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Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
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<blockquote data-quote="lluewhyn" data-source="post: 7509933" data-attributes="member: 6887379"><p><strong>3 out of 5 rating for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist</strong></p><p></p><p>There's a lot of good story ideas here that could really make for a compelling adventure. My issue with it is that as written, the adventure is very railroaded and a DM should probably do a lot to spice it up. As others have said, despite its name, it's not actually a heist, but rather a hunt for a treasure (technically, mostly a hunt for a McGuffin that will point them to said treasure). This may seem semantic, but "heist" carries certain connotations that can be misleading. To me, it's like renaming <em>Die Hard</em> to <em>Nakatomi Tower Murder Mystery</em>. Yeah, there's murder(s) and there's some mystery (what are these guys after?), but you're definitely going to have some very confused expectations based upon the title.</p><p></p><p>Once again, as others have said, it feels very much like an Indiana Jones adventure where you're trying to get an item that will lead you to ultimate reward while others are trying to get the same thing. One weak comparison, however, is that part of the rationale for the adventure (especially if the PCs are Good) is to keep the money out of the hands of the other factions, which doesn't have the same impetus of keeping a powerful artifact out of their hands. In fact, one of the Antagonists is just going to turn around and give the money to the city as a PR stunt, and another is going to use the money to buy back the souls of their children from devils.</p><p></p><p>I'm also not a fan of the "re-playability" features of these official adventure modules. They're not different enough to be really re-playable for the players, and only work to give the DM some variety if they're running the same adventure for different groups. While some may not seem any harm in it, I think this "feature" tends to impact the clarity of the adventure for the DMs. This is particularly true in this adventure, as the alternative variants for Chapter 4 are intermingled for every encounter in such a way to require an obnoxious amount of flipping back and forth.</p><p></p><p>As I mentioned earlier, I think an issue with the adventure is its very railroaded nature. While the PCs have some options on a macro level about how they want things to turn out, a lot of the encounters are designed with one solution in mind. If the PCs do not perform that solution, the adventure comes to a stop and the DM has to scramble to figure out how to connect them back to the plot. The book's states several times that the solution is to just have a friendly NPC show up, or maybe a rival NPC who will take a bribe. A lot of times, the solution for an encounter is not obvious and/or requires them to successfully make a certain skill check. If the PCs fail to keep up with an NPC they're chasing, fail to make the appropriate Investigation/Perception/etc. check, the PCs have fallen off the rails and the DM has to write up a solution for how to get them back on the track. It just seems like the adventure is happy to punt the PCs astray and make the DM figure out a solution each time. </p><p></p><p>One egregious example that comes to mind is when the PCs try to get some information from an NPC, if they're not Harpers, she refuses to help them. The encounter states that the solution is to use magic to get that information from her or to steal a book containing this information from her locked safe. <em>PCs won't likely have access to this magic or will be loathe to use it on her, and they don't know anything about this book existing.</em> Yeah, the DM can determine if the PCs have a viable alternate option, but they'll get no help from the book. There's just a lot of examples like this that frequently puts the DM on the spot in addition to the players, which is pretty challenging if you're new to DMing. </p><p></p><p>In Chapter 4, a lot of these railroaded encounters are all directed towards trying to acquire the McGuffin (err, <em>Stone of Golorr</em>). So, if you fail to solve an encounter, you're adrift and the PCs and the DM both have to find an alternate way to the next encounter. If they succeed, sorry Mario, your McGuffin is in another castle and you get kicked to the next encounter in the chain (there are 8) to try again. Worst of all, if your players somehow get a really good idea that lets them get their hands on the Stone early so they can skip some of this hassle, <em>the Stone of Golorr decides they haven't properly earned it, will attempt to dominate them and force them to discard it, will wipe their memory of where they dropped it, and the PCs will be forced to get back on the tracks and do the required encounters, dangit!</em> </p><p></p><p>No, I'm not kidding about this.</p><p></p><p>As a result, I think I'm going to take a lot of ingredients in this adventure but repurpose them to be more of a sandbox that gives the players more initiative.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="lluewhyn, post: 7509933, member: 6887379"] [b]3 out of 5 rating for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist[/b] There's a lot of good story ideas here that could really make for a compelling adventure. My issue with it is that as written, the adventure is very railroaded and a DM should probably do a lot to spice it up. As others have said, despite its name, it's not actually a heist, but rather a hunt for a treasure (technically, mostly a hunt for a McGuffin that will point them to said treasure). This may seem semantic, but "heist" carries certain connotations that can be misleading. To me, it's like renaming [I]Die Hard[/I] to [I]Nakatomi Tower Murder Mystery[/I]. Yeah, there's murder(s) and there's some mystery (what are these guys after?), but you're definitely going to have some very confused expectations based upon the title. Once again, as others have said, it feels very much like an Indiana Jones adventure where you're trying to get an item that will lead you to ultimate reward while others are trying to get the same thing. One weak comparison, however, is that part of the rationale for the adventure (especially if the PCs are Good) is to keep the money out of the hands of the other factions, which doesn't have the same impetus of keeping a powerful artifact out of their hands. In fact, one of the Antagonists is just going to turn around and give the money to the city as a PR stunt, and another is going to use the money to buy back the souls of their children from devils. I'm also not a fan of the "re-playability" features of these official adventure modules. They're not different enough to be really re-playable for the players, and only work to give the DM some variety if they're running the same adventure for different groups. While some may not seem any harm in it, I think this "feature" tends to impact the clarity of the adventure for the DMs. This is particularly true in this adventure, as the alternative variants for Chapter 4 are intermingled for every encounter in such a way to require an obnoxious amount of flipping back and forth. As I mentioned earlier, I think an issue with the adventure is its very railroaded nature. While the PCs have some options on a macro level about how they want things to turn out, a lot of the encounters are designed with one solution in mind. If the PCs do not perform that solution, the adventure comes to a stop and the DM has to scramble to figure out how to connect them back to the plot. The book's states several times that the solution is to just have a friendly NPC show up, or maybe a rival NPC who will take a bribe. A lot of times, the solution for an encounter is not obvious and/or requires them to successfully make a certain skill check. If the PCs fail to keep up with an NPC they're chasing, fail to make the appropriate Investigation/Perception/etc. check, the PCs have fallen off the rails and the DM has to write up a solution for how to get them back on the track. It just seems like the adventure is happy to punt the PCs astray and make the DM figure out a solution each time. One egregious example that comes to mind is when the PCs try to get some information from an NPC, if they're not Harpers, she refuses to help them. The encounter states that the solution is to use magic to get that information from her or to steal a book containing this information from her locked safe. [I]PCs won't likely have access to this magic or will be loathe to use it on her, and they don't know anything about this book existing.[/I] Yeah, the DM can determine if the PCs have a viable alternate option, but they'll get no help from the book. There's just a lot of examples like this that frequently puts the DM on the spot in addition to the players, which is pretty challenging if you're new to DMing. In Chapter 4, a lot of these railroaded encounters are all directed towards trying to acquire the McGuffin (err, [I]Stone of Golorr[/I]). So, if you fail to solve an encounter, you're adrift and the PCs and the DM both have to find an alternate way to the next encounter. If they succeed, sorry Mario, your McGuffin is in another castle and you get kicked to the next encounter in the chain (there are 8) to try again. Worst of all, if your players somehow get a really good idea that lets them get their hands on the Stone early so they can skip some of this hassle, [I]the Stone of Golorr decides they haven't properly earned it, will attempt to dominate them and force them to discard it, will wipe their memory of where they dropped it, and the PCs will be forced to get back on the tracks and do the required encounters, dangit![/I] No, I'm not kidding about this. As a result, I think I'm going to take a lot of ingredients in this adventure but repurpose them to be more of a sandbox that gives the players more initiative. [/QUOTE]
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