Wizards of the CoastBesprekingen

It's not perfect, but it's very, very good.

This adventure is the best I've seen from Wizards of the Coast in terms of DM ease-of-use. I'm coming to this from Princes of the Apocalypse, which is a royal mess, and this is a breath of fresh air. While PotA requires massive amounts of page flipping simply to find the basic storyline and What's Happening, Dragon Heist instead includes everything the DM needs to know up front. If you're good at improvisation at the table, you truly could read the first chapter to get the main ideas and invent the rest on the fly.

That being said, there is plenty here to run with and you won't run out of content. The adventure is presented flexibly enough that you can modify it on the fly, but with enough information that you don't have to.

You like flowcharts? There are flowcharts.

Encounter maps? Lots of those (older style, not like the Mike Schley maps you might be used to if you've only played hardcover 5e adventures).

Encounter variety? Check.

Factions are useful, relevant and interesting; NPCs have personalities and motivations (though modern politics seeps its way into them); players have freedom to explore; villains are interesting; and the adventure is highly replayable.

Finally, you get Waterdeep. The City of Splendors. Personally, I'm coming to the adventure with very little prior lore knowledge. But there's enough background information presented here that I can see it being quite easy to make the city real and unique at the table.

In all, it's an introductory adventure that contains an incredible amount of useful and easy-to-use information for the DM. If your players are interested in an urban intrigue roleplay-heavy campaign, give it a shot.

Very *very* sandbox-y and rather disorganized. This isn't something you can just pick up and run. It takes managing your players' options and being very aware of all the possibilities in each area.

That being said, there's a lot of fun stuff to do here :)

I like that the 1st part of the book is not a forced march of you must go do this mission. It's ability to change as the players decide where to go is a nice change from prewritten campaigns I have played in the past. As the Dungeon Master for this campaign, the only problem I had with it was putting my players in the mindset of how brutally cold the setting is. Overall we had a great time playing this campaign.

My SO and I bought this so we could do a 2 player game because we missed playing and aren't sure when we'll be able to play with our group again. We've been playing for 3 years, but neither of us has ever DMed. My SO is the DM and said the adventure left a lot open to add details to the story and customize to the PC's backstory. The rulebook only has the common races and a few classes and subclasses, but you can play any.
I'm playing a Dwarf Forge Domain Cleric (from [b:Xanathar's Guide to Everything|35378941|Xanathar's Guide to Everything (Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition)|Wizards of the Coast|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501465919l/35378941._SX50_.jpg|56737486] )

Full disclosure, I didn't read every spell, magic item and puzzle in this book, but I would say I got to a good 60-70% of it. What I read I liked. I really enjoyed the one-liners from Tasha and think this works better than longer paragraphs from a "tour guide" or "narrator", which I don't usually read.

The Artificer was interesting, though the "Iron-Man" version was a little out there for me. I liked the subclasses and the optional features for classes, though I worried sometimes while reading that 5th edition already favored the players and this seemed to make them even more powerful.

Didn't care much for the "sidekicks" section, I think just having a lower level character as a sidekick works fine. "Parleying with Monsters" seemed like a waste of time, but as I started reading the "desired offerings" I thought this section was a great way to come up with some plot hooks, so that's what I would use it for. "Environmental Hazards" was really cool, though rolling often on the tables could get to be a little too much. Really you could just farm the tables to place effects at specific locations. The puzzles were decent, but I've never been big on puzzles for the sake of puzzles, so probably wouldn't use them.

I've got the alternate cover and I love it! I don't really like the regular cover. Lot's of nice art inside and the normal 5e layout.

My favorite line in the book was "Don't feel restricted by the options in the Monster Manual or by the limitations of the animate object spell..." I saw this kind of thinking in the book a couple times and I really love this philosophy and how they're trying to get people to "get loose with it". If there's not a spell that does what you want your bad guy to do, just make it up. If you think it would be really cool if your evil wizard big baddie had a pet goblin that breathed fire., then just give it to him. You don't need to wait for Wizards to publish a book with fire breathing goblins in it.

First, a review of the new composition and binding. The hardbound volume is very nice, in the style of the 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons books. The cover illustrations are on an enclosed piece of cardboard, but not in the book itself. The interior of the modules have been reproduced almost exactly. I noticed that the resolution of some of the pictures (for example the front illustration of S1) is lower and a bit pixelated. Also, the 4 illustrations in S3 that were color are black and white. There was a full page illustration of the fight between the baboonoids, the characters, and the shambling mounds that is now cut to one page (doesn't appear to include all the original picture). Those are the only discrepancies I noticed casually. Overall, I am very pleased with the presentation. If I were to run one of these to players, I would want to get copies of the maps and some accessories so that I am not constantly flipping pages.

All four of these modules were favorites of me when I was introduced to the hobby in the early 80's. I will review them each individually.

S1 Tomb of Horrors is probably one of my favorite modules of all time (S3 as you will see below is also highly favored). I loved the deathtrap dungeon, the colors (the forest green with the zombie like being fighting a cleric and fighter, with the classic shield design), the artwork that were used to describe the dungeon. I have led a group of adventurers through most of this module once, and it was quite a challenge for them.

S2 White Plume Mountain was a bit of a disappointment to me originally. Only 16 pages long but full price. However, these 16 pages are jam packed with wonky ideas for a dungeon and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again. I have never led a group through this adventure. I wonder what a successful campaign has looked like, and if the dungeon master elaborated and expanded the material available.

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was a great favorite of mine. I remember when I first saw a copy (when I was in junior high). I thought the combination of technology with fantasy was awesome. I have always been a bit intimidated with the shear complexity required to run this adventure. I have started out at least one adventure in this module, but didn't get any further then the first level. There is quite a bit for the dungeon master to be aware of to make this a fun and exciting adventure - I believe the experience requirements for the dungeon master are equivalent or higher then the experience requirements for the players. I would love to one day lead a campaign group through this adventure, ideally one set in my customized World of Greyhawk that has developed from the beginning.

S4 When I first saw this module, I was overjoyed about the double booklet format, with one booklet completely devoted to new monsters, treasure, and special artifacts. I loved the classic adventure feel of this module, with the mixture of outdoor adventuring and cavern exploration. After my recent read through the module, I have to suspend disbelief in the great number of encounters in closely located spaces. I know that this is the way of many adventure modules, and I noticed it particularly in this read through. I started one adventure with only one player; it was the only time I played with this particular player and he had a different manner, with diplomacy and thought, rather then my expected hack and slash. I have tried to incorporate and teach this type of play since then.

Overall, I am very happy with this copy of four excellent adventure modules. I hope that digital copies of each of these books is provided soon at drivethrurpg.com (they weren't available at my last check). My purpose for that would be reproduction of maps and aids for game play.

So they stopped doing the trilogies of block novels.

Then they discontinued the single block novel.

They tried the planeswalker's guides books....for exactly one block.

Then they did eBooks of web content, but stopped aggregating them.

Which brings us here, to a D&D module/guidebook for a Ravnica campaign for D&D.

And while I'm sad that we're probably never going back to the days of Rath and insane meandering plotlines with characters whose names aren't Jace or Bolas in, this book was very much my jam. I'd be fine with the spirit of the novels living on in this fashion. Well-organized, clear, flavorful. I don't know if I learned anything about the setting that I didn't know already, but it provided so many story ideas and plot hooks that felt perfect for the format - I particularly liked the bit about how Azorious will occasionally bind felidars to prisoners rather than arrestors, because then the felidar can track the prisoner in the event of an escape, setting up a great race against the clock to find the prisoner before the Azorious do.

I came away inspired for a Ravnica-themed campaign. I have no better praise to give than that.

Theros is a very niche product, even moreso than Ravnica. Ravnica is very egalitarian and eclectic - you can easily incorporate any race, class, monster, etc. in Ravnica and it will feel right at home. Theros has a very specific flavor - its Greek as all hell. That's going to make it harder to incorporate species that don't show up in either Greek mythos or Theros block - Loxodons, Elves, Orcs, etc. Theros does add a nice buffer between D&D mythology and real-world mythology. Including myths like Heracles and Apollo would suck me right out of the game but Thassa and Heliod are just different enough that I can roll with it.

The Gods are neat and described well. I think getting a group that collectively all worship one deity might be difficult, and mixed groups allow for more conflicts and plot hooks. The being said, I can't see this being effective with really large groups, as you will reach a point where one player can't progress in their piety/quest without another player being obligated to interfere or take a hit themselves. Then again, you really shouldn't be playing D&D with a massive group if you value your time and sanity.

Leonin are a slightly more interesting Tabaxi, tritons are a nice twist on merfolk. The Satyrs, though, seem really powerful as player character races go. They aren't Yuan-ti pureblood bonkers, but they should be enough to give a boner to min-maxers.

Theros suffers by having most of its Greek-inspired monsters already in the MM. I'd love to see more hydra variants and sample chimeras in MOT. We get a lot of archons which is...weird. Anvilwroughts and catdog snake are both fun, though.

I think playing with party death - going to underworld while alive, going there while dead, escaping, having an Returned player or NPC along, etc. - allow for some really cool twists on the traditional story structure and anxiety beats of D&D.

A setting for D&D 5th Edition, updated from its previous version. A weird combination of high fantasy and low grade cyberpunk, it can work well with the right group.

This adventure is looking 10 times better than Hoard of the Dragon Queen. More flushed out, not so linear, and some nice design features. They saved money on rougher paper but the artwork is still pretty good. I'm not sure if I like the references to online resources or not. Part of me thinks that's sort of a cop out. Overall, the adventure seems pretty hard and I'll be a little surprised if it doesn't result in a total party kill by the end of the whole thing. At least it looks like fun getting there.

An OK module, particularly for late-period AD&D. Some parts of it work, some parts of it don't — it's practically guaranteed that a party will fail a decent number of the "must succeed" quests, for example, as they require them to act completely in opposition to the traditional D&D adventurer mindset.

The MMs keep getting better! This one uses the excellent stat formatting from MMIV, and adds a few descriptive elements like "magic strike" and "aligned strike" in the Attack Options section. Oh, and the monsters are great, too. There's a good spread of CRs, and both original creatures and useful variations on old ones. I especially like the Lord and Hound of the Wild Hunt.½