Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Session 1

When the announcement came from WoTC about their adventure release for the year being Waterdeep Dragon Heist and the remake of Undermountain, Dungeon of the Mad Maze, my group is super excited so I decided that is what we would start as new campaign. If you have read any of my previous post, you know that I'm not in love with 5th edition like many players and DM's these days, but I want to run games that my players enjoy and have fun with and if that is what they like, so be it. I'm going to add my flare to any published adventure regardless.

We started the session with character creation as group, allowing the players to link backstories and fill in any gaps on their character ideas as a group. Plus, everyone likes to see the roll of the dice as a group. Players for the campaign are as follows:

Aaron playing Avaros (half-elf bard)
Brian playing Paul (human fighter and former Waterdeep Watch)
Scott playing Fairend (human sorcerer, phoenix bloodline)
Cody playing Bloth (human rogue)
Daniel playing Amber (dwarven forge cleric)

The only things I changed up with character creation for this campaign were that I awarded some homemade boons to the players who had completed our Tomb of Horrors one-shot (I'll do a separate blog post on this) and I had the players define belief, instincts and traits for their characters. The only way they can earn inspiration is through excellent roleplaying scenes or from using those beliefs or traits to put their characters in compromising situations based on what their characters would do....doing my best to add in some elements of Burning Wheel / Mouseguard into my games!

The group started in a tavern, the infamous Yawning Portal to be exact. The action starts right away in this campaign as a tavern brawl between two criminal factions, the Zhentarim and Xanathar guild, soon turns into a dangerous encounter as a troll crawls its way up out of the well leading into Undermountain....the look on their faces was pretty great, it was definitely an unexpected encounter and put them on edge right away. With some help from Durnan, the owner of the Yawning Portal, the troll and the stirges that accompanied it were put down and sent back down the well.

With the wheels turning on the adventure, Volo, whom was also in the tavern that night approaches the group following the troll encounter with an opportunity. He asked the group help track down and find his missing friend, Floon Blagmar, who had gone missing a couple of nights ago. Right off the bat, my group was trying to extort Volo for additional reward, but finally an agreement was reach and the group set off for the dock ward that evening towards the last known location of Floon.

So...one of the tools I'm using to help me run this adventure is the excellent Vornheim by Zak S. This book is invaluable for any city adventure for the random tables that are included. Any time my group goes off the rails a bit, I can pull upon this help with any NPC's or other wackiness I want to pull into my game...so back to the adventure....the group headed for the Dock Ward of Waterdeep which is a rougher part of the city. Saltwater, shit and dark alleys are the atmosphere here. With arm twisting and forceful persuasion at the Skewered Dragon, the group learned that Floon and unexpected guest, Raenar Neverember (son of Dagult Neverember the former open lord of Waterdeep) were followed by a group known Zhentarim leaving the tavern two nights ago.

With a heading of a warehouse also in the dock ward, the group set out again closing in on the trail of the missing Floon. So, let's talk about this next encounter. There are four kenko in the warehouse, members of the Xanathar guild, who ambushed the group whom had captured Floon and Raenar. Granted my group was not very stealthy, knocking on the door and generally being noisy, but this one turned deadly for them. By the time they decided to pick the lock on the door, the kenku had heard them and were ready behind cover...as Brian's character, Paul, entered in he was immediately gunned down by crossbolt fire. The next few rounds were pure chaos as the group tries to make their way into the warehouse under heavy fire, two characters were dropped and Daniel's character, Amber, was 1 HP away from an outright killing blow based on a lucky critical roll by me....but they survived. 

Exploring the warehouse they found Raenar, where Brian's character again was extorting and lying for some additional reward, noting it was his father that I had sent them to save him....well played, but he may be flirting with disaster if this keeps up. Before they could finish exploring the warehouse, the Waterdeep Watch finally arrived and after a tense stand-off they were allowed to leave with Raenar who advised that the Xanathar guild now held Floon and likely headed for the sewers nearby. This brought us to the end of the session, but we'll see if the group can indeed save Floon and how big will their reward actually be!

Long absent, but I'm back....

Hello All,

Been a long break from the blog posts, but I just started my group on a new campaign last night, Waterdeep Dragon Heist for 5th edition D&D, so it is a good time to come back and start posting. There is a lot of I need to catch the blog up on including a ton of new books to review, recapping the Keep on the Borderlands and Tomb of Horrors one-off adventurers I ran my group through along with just the state of table-top RPG's and the drama / infiltration of the SJW culture into the hobby which causing a lot of blow-back and rightfully so...anyways, look for some new posts soon!