D&D 5E Dragons of Stormwreck Isle: New D&D Starter Set Is Coming This Year

Hasbro has posted a short video which highlights its 2022 portfolio of brands, including toys and games, and in it can be seen images of a D&D Starter Set called Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. The cover feature a blue dragon breathing lightning.

Critical Role's Call of the Netherdeep also appears briefly.

In this press release, Hasbro lists the boxed set with a retail price of $49.99, which seems very high for a starter set.

 

[robus]

There is no "basic and learner level". The thing with cities is there is a whole lot going on. Most of which is irrelevant and boring. If you look at a typical D&D city Gazetteer, they are hundreds of pages long, so would be difficult to fit in a 32-page starter adventure!

One of the worst things I did was offer to run a city based adventure (roughly based on Dragonheist). It was “deer in the headlights” the whole time as the players could go anywhere and into any location, because of course a city is littered with interesting locations!

 

[MockingBird]

What makes you think WotC would be any better at writing this than anyone else? Seen Dragonheist?

There is no "basic and learner level". The thing with cities is there is a whole lot going on. Most of which is irrelevant and boring. If you look at a typical D&D city Gazetteer, they are hundreds of pages long, so would be difficult to fit in a 32-page starter adventure! As for writing it from scratch, don't bother unless you have a couple of spare years lying around.

If you want advice on writing and running a city adventure, I would suggest starting a thread on it. These forums have hundreds of years of combined DMing experience, considerably more than WotC can muster.

I mean, you're right, I can't really argue your points. That's one reason I never picked up Dragon Heist, I wasn't confident I could do it justice. I attempted Murder in Bladurs Gate, didn't go how I had it in my head.

 

[Jer]

One of the worst things I did was offer to run a city based adventure (roughly based on Dragonheist). It was “deer in the headlights” the whole time as the players could go anywhere and into any location, because of course a city is littered with interesting locations!

Running city adventures taught me that pre-planning a city adventure is a foolish idea, at least for me. City adventures are a page of notes about locations (especially city districts with distinctive names that indicate what goes on there like "Nob Hill" or "Temple Row" or "Market Square"), another page of notes with some NPC blurbs on it and the plots that they're up to, a third page of random names so that I can quickly make up a name when the PCs inevitably start trying to find random weirdos to talk to instead of any of the NPCs that I thought would be interesting and a generic list of potential plot hooks to tie them into, and then it's "welcome to improv city" as we just make up the city as we go. And I try to take copious notes so that I can be consistent between sessions.

I stand in awe of people who can actually use published city-based adventures - let alone make use of massive city gazetteers - as written in their games, because the best I can do even after almost 4 decades of playing this game is steal ideas from them, condense them down into a few bullet points, and then try to fake it.

 

[robus]

Yep

Running city adventures taught me that pre-planning a city adventure is a foolish idea, at least for me. City adventures are a page of notes about locations (especially city districts with distinctive names that indicate what goes on there like "Nob Hill" or "Temple Row" or "Market Square"), another page of notes with some NPC blurbs on it and the plots that they're up to, a third page of random names so that I can quickly make up a name when the PCs inevitably start trying to find random weirdos to talk to instead of any of the NPCs that I thought would be interesting and a generic list of potential plot hooks to tie them into, and then it's improv city as we just make up the city as we go.

Yep, I think I really didn’t have a good plan for handling the random asides:“while in the market square I’m going to find a vendor of X” etc

 

[Jer]

Yep

Yep, I think I really didn’t have a good plan for handling the random asides:“while in the market square I’m going to find a vendor of X” etc

The very first time I ever ran a city adventure I think I was 12 or 13 years old and I don't think the players ever actually got to the adventure. Multiple sessions of literally nothing but me trying to respond to every random aside they came up with.

In the decades since I've gotten better at figuring out how to respond to the random asides in a way that eventually funnels the players into an actual plot at some point, but its still more like riding a roller coaster than a dungeon or a mission-based game. (At least if the players have a mission before they start the city stuff they usually pull themselves back onto track. Eventually. With a mild amount of prodding sometimes.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I mean, you're right, I can't really argue your points. That's one reason I never picked up Dragon Heist, I wasn't confident I could do it justice. I attempted Murder in Bladurs Gate, didn't go how I had it in my head.

If you want some adventure suggestions, Heroes of Baldur's Gate and City of Eyes, both on DMs Guild.

The thing with cities is they have at least 10 times the population as the typical town or village, probably a lot more. Which, if you simply try to scale it up, means 10 times as many NPCs, 10 times as many sites of interest, 10 times as many plot hooks, etc. The impracticality of doing that means resorting to improv, as @Jer suggests.

But I think making a spin-off thread is a good idea.

 

[delericho]

Why do they screw it up every time, even for new players?

Cos writing these things is a lot harder than we think?

And, actually, writing adventures for newbie DMs is harder even than writing them for experienced DMs - although the adventure itself tends to be much simpler, they also can't rely on the DM to do any of the heavy lifting, so the adventure needs to do more right out of the box.

 

[robus]

Cos writing these things is a lot harder than we think?

Perhaps, but I can’t believe they gave this one even the barest play test!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Perhaps, but I can’t believe they gave this one even the barest play test!

Well, all the things you have objected to so far are things that wouldn't remotely trouble a new player.

 

[robus]

Well, all the things you have objected to so far are things that wouldn't remotely trouble a new player.

I got told the same about LMoP when I struggled with it as a new DM, so I guess we’ll have to disagree.