D&D 5E Rebalanced Tyranny of Dragons Coming In January

According to Amazon a 'rebalanced' version of Tyranny of Dragons is being released by WotC in January. There's no indication if there's a new cover, but the "adventure has been rebalanced to be easier for a new Dungeon Master to run and a better play experience".

2019's Tyranny of Dragons combined 2014's Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat with errata and new cover art. It was originally produced for WotC by Kobold Press during the early period of 5E when adventures were outsourced to local companies run by ex-WotC employees, such as Kobold Press, Green Ronin and Sasquatch Game Studios. This will be the third version of these adventures.

Tyranny of Dragons combines and refines two action-packed Dungeons & Dragons adventures—Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat—into a single sweeping campaign. It also includes a gallery of concept art providing a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of an epic adventure spotlighting Tiamat, one of the most legendary foes in D&D.

• A wonderful re-introduction to 5th edition’s first published adventures for new fans
• Begins as a low-level adventure suitable for new players and evolves into an epic, sprawling campaign bringing players all the way from level 1 to level 15
• Adventure has been rebalanced to be easier for a new Dungeon Master to run and a better play experience.
• Book includes gallery of concept art spotlighting Tiamat, one of the most legendary foes in D&D

 

[Zaukrie]

He's another one who's decided that the algorithm rewards him going gloom and doom and having lots of stills of him face-palming whatever WotC is doing. It's hard to take that kind of thing seriously.

I'd much rather a Mike Shea, who while he can be quite critical of works when he doesn't think they're up to snuff, heaps praise when it's due and makes it clear when something is a bad fit for him, rather than a bad product in general. (Also, Shea puts his money where his mouth is, with the excellent Lazy DM products. I haven't read any of his adventure material, but I'm guessing it's pretty solid as well -- or at least a good fit for my style of DMing.)

There seem to be an awful lot of doomtubers about DnD these days. I'm not sure what that says, but it has decreased my viewing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There seem to be an awful lot of doomtubers about DnD these days. I'm not sure what that says, but it has decreased my viewing.

I think it just says engagement algorithms are bad for everyone but shareholders.

 

[Alby87]

That is exactly the sort of thing DMsGuild was made for and there are many documents of that sort available.

I know there are a lot of those guides available (stealed some ideas for CoS myself), but my idea is a Wizards official one. And not because "3PP are for sure bad because they are not WotC", but we are talking in this thread because there is a possibility of a Wizards rebalancing, not a 3PP rebalancing of Tyranny of Dragons. And, theorically (but I don't know if this is the case), official reworks on adventures should at least get the original author/team to supervise/approve those rebalancing.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think it would be a great idea to refresh adventures in the current edition every 5-10 years. However, I would like it to be a true refresh where they look at playtest and feedback and think about how to really improve the adventure and not just update errata in the like. Really take advantage of the 1000s of people who have run the adventure to make real improvements. I think all adventures could use that really.

Absolutely agreed. I would love to see a lot of adventures with the layout improved; with fiddly bits that were hard to run revised; with repeated information excised and missing information filled in. A whole "refresh", as you say.

It would be really neat to see, and while it would be a bit of work, it wouldn't be as much work as making a whole new adventure (with its own set of troubles). I'm obviously not advocating doing this instead of new adventures (there's room for both!) but doing it occasionally as a special product (like the Ravenloft Revamped, but with a little more oomph).

I think it would be cool, and sell well.

The closest example I can think of is the time that Perkins redid the Against the Giants adventures for 4e. He added a new chapter with Stone Giants (which wasn't in the original) and got all-new Mike Schley maps. It was published in Dragon at the time, but something like that could be done as a hardcover book. I loved it, myself. Heck, I was disappointed that the AtG in Yawning Portal was based on the original, and not a 5e update of the 4e one, which (IMO) improved on the original quite a bit (or in the very least, they could have gone for a mix of the two).

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Seems to me that unlike the three Core books that need new print runs made with much more frequency (and thus they just add in the errata they've collected up to that point for them each time)... new necessary print-runs of adventures allows them to do more in-depth work on them besides just errata since they occur with much less frequency. Wouldn't be surprised if Princes and Abyss get similar treatment at some point down the line.

I also have to imagine that they wanted this adventure back into circulation to coincide with 5E Dragonlance being released so that there's more dragon-focused material out there for DMs to pick up and use should they want to expand their DL campaigns. Same way having Odyssey of the Dragonlords on the market helped WotC have more Greek material on the market when Theros was released.

I just had a thought - they're doing that upcoming remix of Phandelver. I wonder if that's an experiment to see what the market might be for a "revised and expanded" version of a much-loved adventure might be like, using, well... a much-loved adventure.

I assume they're going to add a lot to it, as well. We'll see.

 

[dave2008]

Absolutely agreed. I would love to see a lot of adventures with the layout improved; with fiddly bits that were hard to run revised; with repeated information excised and missing information filled in. A whole "refresh", as you say.

It would be really neat to see, and while it would be a bit of work, it wouldn't be as much work as making a whole new adventure (with its own set of troubles). I'm obviously not advocating doing this instead of new adventures (there's room for both!) but doing it occasionally as a special product (like the Ravenloft Revamped, but with a little more oomph).

I think it would be cool, and sell well.

The closest example I can think of is the time that Perkins redid the Against the Giants adventures for 4e. He added a new chapter with Stone Giants (which wasn't in the original) and got all-new Mike Schley maps. It was published in Dragon at the time, but something like that could be done as a hardcover book. I loved it, myself. Heck, I was disappointed that the AtG in Yawning Portal was based on the original, and not a 5e update of the 4e one, which (IMO) improved on the original quite a bit (or in the very least, they could have gone for a mix of the two).

Yes, the 4e update of against the giants is a great example.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I just had a thought - they're doing that upcoming remix of Phandelver. I wonder if that's an experiment to see what the market might be for a "revised and expanded" version of a much-loved adventure might be like, using, well... a much-loved adventure.

I assume they're going to add a lot to it, as well. We'll see.

At the very least I would expect all the sites and locations highlighted in Lost Mines and Icespire Peak to appear in the hardcover. The question then becomes whether they expand each site to become more of their own individual little adventures, or if they all just feed into one primary storyline that encompasses the adventure.

Speaking personally... I think I'd prefer to see this new Phandalin hardcover go the way of Curse of Strahd... where you have this one location and mini-setting" with all these different adventure sites to do small individual events... but there's also an overarching enemy to interact with over the course of the adventure / deal with at the end-- whether that be the Black Spider, or Cryovain or someone else.

 

[Alzrius]

I wouldn't mind if they reskinned it for Dragonlance, but that would require a title change, among other things

That'll be the fourth version of the adventure, when it's called "Bored of the Dragon Queen."

 

[Erdric Dragin]

They do this NOW? After I'm already done running through Hoard of the Dragon Queen with my kids practically? They're at the end of it almost, I'm still shocked at how they decided it was ok to put an adult white dragon as an encounter to do, that one is definitely a TPK.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

up until now I have been assuming that 1D&D would be DM side back compatible, but if an adventure from early 5e needs updating how long before we get every adventure redone...