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

[Blue]

Where? I've certainly never read one with that text written anywhere.

Here's the first paragraph of the overview for Storm King's Thunder:

This 256-page adventure for characters of 1st level to 11th level or higher provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable play experience for the Storm King’s Thunder story, including rune magic items, a new treasure option for characters.

Storm King's Thunder | Dungeons & Dragons

Learn more about Storm King's Thunder from Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

The first bullet point for Curse of Strahd:

A fantasy-horror adventure for characters levels 1-10, Curse of Strahd provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable play experience

Curse of Strahd Revamped | Dungeons & Dragons

Learn more about Curse of Strahd Revamped from Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

Of those I checked many of the others imply it, but these have the "provides everything" verbiage that isn't debatable.

This is absolutely how they are marketed - as ready-to-play adventures.

I put the same burden of proof back on you - I've never read anything along the lines of "this adventure is not ready to run and must be adapted by the DM first".

The only place I can find anything like that is Tales of the Yawning Portal, which talks about "seven of the most compelling dungeons" and then says "The seeds of these stories now rest in your hands", which does imply that you need to take hem from seeds to full blown adventures. This isn't any stronger then the implication from most of them that they are ready to run.

Because if I can show proof that adventures are sold as ready to run to your criteria and you can not show proof that the are sold as explicitly not ready to run to your own criteria, I would expect that we have a clear and factual call in this case.

 

[Retreater]

This 256-page adventure for characters of 1st level to 11th level or higher provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable play experience for the Storm King’s Thunder story, including rune magic items, a new treasure option for characters.

Oh, that one will be a spicy Post-Mortem when I get around to it.

 

[Retreater]

I think it's worth noting that Dragon Heist isn't billed as a resource to help DMs run heist adventures in Waterdeep. It is promoted as an adventure itself, not a toolbox for creating adventures.
Of course it's assumed that a DM will need to do some of their own work in any RPG adventure. And I think that Dragon Heist is a serviceable adventure - I just think it needs more effort from a DM to make it really good than many other adventures I've used.
This is all just my opinion, though. If you love this adventure and your players had a great time, that's awesome.

 

[Blue]

Oh, that one will be a spicy Post-Mortem when I get around to it.

When I ran through it our DM went so off-book it was basically homebrew with a bit of giant-framework. But that's what it took in his estimation to make it reasonable.

As a side note, I really enjoy your post-mortems. The "this didn't work so well" are informative not just for that module, but thinking about things I may do in any adventure I run. I would also love to hear about one that hit on all cylinders for your group for contrast.

 

[Retreater]

When I ran through it our DM went so off-book it was basically homebrew with a bit of giant-framework. But that's what it took in his estimation to make it reasonable.

That's basically what happened with my experience with SKT. It ended up being a satisfying adventure for the players, but it wasn't really recognizable at the end. Still, I think what I changed could make it a better adventure for certain DMs, so it would be a helpful post-mortem.

As a side note, I really enjoy your post-mortems. The "this didn't work so well" are informative not just for that module, but thinking about things I may do in any adventure I run.

I'm happy to hear that. I hope these are entertaining and helpful. Pooling all our collected experience on these boards helps make us all better DMs.

I would also love to hear about one that hit on all cylinders for your group for contrast.

The Tomb of Annihilation post-mortem I posted yesterday was a good contrast to this one. When I get around to Curse of Strahd, that one will be very positive.
However, the one campaign I learned the most from has been my homebrew Against the Black City campaign, which of course is still unpublished (for reasons that could be discussed then). I just don't know if that would be helpful reading for people. But it's certainly a chance for me to eat some humble pie after criticizing other people's work.

 

[Hussar]

I think it's worth noting that Dragon Heist isn't billed as a resource to help DMs run heist adventures in Waterdeep. It is promoted as an adventure itself, not a toolbox for creating adventures.
Of course it's assumed that a DM will need to do some of their own work in any RPG adventure. And I think that Dragon Heist is a serviceable adventure - I just think it needs more effort from a DM to make it really good than many other adventures I've used.
This is all just my opinion, though. If you love this adventure and your players had a great time, that's awesome.

I think that is a VERY fair take. Dragon Heist, unlike a lot of modules, really, REALLY needs the DM to deep dive into it and adapt it to the group.

I wonder if it's because so much of it is very sandboxy. The first three (?) chapters pretty much leave a lot of openess for the players to wander around the city and get into trouble. The thing is, if you don't have a proactive group, then this won't work. Particularly if the players simply don't bite on anything you wave in front of them. For my group, they were pretty much completely disinterested in the mansion or running a business, had zero interest in the factions in the city, and were pretty much singularly focused on the main plot - which, frankly, isn't really much of a plot at all. Follow the trail of breadcrumbs from A to B to C and you get to the end of the adventure.

If you take something like, Storm King's Thunder, it works without a lot of player buy in, since, well, you're expected to basically just go from combat to combat until you kill your way to the end of the adventure. There's not a whole lot of freedom in it. But, I'd argue that Dragon Heist, because about half of the adventure is very open, you need very pro-active players who want to actually play in Waterdeep.

 

[TheSword]

Here's the first paragraph of the overview for Storm King's Thunder:

This 256-page adventure for characters of 1st level to 11th level or higher provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable play experience for the Storm King’s Thunder story, including rune magic items, a new treasure option for characters.

Storm King's Thunder | Dungeons & Dragons

Learn more about Storm King's Thunder from Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

“Provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable Mag experience…”

Not that it creates it for you. Or it is already created.

It’s a collaboration. You need to season it your groups taste.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

“Provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable Mag experience…”

Not that it creates it for you. Or it is already created.

It’s a collaboration. You need to season it your groups taste.

It's still an outrageously impossible claim. I don't have Storm King's Thunder though, maybe it's some kind of miracle module.

 

[TheSword]

It's still an outrageously impossible claim. I don't have Storm King's Thunder though, maybe it's some kind of miracle module.

I do think it’s worth remembering that people standards for a game vary wildly. I’ve taken a new group through a module and have found every element of game fascinating and original, and the very novelty of playing another character that can do anything is awesome to them. Not every group is comprised of seasoned (jaded) twenty year veterans. Maybe these products are sufficiently set contained enjoyable products to a lot of people.

 

[Lyxen]

“Provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable Mag experience…”

Not that it creates it for you. Or it is already created.

It’s a collaboration. You need to season it your groups taste.

It can be read in a completely different way, since it says that it provides everything, for one, and second, of course there will be co-creation when the game is run, but if everything si provided, it should just leave it for the DM to run it, no seek something else elsewhere...