Hi, I'm running this campaign in a little bit, and I'm feeling kind of lost on how to give my villains an actual presence in the campaign. I'm going with the Cassalanters since it's already Summer and I wanted things to be a bit thematic to the actual season we're playing in.
I think Tolkien’s drawing of the Doors of Durin is quite beautiful so I made a door to my garage with the design that lights up. Added the voice opening because it’s an obvious must for a door like this. Made from walnut, epoxy, and forged metal. Has a big LED panel inside to light the wood up. I also couldn’t help myself and changed Narvi’s name in the inscription to mine
Though I seem to be missing a couple beads...where could they have run off to? 😏 🔥
So I ran a sequence where some of my players got captured by Xanathar's goons and others had to raid his dungeon to rescue them. In the process, I wrote a riddle for the gnome jester Flutterfoot Zipswiggle that others might want to use:
Though I'm always in motion, I never change place
I see only one creature, but draw a thousand eyes' gaze
Though I'm barely worth coppers, I glimmer with gold
In the eyes of my master, my value's untold
Answer: Xanathar's goldfish.
Hi, so I bought the adventure on D&D Beyond recently, and I'm planning on using the VTT to run it, but I'm not sure how well it'll suit it. Does anyone have any advice?
I'm a DM and been running WDH for a while now. I wanted to make it more interactive for my players so it became more of an urban sandbox with all villain at play. Depending on the player actions I assigned 'ticks' to each villain's clock to decided who they would end up facing in the end. We are currently at the Gralhund Manor.
Anyone else ran it this way?
Any advice?
Some of my players as so chaotic and needed some guard rails. And they keep forgetting it is a lawful city not the lawless land of dungeon crawling so they are constantly in trouble with the City Watch... I even had to run a trail for one of the players that killed a Cassalanter Guard.
Hello WDH community!
Tonight I'll be hanging out on Discord with u/VicariousVentures and some other DMs running (or who ran) WDH. We try to make this a monthly thing. Totally open for anyone to join. Come with your questions, ideas, and topics!
We'll start soon at 7PM ET in the VicariousVentures Discord: https://discord.gg/262gCtMt
(If you miss this note for June and want to join next month's hangout just send me or VV a direct message).
The characters more or less trust the Cassalanters, and after some friction with Xanathar, they decided to place the three street urchins under the Cassalanters' protection!
The Cassalanters agreed, and I haven't yet decided how to play it. Will they try to manipulate the children and keep them as leverage against the PCs? Or will they allow them to return to Trollskull Manor in order to maintain good relations with the party?
If it's the latter, the orphans could become a valuable source of information for the players!
I'd be interested to hear your thoughts!
I'm running the alexandrian remix. The party used Rhaenar to bluff their way past Zemk and Grumshar, helping Zemk with the ooze to gain his trust. They pretended as if Rhaenar was their prisoner and they had captured him remedying the situation with Floon.
They were taken through to Nilhoor who charmed Rhaenar and intended to take him to Xanathar through the portal. The party watched as Rhaenar disappeared through the door to the portal room. They then realized there was no saving him once they worked out about the portal. They managed to save Floon saying they would deal with him themselves, which they had earned giving Xanathar Rhaenar.
My question is what would Xanathar do with Rhaenar. Obviously he would question him, but past this would it make most sense for him to try and blackmail Lord Neverember or put an intellect devourer in him, release him or just straight up kill him?
Should I throw the Fireball at the end or at the start of a session?
Hey fellow Dragon Heist DMs!
I’ve been creating a heavily expanded Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for my own table, and I recently started a new longform video series where I walk through the campaign chronologically, section by section, from a DM prep perspective giving video clip examples along the way.
The first video is focused on Chapter 1: The Yawning Portal, and it breaks down how I would actually run the opening of the campaign at the table, including:
The goal of the series is not just to recap what the book says, but to talk through the actual DM decisions behind the scenes: what to emphasize, where to foreshadow, how to make NPCs useful and how to make the campaign feel more connected from the very beginning. After I cover these individual location guides I'll be covering things like how to run the heists from the Alexandrian mix as well as pairing videos alongside my Villain guide write-ups.
And of course all of these videos are supplemented by the many free companion guides and GDrive notes available on my Patreon for free (or just give this subreddit a search for any of my previous posts)
And for anyone currently prepping or running Chapter 1: what part of the opening gave you the most trouble? The Yawning Portal NPC overload? The bar fight? Making Volo feel natural? Getting the players to care about Floon? I’m curious what other DMs struggle with most in this section.
P.S. This first video is going to be the longest video by far (aiming for each follow up one to be 30 min long), but I could have easily gone on for a couple more hours just focusing on follow up visits to the YP and diving into the different homebrew things we did with the menu, the NPCs, side quests, etc etc.
P.P.S. Any comments/suggestions on the CH 1 videos will be addressed in follow up videos for things I missed :)
I'm looking for a Waterdeep map where the text labels are on a separate layer. I'd like to translate the map into my native language for my players, so if anyone has the original project file (PSD, Illustrator, SVG, Figma or similar), I could edit the street and district names myself.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!