D&D 5E How much can I learn about 5E Neverwinter in a week?

[Mephista]

I have Salvatore's first Neverwinter book as well. Haven't cracked it. Is it 5e or 4e in terms of when it takes place?
Also, I DO have the Tyranny books; maybe I will skim them for info re: that region as well.

They're definitely 4e. There were an entire series of books by a couple authors that helped establish the Neverwinter setting before the campaign book came out. While they can be interesting for background information, they all take place before both game and book came out, so the information in them is highly dated.

The ToD books don't have a lot of info in them on the city, but they do mention Neverember during the council scenes a bit, if you want to look that over.

EDIT - oh, another change. The Harpers have a stronger presence in 5e Faerun, plus the presence of other factions like the Zhentarim, Lord's Alliance, and Order of the Gauntlet, so keep that in mind as you look over the bits on Harpers and hellfire cults.

Neverember is still a Lord of Waterdeep, he is just no longer the Open Lord. (AKA the person everyone knows is a lord.)

How does one go from being a lord that everyone knows about to one that's not known? Ah, well, I don't actually own ToD books, so its only to be expected my memory is slightly fuzzy on the matter.

 

[Shaunobi]

Hey, wanted to quickly follow-up on what I ended up doing here.

So - first, I bought and read the Neverwinter Campaign Guide in the evenings. In conjunction with Salvatore's book I definitely was able to figure out the main characters in the region and get the flavor. If I had to pick one or the other I would definitely pick the campaign guide over the novel - just a lot more there for what I was after.

I also bought Gauntlgrym on kindle. I read it using Spritz speed-reading technology - took about 4 hours. (Spritz is great, but hard to setup - PM if you have any questions about that.) I had a long drive last week as well, so I grabbed to Audible version of the book as well and listened to maybe 1/3 of the book that way (on 1.5x speed it's still way slower to listen than to read.)

Finally, I read through the resources people sent me above - sent them to my Kindle and read them there in the evenings as well. Thanks all!

Aside: really looking forward to the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide! After reading the NCG (my first campaign guide) I am super into them.

After all that, my junior adventurers opted to NOT go to Neverwinter last session. Glad I prepped, but it's looking like it will pay off some future weekend instead of last weekend