VIDEO
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