I am in the midst of running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, one of latest releases from WoTC, for my group. Here is a quick review and thoughts on this adventure. First off, you may have heard this in other reviews, but the adventure itself is not so much of a heist...think of it as a race against an enemy faction. This adventure is for characters level 1-5.
OK, so the adventure itself involves and immerses the players in the city of Waterdeep, a large city on the Northern Coast of WoTC's love-child the Forgotten Realms. Included within the adventure itself is a pretty lengthy gazetteer on the city itself describing the various guilds, history and people of the city itself. Pretty good information to help bring some more details and environment to your game, but certainly nothing required. The adventure embarks from the famous Yawning Portal tavern and basically rides the rails from start to finish. The DM is given the option of choosing from four villains that will oppose the characters throughout the later part of the adventure. Each of the big-bads are definitely a significant challenge for any group player character in this book....in fact...any party going head-on that them or entering their "lair" is going to get wrecked, guaranteed.
Much of the adventure has the players going from area to area within the city investigating the workings of a plot to uncover a vast fortune of gold hidden within the city, once the players discover the plot, it is a race to find this treasure before those with more nefarious plans reach it. Along the way, players will encounter the rainbow of inclusion which is WoTC D&D these days...I'll just leave it at that....did I meantin that you can make your own D&D game into anything you want already? OK, moving along...There are some good elements included in this adventure. The second phase of the adventure introduces the various Forgotten Realm factions (Zhentarim, Force Grey, Harpers, etc.) which take interest in the doings of the players, opening the potential to join and gain prestige with these factions. This has a very sandbox feel within the city and a skilled DM could have some great fun, pitting the interest of these factions against the various members of his party for some great inter-party role play and conflict.
The adventure is decent, but no where close to great...err really even good if we are being honest. A lot of railroad and heavy handed removal of player agency are worked into the story is a bummer. Again, book use at the table is just dreadful from a WoTC product, expect lots of page flipping to get in sync with maps and room descriptions where needed....Come on WoTC if you are only going to release one or two books a year, at least make them decent....the indie and OSR community are absolutely killing them as far as quality of content and book quality, it is not even close! If you're a huge fan of the Forgotten Realms or currently running a campaign set in that world, this book may be worth a pickup....if not....well, look else where.
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