D&D 5E Waterdeep: Dragon Heist-ier

[Yenrak]

I've been running my very home-brewery version of Storm King's Thunder for the past year. Much of the year we spent playing out a road trip from Luskan to Bryn Shander. (Here's a thread I started discussing some of those adventures.) The party wound up with a huge amount of goods from Icewind Dale that they intend to sell in Waterdeep and are also headed there to look for Artus Cimber and the Ring of Winter.

Anyway, I figured that as long as we're in Waterdeep, let's run Dragon Heist. But I'm going to change it around. For one thing, two of the players are Zhentarim. So why not have them [SPOILER ALERT]...kidnap the Neverember dude? In other words, instead of having the party stumble upon the aftermath of the kidnapping, have them participate.

I think we'll probably have to play our next session via Zoom or Skype or some such because we're based in a city on lockdown.

 

[Yenrak]

This will be my first time DMing in Waterdeep. Let me know if you have any suggested reading or other ideas to help me get the flavor of the city right.

 

[jayoungr]

Would love to hear about the changes you make to the adventure! I don't know if you've checked out the "Enhancing" thread, but if not, it's here:

D&D 5E - Enhancing "Waterdeep: Dragon Heist"

With Dragon Heist due for its official release very soon, it's time for the traditional "Enhancing" wiki thread! (ETA: No longer a wiki thread since the board upgrade, unfortunately.) I don't believe anyone else has beaten me to it yet... This post contains shortcuts to particular posts* that...

www.enworld.org

This thread has lots of cool ideas and suggestions from other people who have run or played it.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I think you should think a little bit about what the motivations of your players are. If they hear there is a group of competing villains looking for a million gold, are they likely to 1. Find the gold and return it to the city, 2. Try and get the gold only for themselves, or 3. Team up with one of the villains to split the gold with them.

If your players are Zhentarim, they'll likely go for 2 or 3. But these are pretty different, as 2 is "against the world" (fighting both the villains, and the city authorities), while 3 is largely teaming up with a villain against the others and the city.

 

[Yenrak]

In our last session, they discovered the beginnings of a plot by Kraken cultists to do something dastardly in Luskan. (Based on a modified Kraken's Gamble.) They decided to not follow the leads and head down to Waterdeep to sell all the Scrimshaw they had hauled down from Bryn Shander.

So I'm pretty sure they're going to go for option 2.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

In our last session, they discovered the beginnings of a plot by Kraken cultists to do something dastardly in Luskan. (Based on a modified Kraken's Gamble.) They decided to not follow the leads and head down to Waterdeep to sell all the Scrimshaw they had hauled down from Bryn Shander.

So I'm pretty sure they're going to go for option 2.

Great, then get ready to have multiple adversaries, including the city authorities, try to stop them. In Dragon Heist, the "good" NPCs don't really have much a role as it assumes the PCs are good. Since these PCs are much more neutral, I would have the city authorities having a much bigger role, that is more confrontational.