Waterdeep: Dragon Heist First Impressions

I love heist/caper stories and urban fantasy adventures so the minute the D&D team announced Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Now that I've got it? I'm still excited.

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My full review will follow after I finish reading the book but a few quick impressions.

1. The choice of four villains to choose from is a nice touch for replay-ability. Each villain is tied to a season. The full reading will reveal why.
2. I like the adventure flowchart and encounter chains.
3. It has a pronunciation guide! That makes a DM's life much easier.
4. Players have three additional factions they can play, one of which is Force Grey. Critical Role fans will love that.
5. Lots of cool NPCs are in the adventure, including well-known ones like Laeral Silverhand, though she may not be the same as the last time you saw her in an official Waterdeep adventure.
6. The building maps are nice and could be reused in other adventures.
7. For background material, it includes a section labeled “Volo's Waterdeep Enchiridion” that should get DMs new to Waterdeep up to speed.

After the freeform aspects of Tomb of Annihilation, the fact that Waterdeep: Dragon Heist has a bit more structure while still a sandbox is a smart choice. Being set in Faerun's most famous city also presents some nice dilemmas for players. Murder hobo tactics are likely to get them killed or imprisoned, so players should have to be more strategic – of course, that's never guaranteed.

While these are just quick takes based on a flip through of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, they definitely whet my appetite for more. City-based adventures aren't explored enough in D&D, in my opinion, Waterdeep is a rich enough setting to allow for as much variety as any wilderness or dungeon setting.

This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!

 

[Demetrios1453]

You should probably out the spoiler, behind a spoiler tag
use:

Spoiler

text to be hidden

, but replace "spoiler" with "sblock"

Ah, I tried

Spoiler

and

and it didn't work, so I didn't know the secret code to create the spoiler text. Thanks! I'll go and edit it now.

 

[MarkB]

Every time I see the title of this adventure, I want to rename it "Grand Theft Draco".

 

[darjr]

It occurred to me that waterdeep and the AL mods that go with it could be a part of the big gaps in several of the adventures released so far. For instance in the first two the players could spend some side time in waterdeep. Or in Storm Kings. Or Elemental Princes. That's really kinda neat.

 

[collin]

I'm a recent Eberron convert, and planning on using in Sharn for sure. From what I've read so far seems like it won't be too bad, need to make a few notes as I go.

Some Realms factions are prominent, but my thinking is they can be switched over to Dragonmarked Houses / powerful noble family / other Sharn factions - Boromar & Daask seem obvious choices to me at this point early on.

EDIT -actually reading little further on might be a lot of work. Thinking AL season coming up might be a better fit for me & my group.

I agree. My original plan was to convert this adventure to Eberron using Sharn in place of Waterdeep. The characters and locations are particularly so integrated to the Realms that it is proving to be a far greater challenge than I originally thought.

BUT I AM UP TO THE CHALLENGE!

I am going ahead with the conversion since I have a fair amount of time before I would be needing to run this adventure with the current group of people I am playing with. I have gotten up through Chapter 2 for making conversions thus far. I just wish the Sharn 3.5 resource book had been better laid out with indexes and so forth. Oh well, I am becoming an expert on Sharn and Waterdeep regardless of where things end up.

 

[vpuigdoller]

After reading thru it, I like the adventure a lot. I dislike the simplified map style.... Sigh at least the important parts are good.

 

[darjr]

I love Dyson Logos map style. Especially printed out to one inc scale it is very nice.

 

[Parmandur]

It occurred to me that waterdeep and the AL mods that go with it could be a part of the big gaps in several of the adventures released so far. For instance in the first two the players could spend some side time in waterdeep. Or in Storm Kings. Or Elemental Princes. That's really kinda neat.

Oh, definitely: I could see starting with Dragon Heist, and transitioning to the back half of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, skipping the intro chapters and the caravan entirely...

 

[Parmandur]

I love Dyson Logos map style. Especially printed out to one inc scale it is very nice.

Aesthetics and utility with maps are a bit of a spectrum. It seems that I always see a lot of folks complaining about the beautiful Schley maps for previous books, maybe WotC is just responding to feedback.

 

[Prakriti]

For me, when it comes to maps, it's a matter of quality over style. I would rather have a good pen-and-ink map than a shoddy full-color one. Luckily, Dyson Logos makes some of the best pen-and-ink maps around.

 

[darjr]

Huh, Dragon Heist as a sort of Phandelver option? Well that’s cool.