When a piece of media rockets to the epic status that a show like WandaVision has, you can almost hear the collective sound of Dungeon Masters around the world clapping their hands together at once whilst wickedly rubbing them together as they begin to scheme. That’s the magic of D&D, right? The ability to go “this thing is cool!” and turn it into something to unleash upon your players? So if you’ve been patiently watching along like us and have wondered how to pull something like that off, here are some tips for how you can take the concept of the show and make a WandaVision style “Hex” work for your table and setting.
Light spoilers ahead!
Before you begin
There’s typically no one-size-fits-all approach in D&D, and that’s something to embrace- especially when you’re already going outside the box. So, before you sit down to craft your own WandaVision Hex module, there are a few things to consider to make sure you’re approaching it in a way that’ll work for your table.
- Session Zero: We’ve talked before about the ways to make the most of your Session Zero, and Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything includes a section on ways to structure it. But a concept like this is a perfect example of how useful they can be in practice. Why? Well, consider for a moment how much Wanda Maximoff’s personal trauma plays into the worldbuilding of the TV series. This works okay when the audience can have distance from a show, but maybe a bit tougher with the personal connections players have with their own characters and in-game experiences. It doesn’t matter how cool your idea is if someone can’t have fun with it, so draw from those Session Zeroes to see if it may behoove you to think of a different reason why the events of the story are happening. (More on that later)
- Let’s Talk About Anachronicity: The sitcom parody elements of WandaVision’s Hex work so well within the narrative because they fit the idealized version of American small-town life that the Scarlet Witch may have seen growing up. It might not translate so well to say, Faerun, Theros, or Wildemount. This distinction also may not matter to your players. It’s good to think ahead of time about if a widely anachronistic tone like a sitcom episode would play for your group or if you may need to sub in something else. It could be a character’s favorite pulp adventure novels, recreations of elaborate stage productions from a city like Waterdeep, or fables and fairy tales adapted to reflect the realm of your game like many of Geralt’s more episodic adventures in Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books. There are plenty of ways to represent journeys into a fiction idealized reality that don’t have to include any modern technology.
- An Awareness That You Are Not Jac Schaeffer: Though it is theoretically possible that the showrunner of WandaVision is reading this, she is not the target audience. And I say that not as a quality judgment, I’m sure you’re great! I say that to free you of the burden of feeling like you have to live up to the task of developing a massively ambitious TV series that helps introduce the most profitable franchise in the world into a lucrative streaming service. You are instead just trying to have a great session with your pals, roll some dice, and be clever. So breathe and have fun with it!
Building Your Fantasy World’s Fantasy World
Now that you’re all set to begin putting together your own Hex, let’s plop that Dungeon Master hat on your head and start thinking about how to actually build the darn thing. Let’s talk about how you’ll actually construct your Hex: how your players can interact with it, who will actually populate the darn thing, and most importantly, how it’ll fit into your overall game and story.
What Episode is This?
How your Hex will fit into your story is probably the most important element, so that’s where we’ll start. This could be the difference between these sessions being a familiar thing that your players will recognize, appreciate, and say “oh yeah, cool!” about, and the kind of story that they’ll remember and talk about for years to come. So what are some ways you could tie it into the story you’ve already been collectively telling?
- Fetch Quest: If your players have already been on a series of fetch quests looking for magic items, the Hex could serve as the unique challenge they have to solve in order to unlock their quarry. A powerfully enchanted item infused with Illusion magic, perhaps, could be bending reality around it. The characters will need to break the enchantment on themselves in order to claim it. Think about moments in films like Labyrinth when Jennifer Connelly is drawn into visions of a masquerade ball that attempt to make her forget her quest to reach David Bowie’s castle. If your group has already fought a few “zone bosses” during their quest this could be a nice change of pace.
- Boss Fight Prep: Instead of being a substitution for a big boss fight, your Hex could instead be a supplement for it. The reality-bending nature of the scenario is a unique and interesting way to have the players research their nemesis without simply pouring over piles of books at the local archives or shaking down the locals for the deets. If you know some juicy info about your particular BBEG’s dark and mysterious past that could play into their plans to defeat them, this could be your chance to unpack that without it feeling like just an info dump.
- A Character’s Story: This one seems to most naturally extend from what WandaVision the series is actually doing. If you’re DMing a very character-driven campaign, you may find yourself shifting between adventures that focus or spotlight different player characters and their journeys at a time. This could operate similar to a fetch quest of the thing you were fetching all along is the friends you’ve made along the way.
- It’s a Trap!: Probably the easiest one to pull off setup-wise. Your adventurers simply took a wrong turn at the wrong time. Now they’re stuck in a Hex, leaving poor Jimmy Woo outside confused and holding a business card. In this case, what you really have here could be viewed as a puzzle taken to a narrative extreme or some sort of mind dungeon crawl.
Who Are You People?
One of the really exciting things that a Hex module can do for your campaign is it provides such a unique opportunity to completely mix things up with your characters. Maybe you’re coming to the end of a long chapter of the campaign, maybe you need a break from the overall narrative and this weird little Hex tale is the perfect in-character vacation. So what are some ways you can toy with your player paradigm a bit to fit this unique concept? Here’s some ideas to ponder.
- Inside the Hex: Are your player characters caught inside the Hex like the citizens of Westview, New Jersey? If so, perhaps their characters could play characters of their own within it. You can approach this in a couple of different ways. You could provide your players with a basic concept and a few bullet points and trust them to improvise this new concept for a little bit. Or you could feed them just enough info to craft their own concept for their character’s role within the “sitcom.” Maybe one of them really wants to play the wisecracking neighbor and will run with that. (Note: this is also a fun roleplaying move to use for long flashback scenes outside of WandaVision Hexes as well. Assigning temporary roles to your different players during another PC’s backstory allows for the personalization of a one-on-one while leaving the rest of the table feeling included.)
- Responsible for the Hex: This is an extension and enhancement of the previous concept, one that assumes that a player character is the Wanda Maximoff of the story and the Hex is created around them. This could be something they are aware is happening, which may require some pre-session collaboration and discussion, or something they are not, in which case you could set it up similarly to the previous style and slow-burn their involvement with reveals as you go. This is where working with your players to create fleshed-out characters in your adventures can really pay off. Not unlike the Boss Fight prep concept above, this is how a characters’ cards can get laid all out on the table rather than making the player spout it off as an exposition monologue at an inn.
- Investigating the Hex: Perhaps your characters aren’t actually caught up in the Hex but rather they come upon it and need to solve the mystery of it as outside observers. In this scenario, the PCs function much more like the SWORD agents outside. This option might appeal to groups that would love the idea of indulging in something outside the box like this but might be less interested in the more complex roleplaying styles some of the other options require. Or this might just be the option your table would find cooler. There are still ways to have high stakes in this scenario, perhaps the characters need to be equipped with a magic item or enchantment that prevents them from being affected by the Hex when inside its altered reality, and with a ticking clock before it can no longer protect them.
Shared Franchise
So those are some ways that you can fit a Hex within the confines of your own story, here are just a few quick suggestions for ways you can use the flavor of existing campaigns or settings to anchor it within a D&D narrative.
- TashaVision: Who needs the Scarlet Witch when D&D has its own famous spellslinger right here? Perhaps Iggwilv is up to a scheme that the players will need to intervene on, or perhaps the Hex itself is contained within Tasha’s actual Cauldron of Everything.
- Stranger Things Have Happened: The events within the Hex could be the result of a powerful Mindflayer at work.
- The Barovian Accords: The existential horror elements of the citizens stuck within the Hex feel like they’d be right at home for a Curse of Strahd side quest.
- Infernal Machinations: Avernus is a great opportunity to provide some mind-bending situations for your players. And The Good Place taught us that a seemingly suburban paradise makes for the perfect hell.
- It’s All Therosian To Me: One of D&D’s newest settings, the Magic the Gathering import Theros hosts a litany of Ancient Greek-inspired Gods, including Phenax, whose deceptions and illusions would make a decent origin for the Hex, as would Purphoros, the God of the Forge, whose love of creation might include the pocket realities the players find themselves in.
As with all game concepts, all of this is of course just a launching board to inspire you to think of how best to include a Hex-style storyline in your game. And of course, one good mystery deserves another- Candlekeep Mysteries, D&D’s new anthology of mystery adventures, is available for preorder right now.
Have you already incorporated a major pop culture touchstone into your game? What did you do and how did your players react? Or have you even created your own D&D version of WandaVision already? Let us know in the comments!
hey, all of this stuff is optional. Don't like it? Then don't use it. Truth is, for many of us our games are full of pop culture references and side jokes. Lots of homebrew plot elements, character personalities, and settings borrow lightly or lift concepts wholesale from other properties because they are relatable or work well. Sometimes the redress is thorough and sometimes less so, but very few games - especially with the number of independent personalities along for the ride - live completely apart from all of the plots, jokes, callbacks, and inspirations that we experience from all the other parts of our lives, whether it's the fantasy novels we read, the science fiction we watch, the other games we play, or the sports that we enjoy. And by and large, our games are the richer for it, not poorer, because very few of us have or can invest the amount of time that someone like Tolkien did into his own fantasy world.
If you're creative enough to come up with your own, completely original homebrew then good for you. It's a rare talent. If you crib from other places to some degree then you're probably more like the rest of us. Nobody's making you run WandaVision in your campaign - but just as an exercise it's useful to think about how to adapt a concept from something else in your life into a relatable plot point. They're just ideas. Get back at your awful manager by converting his office politicking into a minor villain's role, and then defeat him for treasure and experience points. Take the latest professional wrestling rivalry drama and use it to flesh out the social dynamics of warring orc clans. Use World War I history to inform the logistics and theme of your feywild trench warfare campaign. Do whatever - you don't have to take or actually use any one example provided here, but it's useful just to listen to different approaches one can take to incorporate useful ideas on any level that works for you, whether overt or subtle. If nothing else, an article like this - whether you like this specific idea or not - is just a good reminder as to how free *you* are to do more than just play D&D by its ruleset.
Now that would make for an interesting campaign
Good idea, that could also work in the context of a Majora's Mask-esque situation
Sheesh! Tough crowd XD
I enjoyed the thoughts here. Having never watched WV, I still understand the basic premise, so this threw up some good ideas that weave into any campaign.
Don’t be disheartened by the comments here, Riley. I liked the content.
I know, right? Like, jeez people, it's a new contributor and the world is big enough to accommodate tastes besides your own, so chillax...
While I think this article might have been a little better if it used WandaVision as a title hook and jumping off point and focused a little more on “pocket dimension” adventure ideas in general rather than this specific one, I don’t think the tie-in is inherently bad. Lots of good adventures are ripped from other sources (my last session was a great one and it was straight from Spencer’s Faerie Queene, and my best campaign was basically Ocean’s 11 but fantasy). Heck, even Tolkien shamelessly ripped off classics like Beowulf. Just because this particular idea is more accessible to a more mainstream audience doesn’t invalidate it at all. Though I still think The Truman Show at least deserves a mention.
Point is, I think the article isn’t anywhere near as egregious as some people seem to think it is. And if I’m not mistaken the author is a new writer here: if you’re reading this, I’d like to let you know you’re doing a great job! Nothing on this site has ever pleased everyone, so you’re all good. :-)
I second this. Welcome on board Riley; you're off to a fantastic start!
I actually 3rd this, welcome! And I apologize for all of the old hats like me.
Not a bad topic to bring up actually, I was doing things like this back in the late 80s, and early 90s for both 2e and V:TM, and Mage the Ascension.
It never a bad idea as a DM to be inspired by a series, be it tv. or books, or movies. Or even a dream and see how you could work it into adventures.
Years ago, I use a book that pulled it's readers inside of a tiny demi plane that resembled the home of the wizard who was the author of the book, from a time when his wife and children were all alive and well. The world inside the book gives clues, in ways to help the wizard who is now a ghost that haunts his old home, that has since been renovated into the Inn. The only way they found out was through an old antique mirror in the basement.
The Inspiration for my concept was taken from a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Royale."
I had an idea for a campaign once where the heroes wake up inside a seemingly endless biodome with all kinds of weird lifeforms. At some point they'll discover that they're in a biodome on a spaceship. Beholders are kidnapping sentient creatures to film and broadcast their reactions and struggles in an unfamiliar and alien location. Why? Because they are Beholders.
Inspiration: Mojo World, Murderworld, the Truman Show and reality tv in general. There are probably other examples. The Matrix maybe? The Good Place?
My point is, I thought of WandaVision as a campaign before WandaVision was even a thing. Kinda. But you can definitely see how derivitive it is.
I've run Second Variety/Screamers as a one shot twice. I don't think that's pop culture enough to be pop culture though.
Edit: I forgot that one South Park episode!
Seconded.
100% agree. But this is what you get when the company lets all its top writers and content creators go....Sad
Don't listen to us... I think we're all still angry and sad over James' resignation. We want to lash out at something and you're the most recent thing that we can do it to. The last article also got a lot of hate, but that isn't because it's bad. You just had the bad luck of being here right after James resigned. One tip I'd give you, though, is to keep your articles relatively general. Maybe instead of this exclusively being about WandaVision, it could be about everything with a similar premise.
This video sponsored by Disney or something? there using actual screenshots in this article...
So apparently it’s a bad idea to suggest an outside-the-box concept in a game that’s inherently about creativity. This is a great article about how to do a pocket dimension, illusion-gone-haywire, etc. When I was a kid, I had a dream that my parents had been replaced with actors playing their parts, and nobody believed they were essentially stunt doubles of the real thing — terrifying at the time, but like WandaVision, a great story seed with similar elements. All of these concepts make for great storytelling, and DMs can pick and choose which components they can use from a wildly successful and original piece of media, the same way D&D has adapted various myths, steampunk, gothic horror, cosmic horror, kaiju, space opera, The Office, and of course Tolkien, and we each have the option to pick and choose elements from any of that for our games.
The author makes it clear that this isn’t about bringing superheroes into your game, but a reality alteration, whether Feywild (as others have noted) or something else (Leomund’s Tiny Hut gone wild). Pocket dimensions aren’t new to D&D (Barovia, anyone?), and imagine that this isn’t Wanda, but a vampire like Strahd who’s trying to bring their pocket dimension into the Prime or a Bag of Holding that short-circuited.
Riley, it’s easy to get down about criticism, and the D&D fandom is full of it. (Srsly, people are still angry about the suggestion of a hero in a wheelchair!) It’s even worse when they’re mourning the loss of multiple dearly-loved staff here @ DDB (I recently lost my job because my boss retired after decades, and people couldn’t get over the fact that I wasn’t him, so I feel your pain.), which is causing them to lash out, and you’re the obvious target for their subconscious grieving. But while I loved those staff who left and will miss them, you’re a breath of fresh air and don’t need to be them. I hope the criticism here won’t get you down, and you realize that most people who liked the article don’t comment. Kudos & welcome. The limitless D&D multiverse is big enough for you.
Amen!! Finally, some positivity :) I agree 100%
Is it epic though?
Great article! It gave me multiple ideas on how to bring these interesting story ideas to my table.
Seems a little to Woke for me.
Truth!