Zoltar, Author at D&D Sage Advice

The “art wall” at WotC HQ offers a glimpse of what’s coming in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. #wotcstaff pic.twitter.com/DKWFuubtCj

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) June 2, 2018

… pantsless pirate?

I have questions.

— hurm. (@Hurmly) June 2, 2018

Gives new meaning to the phrase “high seas.” #wotcstaff https://t.co/h6e6ssiiB4

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) June 2, 2018

… and here are just a few of the weird and wonderful faces and features of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. #wotcstaff pic.twitter.com/05UGi5qjtC

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) June 2, 2018

Is that Ahmaergo I spy with my many eyes? 👀

— KKRP (@KKRP2) June 2, 2018

Yes, indeed. #wotcstaff https://t.co/Qk6Dc9eIge

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) June 2, 2018

dragon heist is an exciting new adventure that takes you to the streets of Waterdeep where Dungeon Master’s have more freedom and players will have lots of opportunities to roleplay I talked to Chris Perkins and Mike Merle’s about this new adventure it is an urban adventure it’s a romp through the city of Waterdeep in search of a lost and rather gargantuan treasure that the villains are after and the characters primary job is to keep the treasure out of the villains hands hence the heist now in Waterdeep a dragon is a gold coin so Waterdeep dragon heist is about keeping getting the gold keeping it out of the villains hands one of the ideas that Chris played with was this idea that the adventure is configurable but by the dungeon master that depending on what time of year it is that could influence the villain that you’re locking horns with which will then all through the story that you’re telling each villain has plans to spend that gold in terrible ways so and every villains every Road villains need for the gold is different and the pressure that they feel in getting it is also different and I don’t want to spoil too much what their individual agendas are but suffice to say if they get the gold and there’s a lot of it bad things will ensue I like this concept we explore of Waterdeep as being the sort of capital of fair room it’s and what that means so it’s not just that water deep is the largest city it’s the most advanced city it’s the city where this is the center of culture of the arts of learning I like that idea because I lived in New York City for a few years and I really like I liked living there in part because there was a sense that any national trend would start in New York or can you could trace its roots there it is sort of the city on the cutting edge it’s kind of between a medieval city Waterdeep and a Victorian city and there’s magic galore lots of magical activity in the city lots of powerful magical figures hanging out in the city and powerful figures and general the city has what nine different Ward’s each of them as big as a town so having an adventure which sort of swept to the characters through different parts of the city was kind of an interesting challenge Richard widows are one of our art directors talks about how you have this real sense in D&D of is you’re often the periphery of the realm you know in the wild yeah there’s like very utilitarian very primitive technology but as you come closer and closer to the core to a city like water – you get more and more civilized more advanced everyday items that people are dealing with you know this idea that in water deep you catch a taxi you know things like that it feels almost like a if the fringes of the civilized realms of the sword coasts kind of like this Dark Ages you know rough-and-tumble barbaric frontier water deep is almost like and not like 1800s you know London or something like that it’s a little more advanced than you might expect it’s in some ways from the player’s perspective it’s a very fish-out-of-water story because everything that you all your skills and things as an adventurer lend themselves to the forlorn dungeon out in the wilderness where you kind of have free rein to you know he throw your fireballs around and things like that within a city structure you’ve got to behave differently it changes the way your group functions and I think that’s going to be an interesting challenge particularly for characters like barbarians and Rangers who a lot of their skills are sort of meant to play outside of the urban environment but I think I think the fish-out-of-water story has charm and a lot of funny things will happen in a lot of games because the Barbarian feels so out of place that’s not to say that the barbarians gonna be useless we try in the adventure to make sure that there’s something to appeal to everybody but I’m not lying when I say that you can’t just pick a fight on the streets of Waterdeep and expect to get away with it Neverwinter is still kind of pulling itself out from the cataclysms it’s endured you know on the moon sea flan is like the city that’s been raised and destroyed so many times it’s still just a hotbed of like classic dean d dungeon adventures you know there are monsters lurking everywhere the water deep is kind where everything is starting to calm down and starting to hit more just a workaday civilized existence that the that adventurers can really disrupt and it’s a nice pairing with this idea of a heist where you can’t just kick in the door and kill everything because that that doesn’t quite work in the middle of us of a city because of the limitation you can possibly see a lot more role role-playing opportunities in fact even if you have some players who are not necessarily role-playing minded right they’re now forced into a situation where they have to figure out and address challenges verbally yes or if they want to be violent they have to be smart about it they have to take the fight off the street they have to corner their opponents in places where they’re not going to get caught by the local guard and arrested one of the other interesting things about Dragon heist is because we are building it in water the does take place in water deep we had to explore things like what is the legal code of Waterdeep what are the crimes that can be committed and what are the punishments for those crimes and I remember writing a section of the book which was basically what happens when the characters are arrested for a crime how do you actually play that out it’s not a city where you can just have a brawl with like swords and spells middle of the street and like oh that just happens like no like the garden shows up that’s this is bad people don’t want this is the heart of civilization people don’t want fights in the streets right they call the guard the guard shows up and they deal with it you know it’s not like a rough-and-tumble town during the brainstorming session we were trying to figure out who the bad guy was we had so many good options that when it came time to choose I’m like why should we let’s just throw them all in and try to weave a story around it and so then the idea naturally came about that it would be kind of fun to let the DM choose the villain if we can structure the adventure in that way that would be kind of cool because it means that you could run the adventure multiple times and not use the same villain every time so there’s a bit of replayability that’s kind of built into this adventure which we haven’t had to this extent before as far as I know this has never been done before and it also means every table has a kind of distinctive experience it’s there’s you know and so that’s something which you know Chris has been thinking about and it’s something he wanted to do within this within this adventure it felt like a really good match for in a city there’s a kind of funny thing of your your enemy is part of the city they’re they’re just you just walk up to them and talk to them the way the adventure kicks off and I’m not spoiling anything here by saying this is one of the first characters you meet is Volo at the yawning portal and he gives you your introductory quest and that quest I won’t tell you what it is but I will tell you what it was designed to do and that is too familiar I start to familiarize the characters and the players with this character of Waterdeep of the city that they’re in and so Volos quest kind of takes them on a little mission through the city they solve that and if they are successful Volo awards them with the deed to a piece of property which has at various times been a manor house it’s been an inn it was an orphanage it’s got a long and storied history it’s the fun thing on water it’s very D&D City you know it is very old right it’s it’s layers upon layers and you see that in real world cities but obviously Dungeons and Dragons the the president in the past have a very different relationship in D&D then they say do in real life it’s a big enough City that there’s a lot of playroom and every district kind of has its own feel and its own charm so it does feel like many locations in one place it’s also got an underground so some of the some of the adventure will take place there as well so there are dungeon like environments that you’ll stumble across but then you can always just come back up to the top of the city the city of a thousand stories right things like that there’s so many people in the small area and all these stories intertwined the villains are very very powerful much more powerful than the characters the goal of the adventure is to deny them the gold and the support them but the characters are going to be very hard pressed to actually defeat them in combat you it’s possible maybe lucky rolls will weigh heavily in the favor of the characters and they’ll emerge victorious but these villains normally you would not mess with they’re very scary particularly given the levels of play involved we don’t expect you to actually kill them off which are some of my favorite adventures yeah well the boom you will never have a chance together but you make will give you lots of chances to kill the villain we do not try to recommend it thank you Mike Murrells and Chris Perkins for telling us more about dragon heist you can order that book on dean DB on Comm we are the official digital tool sets for a 5th edition dean D I’m Todd Kenrick thank you for watching you

Jarlaxle?

— Jolly Jon (@Vernacularshift) June 3, 2018

Jarlaxle. #wotcstaff https://t.co/78ctU8BSXB

— Christopher Perkins (@ChrisPerkinsDnD) June 3, 2018

D&D Sage Advice

Questions on Dungeons & Dragons answered by game designers

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Author: Zoltar

The “art wall” at WotC HQ offers a glimpse of what’s coming in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

Are you saying you don’t think the game has action economies?

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist!

A phrase popped into my head and wouldn’t leave

Thinking about creating a spell called “Encumber” and play it with that mechanic. How do you think?

A Ghoublin!

Ed’s dwarves

Ed’s sentinel

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