D&D 5E Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Post-Mortem (Spoilers)

[Burnside]

I don’t quite get when people expect to run a published module as written.

They probably expect it because that's how the adventures are marketed, and also how they are written.

 

[Retreater]

You read the Alexandrian review and the Remix and ignored them and then are surprised that the reviews were true? Come on, you knew it was going to fail if you ran it as written, right? But you didn't want to put in the work to to use the Remix or otherwise make it work?

I did get some advice about problem areas and ideas about how to smooth over situations. My primary issue with remixing or blending together all four seasons was how it was organized on Roll20. You had to choose the season and run that season as a separate module. Running winter and summer, for example, would require two different games. Had I been doing it in person without the constraints of technology, I think I would've felt more free to homebrew it and take other suggestions.

Can I ask why you didn’t use the villains lairs? Even just the Cassalanters if you didn’t want to use the Alexandrians advice and link in all four lairs?

I did, to a certain point. The party went to the Cassalanters' manor house and had a very tense role-playing showdown with the nobles. They didn't go into the dungeon, because there was so need after securing the nobles wouldn't be getting the gold.

I am getting a sense that you wanted the adventure to fail in order to prove it was badly written.

Now, I haven't read it, so I'm not going to defend it, but if I don't think an adventure is up to snuff* and I don't want to put in the work to fix it I wouldn't run it in the first place.

I think I went through several stages. I was hesitant to run it at first, but really put in a lot of effort at the outset to give my friends a good experience - creating many cool NPCs, putting in the full city map, designing a Waterdeep sandbox. When they started to not feel the adventure, I pulled back the resources I was putting in and kind of sped them to the conclusion. I saw no sense in prolonging a bad time.

@Retreater I've read about your failures with PF2 and Frost Maiden and now this. Do you have any success stories to share!

Absolutely! I wouldn't still be playing D&D after all these decades if I didn't have good campaigns/adventures. Just sticking with 5e, I can do positive post-mortems with Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, and (believe it or not) Princes of the Apocalypse. I have more negative ones with Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Out of the Abyss, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and Storm King's Thunder.
This isn't to imply most of my games are bad. Good adventures tend to last a long time as they run to their natural conclusion - so there's not as many of those. The adventures that don't work out, we usually speed through them to get the experience over with (if we don't quit altogether) - so there are more bad ones because we don't take as long with them.

 

[Retreater]

I bought the module on FantasyGrounds because I needed information on Waterdeep and I think it failed there. I got some good locales that i used and I did use a piece of it but I would have got a better map of Waterdeep with at least the street names.

I did not think much of it as an adventure.

If you want a good map and sourcebook for Waterdeep, I really recommend Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. It's a 2e product, but the setting information still holds up. Much cheaper than Dragon Heist. ($21.99 print on demand and PDF from Drive Thru RPG.)

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I did get some advice about problem areas and ideas about how to smooth over situations. My primary issue with remixing or blending together all four seasons was how it was organized on Roll20. You had to choose the season and run that season as a separate module. Running winter and summer, for example, would require two different games. Had I been doing it in person without the constraints of technology, I think I would've felt more free to homebrew it and take other suggestions.


snip...

That is really terrible of Roll20. On Fantasygrounds you got the whole lot in one module and run it what ever way you like. They even had free and well done replacement maps done by a community member.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They probably expect it because that's how the adventures are marketed, and also how they are written.

I don't know that I have ever seen an adventure advertised as "run out the box". The only ones I might expect that for are the ones in the starter sets, and they can be run that way without problems. As for the writing, maybe they could say "this is only a suggestion" every couple of lines, but I don't think that would do much to help readability.

 

[TheSword]

I did not run it and never will, I pla... no, endured through it, hoping that it would be interesting as I love City Adventures. But it's NOT a city adventure, just a series of immutable encounters set inside a city but it does not feel like it, you are NOT performing a heist, and after reading through it I understood why the DM (who is a great friend from almost 40 years ago but who did not, unfortunately, had the time to do a lot of preparation) struggled with it and why we were so disappointed by the end result.

I understand that with a huge amount of work you can turn it into a city adventure worthy of the name, but you will still end up wasting a large part of the module (because of the absolutely stupid "replay" thing which is basically just a way to fill up pages). And it just goes to show the really poor quality of the production.
Like most modules, there are free enhancements and there are paying ones over on DM's Guild, but it's still not an excuse for the really low quality of the module.

Ok so I personally prefer Mike Schley maps given a choice. But I understand the design decision for not using them. They wanted to maintain consistency with undermountain which was NEVER going to be able to use full colour maps like other products.

The replay idea is much maligned. They’d just repurposed 10 locations for four different uses each. The reality is those uses can be slotted into later adventures in Waterdeep particularly in between Undermountain. The four lairs are frankly brilliant and could be used across 5-10 levels of play. More if tinkered with. As the Alexandrian has shown using all four lairs is possible with a bit of thought. Incidentally it isn’t necessarily intended for players to replay but for DMs to re-run which is very possible. The fact that haven’t put this in later campaigns suggests they acknowledge it isn’t worth it, but I don’t begrudge them trying.

I say again. The heist element of this game is not robbing a bank. It’s the challenge of keeping the treasure out of the hands of a half dozen powerful organizations. Playing them off against one another and using something other than combat to do so. It may not be your kind of heist, but it’s a legitimate use of the word.

 

[LordEntrails]

I did get some advice about problem areas and ideas about how to smooth over situations. My primary issue with remixing or blending together all four seasons was how it was organized on Roll20. You had to choose the season and run that season as a separate module. Running winter and summer, for example, would require two different games. Had I been doing it in person without the constraints of technology, I think I would've felt more free to homebrew it and take other suggestions.

That is really terrible of Roll20. On Fantasygrounds you got the whole lot in one module and run it what ever way you like. They even had free and well done replacement maps done by a community member.

Yea, what Ungainly said. That's a damned near horrible implementation on Roll20. One more reason I'm glad I use FG.

Sorry you didn't have it in a manner useful to actually use it how you wanted. For FG, I made myself a supplemental module to implement the Alexandrian Remix. So with my own module and the FG module together things went really well.

 

[Lyxen]

Ok so I personally prefer Mike Schley maps given a choice. But I understand the design decision for not using them. They wanted to maintain consistency with undermountain which was NEVER going to be able to use full colour maps like other products.

This is a very, very weak excuse. especially since actually the maps of DotMM are of way higher quality, although not in full color.

The replay idea is much maligned. They’d just repurposed 10 locations for four different uses each. The reality is those uses can be slotted into later adventures in Waterdeep particularly in between Undermountain. The four lairs are frankly brilliant and could be used across 5-10 levels of play. More if tinkered with. As the Alexandrian has shown using all four lairs is possible with a bit of thought. Incidentally it isn’t necessarily intended for players to replay but for DMs to re-run which is very possible.

And a DM can re-run any other module completely with another group, he does not need a new configuration of the module. It actually makes more work for him, and risks confusing him for no real good reason.

The fact that haven’t put this in later campaigns suggests they acknowledge it isn’t worth it, but I don’t begrudge them trying.

Just because it's a new idea does not mean it's cool, but sometimes a bit of thinking saves a product from being really, really poor.

I say again. The heist element of this game is not robbing a bank. It’s the challenge of keeping the treasure out of the hands of a half dozen powerful organizations. Playing them off against one another and using something other than combat to do so.

No, sorry, it's not. If it was really that way, I would have loved it. But rather than creating a sandboxy environment where the organisations are really played intelligently and react to the PC's actions and to each other, they have decided that it was way too complex (and indeed, that kind of situation requires an experienced DM), so they totally reversed the problem and decided that what the PCs do don't matter, they are only going to be the pawns of the DM playing the organisation. Not cool at all.

It may not be your kind of heist, but it’s a legitimate use of the word.

No, it's not, sorry, the heist plays almost no role at all in the module !

 

[TheSword]

I did get some advice about problem areas and ideas about how to smooth over situations. My primary issue with remixing or blending together all four seasons was how it was organized on Roll20. You had to choose the season and run that season as a separate module. Running winter and summer, for example, would require two different games. Had I been doing it in person without the constraints of technology, I think I would've felt more free to homebrew it and take other suggestions.

It’s worth knowing that Roll20 has a transmogrify function where you can move maps, handouts and characters between campaigns. You can then move the Lairs and any other stuff you need across just by clicking box. There was a readme I think when I bought the module. I think the reason they did it this was was there wasn’t 40 similar maps clogging up the directory.

 

[Burnside]

I don't know that I have ever seen an adventure advertised as "run out the box". The only ones I might expect that for are the ones in the starter sets, and they can be run that way without problems. As for the writing, maybe they could say "this is only a suggestion" every couple of lines, but I don't think that would do much to help readability.

I find this kind of intellectually disingenuous tbh. They do tend to say "feel free to change whatever you want." They don't say "You will absolutely need to change a lot of this in order to make it actually work. If you don't take the time to change and re-work substantial parts of our $50 hardcover adventure, then of course you should expect a bad experience."

It's a reasonable expectation on the part of the consumer to be able to run the adventure as written and have a good time. The fact that that's so often not the case isn't something to blame the purchaser for. The "a good DM will fix it" mentality is very widely accepted, but that doesn't mean the designers shouldn't be expected to deliver a playable, fun adventure.

If your point is, "Well, I though WD: DH was playable and fun" then fair enough - it's a subjective opinion. But I don't buy the take that "everyone who buys this should automatically assume they'll need to heavily re-work it, and if they run it straight and have a bad time, it's the DM's fault and not the designer's."