This review includes spoilers.
The good: the basic setting is truly excellent. A former lord of Waterdeep embezzled a massive amount of gold, and the PCs are hunting for a sentient stone that holds the secret about where the gold is hidden. At the same time, several nefarious groups in Waterdeep are also hunting for the stone/gold. So there's a great ticking clock element. The authors have also done a superb job bringing Waterdeep to life, with more than a dozen truly outstanding (often funny) nonplayer characters. For example, the players are likely: to own a tavern run by a moody poltergeist, to run afoul of the law embodied in the person of spluttering Capt. Hyustus Staget (and then to be tried for crimes in court), to be targeted by the slanderous accusations of a shrewd owner of a competing tavern, to be invited to join one of several really cool factions vying for power in Waterdeep (including factions run by the drow, a beholder, and devil-worshipers), and to discover that several powerful Waterdhavian nobles are deceitful or worse. My players -- particularly the ones that like role-playing as opposed to combat -- have absolutely loved all of these parts of the adventure. Even more than in Phandalin, Waterdeep feels like a place for new adventurers to make a real name for themselves in a complex, fully realized world. In this Waterdeep reminds me of Barovia in Curse of Strahd and the Underdark in Out of the Abyss. Perhaps it's not quite as memorable as either of those places, but it's close, and that's a MAJOR achievement in my view.
The bad is that this book is difficult to DM. The main problem is that, as others have pointed out, the book primarily describes not places with maps to be explored by the players, but sequences of events for the players to witness, where the players are fated to remain one step behind the stone as various people run off with it through Waterdeep. I thought this setup denied the players any real chance to change how the story ends. In the case of my own campaign, my players did something really smart and got the stone before they were "supposed" to, which obviated my using a lot of the most interesting material in the book. Another little problem for DMs: I think urban environments, because they are full of NPCs who must be given interesting things to say to move the plotline along incrementally, are just inherently more difficult to DM than most monster lairs. The book also has lots of material that is bound to be discarded -- unless the DM comes up with her own way of integrating it into what's going on her game. In a way this is good, because I feel kind of proud that I've been able to make the material my own, but it is time consuming. Final quibble: players who like combat will at times get a little antsy, as it's hard to pull out swords on the streets of an apparently "civilized" place like Waterdeep.
Anyway, overall I say it's still five stars. Clearly better than a good solid adventure like Storm King's Thunder, because more original and fully fleshed out, but slightly inferior to my favorites, which are Out of the Abyss and Strahd. It's more interesting than Lost Mines of Phandelver for 1st level characters, which is high praise as Lost Mines is really good. But at the same time, unlike Lost Mines, the DM must be prepared to do a lot of work!
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From the manufacturer
Half a million gold coins are hidden somewhere in Waterdeep!
Welcome to Waterdeep, the Crown of the North, where a wondrous tale of urban adventure is about to unfold.
Adventurers gather at the Yawning Portal Inn and Tavern. Volothamp Geddarm, the famous explorer, has a quest for them—one that entangles them in a bitter conflict between two nefarious organizations. If the adventurers complete his quest, Volo will reward them handsomely. But the real prize lies hidden somewhere in the City of Splendors, waiting to be claimed.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an urban heist adventure designed to take characters from first level to fifth. Be sure to check out the follow-up adventure, Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which picks up where Dragon Heist leaves off.
Inside Dragon Heist
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Brains Over BrawnWaterdeep is a city of firm laws and swift justice. Adventurers hell-bent on carnage and chaos won’t fare well in the City of Splendors. Instead, adventurers will rely on their ingenuity and political savvy, taking on missions from investigation to reconnaissance, subterfuge to sabotage. |
4 Villains, 4 PathsDungeon Masters can choose between 4 villains to feature as the main antagonist. Their choice of villain determines the season of the year in which the story take place as well as the antagonists in several of the encounters. With so many options, there’s enough content for Dungeon Masters to keep it fresh while running the adventure multiple times for multiple groups. |
Explore the City of SplendorsIncluded in the book is 'Volo’s Waterdeep Enchiridion'—a guided tour of Waterdeep, one of D&D’s most beloved settings. In this chapter, Dungeon Masters can explore Waterdeep, its culture, its history, its guilds—even local slang to add that extra layer of authenticity and immersion for their players. |
An innovator in providing contemporary fantasy entertainment, Dungeons & Dragons is the wellspring for the entire modern game industry, digital as well as tabletop. Fifth edition D&D draws from every prior edition to create a universally compelling play experience, and exemplifies the true spirit of a game that holds captive the hearts and minds of millions of players worldwide. The core rulebook series consists of three books: the Player’s Handbook, the Monster Manual, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
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Good adventure with some problems - and probably no heist.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist provides a solid level 1-5 adventure. The city setting is very evocative, with lots of hooks for great stories. Over the course of four main chapters (all of which are very strong, although chapter 2 has some caveats I'll get to in a bit), the adventure sets up a treasure hunt in the city. It provides four different villains that can oppose your adventuring party, and each villain receives a custom written version of events for your players to work through. There is also a great section at the end that gives an overview of the city, providing nice details to help understand life and major locations in Waterdeep. And to cap it all off, there is a beautiful fold out map in the back of the book of Waterdeep that is very well crafted.Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with this book. First, despite the promising title of "Dragon Heist," there is no real heist contained in this adventure. Finding the hidden treasure smacks more of Indiana Jones than it does Ocean's 11. It is still very entertaining, but for those seeking something a little different, this will require quite a lot of customization to bring it in-line with expectations.The next issue is the maps. In this edition, Wizards has switched cartographers from Mike Schley to Dyson Logos. This is polarizing to say the least. Schley's maps were rich in detail and color, but some people complain that they were overly complicated and difficult to understand or reproduce at the table. Logos' new maps are the opposite of that style. They are spartan and bare bones sketches with very little detail or nuance. I personally much prefer the style of Schley over Logos (especially for online or digital tabletop play), and feel the new maps fall short in what is otherwise a premium product. Your mileage will vary depending on how you feel about the styles. (Please note, I appreciate the work of Dyson for the gaming community over the years. His trove of free maps available on his website are a bounty of riches for tabletop DM's. However, to me his maps feel out of place in the context of the book they find themselves in - they are rather more suited to Adventurer League or DM's Guild type titles and feel out of place in a premium product that has already established such rich visuals through the previous volumes.)Villains and their lairs each get a separate chapter in the book, which is great. These lairs are very well designed with lots of fun options, and are maybe the closest thing to a heist the whole book has. The only downside is that if your party sticks to the adventure as written, they will likely never venture one foot even remotely close to these lairs. These are kind of last-resort settings (or options for a resourceful DM who wants to customize the adventure), a way to wrap things up if your party fails at the main "heist."Last but not least is the page count. Clocking in at 224 pages, it is well short of the 256 pages used for Tomb of Annihilation. It feels like those last 32 pages could have really been used to flesh out the city of Waterdeep beyond the basic primer that is included, or to really flesh out Chapter 2. The second chapter of the book details the running of a business that the players will receive, and also focuses on side quests for the various factions that are represented in Waterdeep. Each quest is about two paragraphs of description that includes the DC of the success roll to solve whatever problem is presented. While I love the idea of this section and can't wait to run players through this open-world portion of the adventure, it is also a bit sad that more pages weren't devoted to developing the city or those faction quests more so this part of the adventure could really open up.All in all, I really do like this book. It has a few major flaws that are worth pointing out, but it is still a case of the good out-weighing the bad. The city feels lively in the pages, and is a great setting for an adventuring party to start in. It is a good adventure to take a party from level 1-5, providing a good alternative to experienced DM's who want something different than Lost Mines of Phandelver from the starter set. This book is a great start especially for moving on to Storm King's Thunder or Princes of the Apocalypse. Just be prepared as DM to do a little more heavy lifting than you might have expected to fill in for some of the shortcomings.
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JJBG
Un libro muy completo junto con dungeon of the mad mage
Reviewed in Mexico on March 29, 2022Style: Physical BookVerified Purchase
Spencer Hardcastle
Awesome low level campaign
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Aderitus
Libro normal de D&D
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Mattia
Condizioni buone ma non perfette, bella avventura
Reviewed in Italy on March 20, 2021Style: Physical BookVerified Purchase
