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!