D&D 5E Beadle & Grimm's Waterdeep: Dragon Heist - Platinum Edition

Right now all signs point to "failed Kickstarter from first-time creator" territory.

I mean, seriously: they won't give you any specifics whatsoever about what you're getting. Nothing. You go to their site and click the button that actually says "Show Me" -- but the button doesn't do that, because they refuse to show you a single thing that actually comes in the box. Instead you get a bunch of "example" pictures of random miniatures and art with captions warning that you won't actually receive any of the things you're looking at. And then at the bottom of the page there is a button labeled "Take My Money" which unlike the "Show Me" button functions perfectly well.

On top of that, they're trotting out a "no spoilers" rhetoric to imply that everything's ready to go but can't be shown yet, whereas if you look at the various interviews and videos it's obvious that they are nowhere near finalizing the actual box contents, and it doesn't even seem like much work has been done on it at all.

I'd be happy to learn I'm wrong about this. There's a real market for this sort of a product, and I'm part of that market, and I really like Matthew Lillard. But they've totally screwed the pooch on this (Scoob? Is that you?) and the interview suggests Lillard is kind of aware of that. If they get their act together very quickly and nail down and announce what the various tiers contain -- and if the product is totally awesome -- their order numbers might recover.

It’s a hell of a testament to branding, though, if they get pre-orders for a $500 mystery box! That deserves some respect!

If I'm going to spend $500 on tabletop role-playing game supplies for a more immersive gaming experience, I'll buy a bunch of Dwarven Forge sets.

Nathaniel Lee said:

If I'm going to spend $500 on tabletop role-playing game supplies for a more immersive gaming experience, I'll buy a bunch of Dwarven Forge sets.

Click to expand...

I'd say $500 will get you a few Dwarven Forge sets... if you want a bunch, add a zero to that number (spoken as someone who has a bunch of sets!).

I don't doubt that at all. I nabbed myself for unpainted caverns sets (I figured it's not as important for caverns to be painted and worse comes to worst it seemed fairly straightforward to paint them) and fortunately have spent less than three hundred dollars total. The shipping is what really hurts it for me... if there was an actual retail location I could pick these up from, I'd be much more inclined to buy a $45 set, but having to pay shipping makes me feel like I need to order a bunch to "save" which means, of course, I'm spending a couple of hundred dollars at once.

I'm still contemplating this (depending on book sales). For me, it seems to be what I wished the 1e City System box was, with everything needed to run Waterdeep. While I already have a TON of miniatures, both prepainted and Reaper Bones, I'm sure there will be something I can use.

As far of maps of Waterdeep, Wizards has a map pack coming this fall, but I can't recall if it is at the time of Dragon Heist or Mad Mage. This product may be worth it. I'd like to trust in this company, though I may just print what I need from my Dragonlock. There has to be something else in it, maybe more of these?

I just can't get past the $500 asking price. I really want these sorts of things in general to do well: Dungeons & Dragons certainly deserves the premium treatment, and things like the FLGS exclusive versions of various source book releases are awesome, but if you're going to ask someone for $500 you better be giving them something that feels like it's worth $500.

Granted, the listing on the Beadle & Grimm's website says that it will include "much, much more" than what has been listed, but I feel that if they really had something big up their sleeves they would have already announced or at least hinted at it to get more pre-orders in the bag. Right now, it looks like we're going to get some art cards for important events or scenes in the campaign, a bunch of miniatures that in all likelihood are just selected out of the series coming out for this game already (if there were going to be exclusive ones they would have at least mentioned that), a few physical coins or whatnot as story props, some battle maps, and a nice DM screen.

That is in no way, shape or form worth the additional $450 above and beyond the price of the module itself.

I mean, I want to give Matthew Lillard et al the benefit of the doubt, but this is essentially a $500 Loot Crate from a company with no reputation to fall back on and no basis from which to guess what the quantity of goods and quality thereof will be. That's way too much of an ask in my book.

Yea, I thought this was pretty interesting when I saw it during the SoME. But then paying close attention during the stream and browsing their website at the time, I quickly came to the conclusion, 'No chance in hell am I going to trust a company with no track record for a $500 product that they won't even tell me what the product is.'

If this flops, no one really is going to have any excuse to complain that they wasted their money.

Just wanted to echo what the majority here are saying. I think this is an excellent product idea, and in theory I am very interested.

But at a $500 price point, before I purchase I absolutely need:

a. Real product shots and a detailed description of what I'm buying
and
b. to know if the actual adventure itself is good and is something I actually want to run

I've been trying to think what it would take for me to spend $500 on an adventure that covers 5 levels.

* Credits to Hero Forge that get me PCs for 6 party figures. A contract to have them professionally painted.
* Painted minis of great quality for all encounters in the module.
* Dwarven Forge to build every encounter location (including enough to do connected encounter locations).
* Props for any writing, signage, etc...
* Magic item props for any found magic items.
* Metal coins to cover all monetary treasure in the module.
* High quality books (Module for the DM, player books for each player).
* High quality DM screen (not just cardboard).

I might spend $500 for all of that for one adventure - but then I would not spend it on a second adventure as most of it could be reused.