Give Me Your Dragon Heist Tips

lluewhyn · Jan 2, 2019

vincegetorix said:
ahhhhhhh c'mon guys, I just got the campaign for Christmas and your all telling me its bad? That's disappointing.

Without reading it yet, I had in mind of having the PC discover that Neverember also put some the lost crown of Neverwinter's Alagondar bloodline in the vault, sparking another quest after the vault when both Neverember goons (who now remembers that the crown is in there) and the Sons of Alagondar (who are still active in my FR) try to get their hands on the crown for their own agenda.

View it as a recipe that's got a lot of great ingredients but is organized in a very confusing way and if cooked as instructed could lead into an unappetizing mess, but if some work and creativity is applied into it, could result in a fantastic meal. The amount of work is up to you, but some of the suggestions given should help you out.

practicalm · Jan 3, 2019

There is a lot of DM must put it together differently to make it more fun in this adventure, but I find this to be true with all the adventures so far. (Except I haven't really looked at ToA because I want to play it.)

Heist has almost all the parts to make it good but it requires retooling to get it there.
Some hints to make it work.

Make a timeline for what you want to happen without the players getting involved.
Then figure how the players might get involved at each step in the timeline and figure out how the players could learn about each step either before or after.

Move the McGuffin from faction to faction instead of keeping it with just one villain or the Nimblewright.
Play up the perceived closeness of the players to Renaer as Renaer having hired them to help Renaer to find the stone and the heist.
Have the factions court the players and confuse them because Renaer has not actually hired them.
Move the item from Faction to Faction in the Chapter 4 path and have different factions be chasing the item along with the players
Add additional heists for the stone and the keys to make it more heist like.
Figure out what the town lords and authorities are doing.

Watch It's a Mad Mad World.
If you have a copy of the Paranoia adventure "Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues" then you can use some tricks from there.

lluewhyn · Jan 3, 2019

practicalm said:
I also agree there are major issues with the adventure.
2. Too much relies on the players not getting the McGuffin until the end of chapter 4.

This leads to the thing I found most appalling in the adventure: If the PCs somehow act smart and are able to get the McGuffin earlier than the end of Chapter 4 through cleverness, the McGuffin itself feels like they haven't "earned" it, and attempts to force the PC to lose it and wipes their minds of the incident until they go through the full Chapter 4 sequence. This is one of the worst ideas I've seen written in a published adventure.

jayoungr · Jan 3, 2019

jasper said:
I ran it as Adventure League game. The Code of Laws tripped people up right and left. And I bend over backwards letting get off with small fines and stuff. Look up my write up about the games and feel free to ask questions.

Got a link, or at least a hint as to where to find your writeup? Is it in Story Hour here?

jasper · Jan 3, 2019

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?653401-Jasper-Dms-Season-8-spoilers

I always forget the link

practicalm · Jan 3, 2019

jasper said:
I ran it as Adventure League game. The Code of Laws tripped people up right and left. And I bend over backwards letting get off with small fines and stuff. Look up my write up about the games and feel free to ask questions.

The Waterdeep Code of Laws has my players appropriately terrified to the point they were not keen on going into the villa at the end of chapter 3. And there are other reasons not to go in besides.

CydKnight · Jan 5, 2019

I am reading through this now for a campaign sometime in the future. It has a lot of great ideas but it really needs to be buttoned up by the DM in a lot of places so I plan to do what I normally do running a 5E published adventure. Do a lot of research on the web to get ideas for customizing it.

This is a big reason why I typically wait at least a year after release to run a published campaign. I am not the most creative person and need lots of help. By the time I run it, I am sure there will be no shortage of thoughts floating around that I can beg, borrow, and steal for this.

One thought I did have reading through this. What if the players decide they do not want the mansion at Trollsclaw Alley and want to sell it without moving in? I can see where some players (and some DMS) would see this as a distraction while dealing with the focus of the adventure. It ties in to one major hook but I can see plenty of other ways to set that hook that don't involve running a household and tavern.

collin · Jan 5, 2019

CydKnight said:
One thought I did have reading through this. What if the players decide they do not want the mansion at Trollsclaw Alley and want to sell it without moving in? I can see where some players (and some DMS) would see this as a distraction while dealing with the focus of the adventure. It ties in to one major hook but I can see plenty of other ways to set that hook that don't involve running a household and tavern.

The selling of Trollskull manor has been mentioned before in another thread. That is certainly an option, and I think the final agreement on the price of sale was 5000gp.

Reynard · Jan 5, 2019

So for those that decided to use ALL the villains and factions in order to give it that kinetic heist movie vibe, which ones were more sympathetic versus more monstrous. As I stated earlier, I have painted the Zhents as an organized cartel with an air of false professionalism, and the Xanathar guild as tattooed MS-13 thugs. What about the others?

Old One Eye · Jan 5, 2019

I am running a winter game, probably about halfway through. Some thoughts:

Do not run it if your players like a sandbox environment. It very much needs players willing to follow the plot.

The plot gets very confusing from the player perspective. It helps if your players are fine with having a meta-discussion from time to time explaining what is going on.

If your players are not familiar with the Realms, which mine are not, then the similar sounding Xanathar and Zhentarim is very confusing. Do not use the word Zhentarim. Call them the Black Network.

Be prepared to skip several of the scenes. It gets draggy. Having some side quests ready to go will help spice things up.