D&D 5E Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Post-Mortem (Spoilers)

Retreater

Legend
Each time a campaign ends, I try to learn from it. This will be about my Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign.

About the Group and Selection of the Campaign

This group of players contains the core players from my college days. We've been gaming together for over 20 years, starting with 2E, through 3.x/PF, and now into 5e. They were the original playtest group for my first published adventure. We've been the best men at each others' weddings, cried on each others' shoulders as our friends have passed away, bought each other rounds of drinks to commiserate job losses and divorces. We even tried 4E together. Can our friendship withstand the Dragon Heist? Read on to see.

The group consists of an OSR-apologist/mad scientist/contrarian, a casual player who rolls emotion dice to sprinkle interesting dynamics into the game, a guy who went so all-in with Pathfinder that he's only just now trying 5e, and another player who loves being the party leader/face - and sometimes gets a little bossy with how others play his characters.

Somehow I'd gotten the reputation in the group for being good at running city adventures. The group had been wanting to play in Waterdeep since 2e, so several requested Dragon Heist. I had my reservations because I knew that it had gotten mixed reviews. But I was sure I could make something good (enough) out of it.

Preparation

I did my homework. I read the Alexandrian's blog about the adventure and picked the Cassalanters as the enemy faction, knowing my group of players would like to deal with corrupt nobles. I also got out my old copy of Volo's Guide to Waterdeep, scanned in the full Waterdeep map and loaded it into Roll20 (where we were going to be playing the game). I was ready to make a rich, vibrant world, ready to sandbox in the city. I put in a map of the Yawning Portal Inn and created a bunch of tokens and NPCs where the party could come and draft different followers to help them on their excursions.

A Pretty Good Start Leads to Little Involvement

We had several solid sessions at the beginning as the party investigated a warehouse and a thieves guild. However, it started to fall apart when the party got possession of the haunted tavern to set up as a base of operations. Wanting to keep a low profile, the party decided to not get involved in this business venture.

Don't Go Chasing Railroads

Where the adventure really starts to unravel is the chase scene where the Macguffin is stolen and the PARTY ABSOLUTELY CAN'T GET IT EARLY - NO MATTER WHAT. But the characters made excellent skill checks, followed very logical patterns, came up with very creative solutions. I let them get the Macguffin midway through the chase scene. I found no sense in artificially prolonging the chapter.

The Anti-Climax

After utilizing the Macguffin, the party was able to find the hiding spot of the treasure. Navigating a few easy traps, the party came to a non-combat encounter with a good-aligned dragon and were able to talk it out of the gold. No big fight, and they couldn't even keep the treasure. The group, so bored with the last few sessions, were more than happy to let the campaign fade out.

Lessons Learned

Sometimes, reading reviews tells you all you need to know about an adventure. Dragon Heist was truly a half-baked idea. Yes, I could've reworked it and made it decent, if I put in as much (if not more) work than I would typically spend in designing my own adventure. But I'm left wondering, who is this adventure for? It's very "advanced" for a DM to try to run. Why would you want to play it four different ways? Are you going to run it for the same group that many times? Why not just view it like an Escape Room or a "legacy" board game - your group plays through the mystery once, and you get your money's worth. What could they have done had they focused on only one group - like the Xanathar's Guild - created an in-depth multi-faceted mystery with eyes everywhere ;).

What Came Next?

After this campaign, one of the players offered to run a dungeon crawl in Old School Essentials. That game deserves another thread.
 

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I always appreciate reading other people's experience with adventures I've run, or am thinking about running... but...

You read the Alexandrian review and the Remix and ignored them and then are surprised that the reviews were true? Come on, you knew it was going to fail if you ran it as written, right? But you didn't want to put in the work to to use the Remix or otherwise make it work?

Dragon Heist works, mostly, but only if either your party is fine with a poorly written railroad or you alter or remix it. I have to say, I would never dream of running it as written. Now you know why :)
 

Mistwell

Crusty Old Meatwad (he/him)
We are right now (as in session ended a few minutes ago) in the process of a potential total party kill while fighting an invisible Xanathar in his lair.

We were not prepared and had no idea we were blundering into his lair. My rogue is asleep, under the effects of fear, and charmed. And that's in round 1, having been hit by three rays. RIGHT after he killed the goldfish. Meanwhile some invisible drow is lobbing 4th level spells at us, and we already expended some resources taking out a grell. Oh, and our wizard wandered the wrong way looking for a shortcut from behind into the lair and ran into a pack of kua toa.

We have a possible escape plan, but I will be rolling up a spare character just in case in preparation for next session.
 

TheSword

Legend
Can I ask why you didn’t use the villains lairs? Even just the Cassalanters if you didn’t want to use the Alexandrians advice and link in all four lairs?

The Lairs/main villains are about a third of the book. The heist part is about trying to con these power players out of what is needed. The three keys are there to allow you to send the players into some cool areas if needed.

I don’t think there is any harm in getting the stone early. My group got it after Grahlund Villa and I missed the ‘chase’ entirely (in my opinion the poorest part of the book). I repurposed some of the more interesting locations for when the players were trying to find the villains hide outs.

To me, Dragonheist is full of great city locations, great NPCs, some very good ideas. But it needs work to tie it together into a campaign. It’s not ready to go out of the box for a party with high expectations.
 
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I am getting a sense that you wanted the adventure to fail in order to prove it was badly written.

Now, I haven't read it, so I'm not going to defend it, but if I don't think an adventure is up to snuff* and I don't want to put in the work to fix it I wouldn't run it in the first place.


*which is most of the time, I have read far more bad adventures than good ones.
 

TheSword

Legend
We are right now (as in session ended a few minutes ago) in the process of a potential total party kill while fighting an invisible Xanathar in his lair.

We were not prepared and had no idea we were blundering into his lair. My rogue is asleep, under the effects of fear, and charmed. And that's in round 1, having been hit by three rays. RIGHT after he killed the goldfish. Meanwhile some invisible drow is lobbing 4th level spells at us, and we already expended some resources taking out a grell. Oh, and our wizard wandered the wrong way looking for a shortcut from behind into the lair and ran into a pack of kua toa.

We have a possible escape plan, but I will be rolling up a spare character just in case in preparation for next session.
YOU KILLED THE GOLDFISH 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱

Oh lord. I hope your character hasn’t got any kids, or loved ones of any kind.
 


Lyxen

Great Old One
I have written time and time again how this is a really bad published adventure, for me the worst by far from WotC in 5e, and this just confirms it. Remix it heavily, stick with the remix, otherwise even your best efforts will not save it.
 

Hussar

Legend
I had a largely similar experience. Decent enough start but it kind of petered out. I think a large part of my problem is that about half the group had zero interest in the inn or any of the factions or, frankly, anything to do with the setting at all. I mean, I spent a great deal of time setting up the mansion, used a very excellent little adventure I found online to spice it up, played it out, and then... nothing. The players did absolutely nothing with it and couldn't care less if it burned to the ground. The only comment I got was, "Oh, look, there's a sewer entrance nearby."

So, I think that the adventure can work, but, you need very pro-active players who want to actually engage with the setting. If you have a group that is mostly interested in you rolling up the plot wagon each week and doling out the fight du jour, then, no, this adventure won't work worth a damn.

Something to really remember though, is that this is only a 5 level adventure. It's SHORT.
 


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