D&D General WotC Reveals New Information and Covers for 'Keys from the Golden Vault'

Due in just a few weeks, Keys from the Golden Vault has receoved little fanfare so far. However, a cover and descrioption has appeared on the Wizards Play Network site. Wizards Play Network (WPN) is a network of WotC-approved stores.

An anthology of 13 heist-themed adventures for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.
 
Some jobs require more than simply wielding a sword or slinging a spell. Whether it’s procuring a well-guarded item or obtaining crucial information from an imprisoned contact, these tasks require careful planning and flawless execution. The secretive organization called the Golden Vault specializes in hiring crews for such jobs, and for the most daunting assignments—pursuing fabulous treasures and stopping dire threats—that crew is your characters.
Keys from the Golden Vault™ is a collection of 13 short, standalone Dungeons & Dragons adventures designed for characters levels 1–11. These adventures can be placed in any setting and you can run them as one-shot games or link them together into a campaign. This book also includes in-world maps to help players plan their heists, plus advice for running nontraditional games with high risks and huge rewards.

Contents:

• Book of 13 stand-alone adventures spanning levels 1–11, each focused on a single heist
• Adventures can be set in any D&D or homebrew world and can be played individually or as part of a full campaign
• Introduces the Golden Vault—a mysterious organization for which the player characters can work as heist operatives
• Each adventure includes a map to guide Dungeon Masters and a map to help players plan their heists
• Adventures emphasize player choice with each heist having multiple paths toward success
• Includes advice and detailed information for Dungeon Masters running nontraditional adventures with high risks and huge rewards

There's also an alternate cover.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Could you provide more concrete examples of ways specific 3PP adventures do these sorts of encounters better?

????

I'm not sure what you're asking here.

Many 3PP designers would have carefully considered the mechanics of the scenario and simply not made the weird decisions/errors that this designer did. I'm not sure how it even be possible to provide a "concrete example" because how would that even work? Surely we'd need a nearly-identical 3PP adventure to it?

Personally I pretty much never run a combat encounter as written anymore. I design them with the abilities of my players' PCs in mind as depending on party composition a static encounter could either be easy or very hard.

Cool.

Irrelevant.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So, I'm going to be honest here.

I'm taking this as you admitting you've never even read a 3PP adventure.

That really just proves my point.

That's fine. Feel free to take from it what you like. But I do not see any need to try and "prove" myself to you, because quite frankly I don't really care whether you believe me or not. And considering the types of things I've seen you write about in the past about what you find important to you when playing or running D&D... I'm pretty sure we don't see the game the same way. So even things I would say were good about an adventure in an effort to "prove" something to you... you quite possibly would disagree with it and say it was bad. And stuff you thought were absolute necessities for quality I'd look at and go "Really? That's what you find important?"

So no harm, no foul. We're just different people with different tastes.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I do not see any need to try and "prove" myself to you, because quite frankly I don't really care whether you believe me or not.

What is there to believe?

You've made no claim. I asked. You didn't answer. So the only logical assumption can be that the answer is no. You didn't claim you did read 3PP ones. Not even by implication.

So no harm, no foul. We're just different people with different tastes.

No.

I'm looking at what makes a pre-written adventure be suitable for most groups - stuff like information being presented well and organised, the adventure being explained well, a lack of serious plot-holes which could derail the adventure (the PCs will be doing enough on their own lol!), maps being used well, the adventure being basically complete (it's easy to alter once it's complete if you need to, but you also don't have to). NPCs being presented well with their motivations and quirks explained quickly and clearly, rather than many paragraphs of waffle, or just nothing about them.

That's not to do with taste except if you're saying your different taste is "adventures that are poorly presented and disorganised, where the adventure isn't explained well, if at all, where there are tons of plotholes to help derail the adventure, where the adventure is incomplete, and where NPCs are either given zero motivation/personality detail, or many paragraphs of waffle".

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, I haven't seen the Arcane Library nor any of the Paizo adventures, so I cannot confirm or deny your statements. All I can say though is that if you really like them, then at the very least they are written to work for your particular style of DMing. Which is great for you... but who knows if they would work for anyone else without having to do the same amount of work to "fix" things as people say they have to do for WotC's?

You should pick up one of the Arcane Library adventures. There's at least one free one on the company website and I believe there's a free one at DriveThruRPG as well. And you can get another free one by signing up for their mailing list (which you can then unsubscribe to).

They're actually very spare with just the amount of information needed to play. But it's exactly the right amount of information needed to play. More than once, I have picked up an adventure cold and successfully DMed all the way through it to good effect.

Kelsey (the writer behind Arcane Library) runs circles around most other writers in terms of organization and identifying and providing critical information. (It helps that she had a different writing career -- print journalism -- before being a full time adventure writer.)

WotC can and should be taking notes, as should everyone else, just as no one has an excuse, 16 years later, to not organize and annotate their RPG supplements the way Monte Cook does. Both organizational methods are free and can be used by anyone. Poorly organized books are a choice.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Don't heist focused RPGs, like Blades in the Dark, have this kind of thing as a core mechanic?

It's the defining feature of Blades in the Dark, in fact.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have not played Blades in the dark but yes I have played other superhero and heist focused games with such mechanics... but not normally D&D

There's a DMs Guild supplement that came out several years ago that adapts the Blades in the Dark system for D&D heists. (I DM for a lot of rogues.) Worth picking up. (Its name escapes me for the moment.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yes, because in 1991 the license was not worth $10,000 because Lucas starved them out.

There's no way that the Star Wars license has ever been worth less than $10,000, whether there's a new movie out or not. At the very least, it was an investment in the future.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Looks neat.

Too bad too, since I was looking forward to this to make up for the there being no player involved heists in Dragon Heist.

Depending on what happens I may have to wait for a used copy to pop up.

 

[Weiley31]

I wonder if the Wizkids “biggie” mini of the quasit is supposed to coincide with the release of this adventure.

Also, I’m fine with it ending at level 11. I have no love of “Avengers Assemble” that the game becomes past 9th level.

Tyranny of Dragons IS the "Avengers Assemble" of 5E pretty much.

 

[Stormonu]

BTW, the face on that rogue looks unnaturally realistic - as if it's someone specific. Anyone got some face recognition software to see if it's somebody real?

Also between Strixhaven and Golden Vault, it looks like this could be the basis for class-themed adventures. Maybe we could get a war epic (or would SotDQ count?) for fighter-types, religious quests for cleric/paladin types (Crusades Against the Nightlords ?) and some sort of wilderness exploration theme for Barbarian/Druid/Ranger?