Covid has put paid to most of my face-to-face gaming over the last 11 months or so, apart from a brief time when restrictions were lifted, myself and my gaming groups have had to get our gaming fix online through Discord and Roll20, and cope with the playstyle changes that result from it. One of my regular players has been trying his hand at DMing which is nice to see, and to do so he has been running regular 5E rules and the Wizards of the Coast adventure 'Dragon Heist'. For a change, I've been a player!
Now I know I've mentioned before that there are aspects of RAW 5E I don't like, but I tried to shift those into the background and enjoy the adventure for the challenge, the story and to enjoy gaming on the other side of the screen. And I'll admit that I have done... we're now roughly 1 session from completion!
I'll stop the rambling and get to the point. Here's a review of Dragon Heist from a player's perspective. It differs from all my other reviews in that I've not run the adventure, in fact I've only read the text for one small encounter area, and did so after we had played it. My DM knows why, and it's inconsequential to this review.
Dragon Heist is a low level 5E mini campaign written by Wizards of the Coast. Unlike many of their other adventure products the material is entirely new. It's a fact that that majority of their more highly regarded adventures have been conversions and adaptations of older material, their newer material has not been as well received in general. The adventure takes place in Waterdeep in the Forgotten realms setting, and involves the PCs becoming embroiled in plots to retrieve an artefact - various unsavoury people want it because it allows access to a large cache of treasure hidden beneath the city.
Let's dive straight in with the good points. It's a city adventure, there aren't many of those, and ALL of the action takes place within Waterdeep. Of course many of the locations feel like traditional little dungeons, but the whole feel of being within the confines of the city gives an interesting atmosphere to proceedings. It is extremely roleplay heavy, and I like that aspect. Yes there are plenty of fights. Yes there are puzzles. There's a little bit of exploration. But largely the direction the adventure takes is one based on roleplaying. Our party has talked our way through a high percentage of encounters - having not read them I don't know if this was the intention, or how successful combat would/could have been - but it's quite pleasant to play through an adventure where diplomacy can succeed.
There's a really enjoyable section where the party are given the deeds to a Pub, and are given the chance to clean it up and turn it into a viable business. I LOVE that sort of thing, it brings meaning to a setting, and gives a sense of purpose and belonging to the storylines that develop.
I gather from snippets our DM has said and other comments I have read online regarding the adventure, that there are also several routes in which the story can lead, depending on DM's choice of villain, PC allegiances, and the outcome of various encounters. This gives the adventure some degree of replayability. Now I don't know how much that will differ from playthrough to playthrough, as I believe the general premise is the same in each path, it's just that the opposing faction is different. Still, it's no bad thing to have this level of choice in an adventure.
But there are flaws. Firstly, it is set in the Realms - of course it is - WotC use it as their default setting. The Forgotten Realms gives me 'issues'. In an early encounter our 1st level party wandered into a location containing a Mind Flayer, which simply got up and walked away, leaving us to fight some other beasties. In old school D&D Mind Flayers were horrific, otherworldly creatures. They were rare, much feared, and insanely deadly. So the idea of one simply living in the sewers beneath Waterdeep, so accustomed to contact with other races that it would simply not bother to slaughter us and get easy brains, it makes a bit of a mockery of them. It normalises them. And when the fantasy is 'normalised' it ceases to be fantastical, it becomes mundane. To put it mildly, that encounter was shit. 'Normalising' fantasy is a common theme with the Realms, it's one of its biggest flaws (along with the entire anachronistic feel of the setting, stuffed with too many heroes, constricting and often contradictory lore, etc etc). And then there's the NPC names, don't get me started on those.
There's also the issue of the various 'paths'. I gather there are several, we've done one, which means that unless the DM runs the adventure a few more times then more than half of the book's content is simply redundant. That's a simple criticism and a fairly obvious one.
City adventures are tough to run, they are hard work for a DM in terms of preparation, and I credit the DM with the amount of effort he has put into getting his head around all the moving parts, the politics and the factions. Given that he's relatively inexperienced in the role of DM he has done a fine job. But there are certainly easier adventures with which to gain valuable DMing experience!
The final criticism pertains to the Lore of the adventure, and cropped up due to our DM's one real mistake. Factions play a significant role, and having some understanding or investment in those factions is expected from the players. I don't pay much attention to the Realms. 2 of our group were quite new to 5E. Only 1 of our players really had any background to work with. Now I don't know what the DM said to the other 3, but when I joined in the 2nd session (yes, I was late, missed the 1st session) I was told I could play whatever character I wanted from the official books. I gather the other 3 were told something similar. Thus party conflict occurred. The one player invested in the Realms material created a character with past ties to a specific faction, the other 3 of us did not - which lead to the party using that character's connections. This faction turned out to be one totally at odds with the characters we had created, which in turn created tension which spilled out a little from the game.
In including the Realms' factions in such a way, the module writers make an assumption that the players are invested in the setting beforehand. They assume experience with the setting. It would have been much better to perhaps introduce any faction influence in a more gradual way - these are 1st level characters at the beginning - they should *not* have significant connections!!!
Maybe I'm a little biased on that last criticism. I don't like the Forgotten Realms. I largely try to avoid its material wherever and whenever possible. We met Volo at the start, consider me not bothered.
Criticisms aside, I have quite enjoyed the adventure. Yes it has flaws. If I read it after we have finished it I may find more, but there's ambition in there, and it's a genuine effort to create an adventure with a degree of flexibility and replayability.
Rating from an old git's perspective: 6/10
