The Heist Begins

This post may contain spoilers to the D&D Adventure "Waterdeep: Dragon Heist"

I think the last time I used a pre-generated adventure was the prior time I ran D&D a couple of years ago, and that was an old Goodman Games module for 3E that I updated for 5E (which wasn't without its challenges).  But with several of our regular GM's in my gaming group unavailable, but my still having a lot on my own plate, I thought I would consider doing it again, only this time trying out one of WotC's up-to-date publications.

After doing some research, I decided on their most recent product, Waterdeep: Dragon's Heist.  I'm a big fan of "caper" movies and the whole premise seemed to be a nice change from your typical murder-hoboing.  The whole adventure takes place in a city, there's a ton of investigation and roleplaying, and it serves as the prequel to their release of the latest iteration of the Undermountain megadungeon, which is being released in November.

We will be playing our third session tonight, having gotten our way through the first chapter of five in two sessions.  Each chapter is supposed to roughly correspond to a level advancement, so the PC's are supposed to be second level at the start of chapter two, etc.  The first chapter introduces the PC's to some major characters, introduces the main plot, and gives the PC's a chance to both do some investigating and dungeon crawling, albeit in a lead-you-by-the-nose sort of way.  One of the dungeon encounter areas, for example, has one clearly identifiable entrance (the others are much harder to locate) and doesn't truly fork, leading the PC's eventually to the boss fight of the level.  For an old school guy like me, that seems heavy-handed, but I'm not sure the players even noticed.

The second chapter is the most unusual for me, because it actually lacks any kind of crawling, dungeon or otherwise.  The entire chapter covers the PC's wandering around a neighborhood in Waterdeep, meeting people on the street, and being elicited to complete certain quests.  The quests themselves are not combat related, but based on skills, e.g. "Make three DC 12 Intimidation checks to succeed."  Many of these are roleplaying-related, making me once again question the relationship between players acting out what is happening versus just rolling dice.  Almost all the combat encounters are strictly the consequence of players actively seeking them, and are rarely advantageous given that they are basically living in a fantasy suburb at the time (the law is nothing to mess around with in Waterdeep).  For some players this will be a welcome change of pace to a D&D game, but others may find this to be a weird slow-down in the pace of the game, especially given that chapter two is supposed to cover over a month of time in the campaign world.

I'll keep you updated on how the campaign progresses without giving away too much of the plot.  Thanks for reading, and comments always welcome!