Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
I’m also working on a dragon heist remix, and I agree that the way it’s written does have a lot of gaps between what I would consider “adventuring.” But compare to a dungeon or other adventure location. There are rooms with traps, monsters, and/or hidden stuff to find (i.e. encounters) and there are rooms without. When running a more socially-focused adventure, you can think of each scene like a room in a dungeon. In a typical adventuring day, the party will play through several such scenes that challenge them and tax their resources, and several such scenes that don’t. That’s perfectly normal.One of my groups is playing in my remix of Dragon Heist, so there's not much risk from the elements or going hungry and, yes, there are days when they're asking questions and making connections and trying to figure out what's going on and who the bad guys are. Then they're given a mission to infiltrate some bad guys place and that becomes an adventuring day. The other days will make minor dents in their resources but nothing like a real adventuring day.
I agree that PCs are always in the midst of adventure, they are the protagonists after all, but these adventuring days are intended to be especially challenging days that will sap their resources to the limit and make them feel like they eked out a victory.
I will say, I empathize with your plight when it comes to urban adventures in general, and Dragon Heist in particular. One of the things I’m doing in my prep work is defining scenes and encounters within the story, and there are definitely going to be a few adventure-light days. But I think those days can be largely narrated over, the same way you would an empty dungeon hallway.