D&D 5E Looking for Short Urban Adventures for Levels 1-3

[The Scythian]

Whispers of the Dark Daeva by Richard Green. It's designed for Green's Parsantium city setting and has a distinctly Indian flavor, but with a bit of filing you could make it work for just about any large fantasy city.

 

[pukunui]

I'll check that one out too. Thanks.

 

[pukunui]

At the moment, I'm thinking Mad God's Key is the winner. The bloody tomb is great, and the fact that it involves a book that gets stolen from a library is a surefire way to get two of my players invested (as they are both librarians). They really enjoyed The Scroll Thief for that same reason.

Waterdeep's bound to have some kind of library, and I can put the tomb in the foothills of the Sword Mountains to the north of the city. I can replace references to Boccob, Vecna, and Wee-Jas with Mystra (or Oghma), Velsharoon, and Jergal respectively.

 

[briggart]

I ran "The Scroll Thief" as a side adventure while my Tyranny of Dragons group was in Baldur's Gate. They really enjoyed that one. I do like "Cloak and Shadows", especially its alternate chase rules, but haven't run the actual adventure. It's more for 3rd level PCs, though, isn't it? I'm not that familiar with the last one.

You may be right that "Cloak and Shadows" is more for 3rd level characters. There should be guidelines to scale up and down the challenges in AL adventures, but having only played and not DM'ed these, I don't know how effective they are in this case.

SPOILERS for Boltsmelter's Book:





The PCs have been hired as guards by Boltsmelter. The adventure opens with the elemental cultists coming after B. It's clear that the PCs will be overwhelmed, so they have to flee, leading to a nice chase within the city. After the PCs get rid of the immediate pursuers, they have to lay low and find a way to leave the city and escort B. to his final destination. The options for leaving the city are mostly tied to the factions, so that could require some reworking for your campaign. Once they are out of the city, they discover that there is another party interested in B., and while they are dealing with this party the cultists from the beginning come back to steal the titular book, leading to the final showdown to prevent some evil ritual destroying part of the city. I think it's for level 2 characters.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

The bloody tomb is most definitely awesome. I think you could make the villains Red Wizards, due to their affinity for undead. Tomb could be outside Waterdeep, as you mentioned, or even in Undermountain. I'm not familiar with the sequel, but sounds promising. I also think Blood Vaults of Sister Alkava from Kobold Press could work as a sequel, too...

 

[pukunui]

I'm planning on running Scourge of the Sword Coast and Dead in Thay as the main part of this campaign, so I suppose I could swap out the cultists for Red Wizards. That might get a bit repetitive, though. I am happy for this introductory adventure to be a standalone thing. (I could just leave out the letter found at the end of the adventure, for instance.)