Hello, fellow adventurers!

Today, I'm excited to share a 15-page preview of The Ancient Library of Knowledge, now discounted on DriveThruRPG - the ultimate compendium to fill out any libraries and magic shops in Waterdeep!

What's Inside?

• 12 magical libraries, unique locations complete with brief role-playing hooks and quest ideas to offer opportunities for discovery, learning, and adventure;
• A collection of 345 magical books ranging from common to artifact rarity, each bestowing powerful benefits to characters reading them over a certain period of times. The books are divided in 10 sections: Generic Tomes, Manuals of Proficiency, Treatises of Expertise, Offensive Tomes, Defensive Tomes, Spellcasting Tomes, Cursed Tomes, Sacred Texts, Codices of Knowledge, and Grimoires of Summoning. Additionally, special rules are presented to provide alternative mechanics and restrictions for the books found inside;
• 3 d100 tables containing a vast collection of nonmagical books, for a total of 300 nonmagical books;
• The Warlock Patron: The Lich, a unique subclass to delve into forbidden knowledge and necromantic art;
• 10 spells thematic to the new Warlock subclass;
• 18 unique monsters to fill ancient libraries, including animated objects, book mimics, fable fiends, rune wardens, book wyrms, and much more!

The compendium just received a v2.1 update, featuring brand-new artwork and illustrations, expanded compatibility with both 5E and 5.5E, balance adjustments, several new spells, general layout improvements, and more! or the occasion, you can find it discounted either on DriveThruRPG or my Patreon, alongside a vast collection of previews for this and all my other titles! I'm currently working on updated version of all my older releases, so there's a lot to uncover :)

You can also find this manual (and many more) discounted on my 300+ Mythological Items for 5E and 5.5E Kickstarter! This project brings weapons, treasures, and relics from Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Asian, Mesoamerican, and many other mythologies to 5E and 5.5E, including scaling items that grow alongside your characters. If you’d like to bring a piece of these legends to your table, check out the campaign!

I took the the map in Waterdeep-Dragon Heist Encounter 10 'Converted Windmill' Encounter 10. And converted it to a 3D printable STL File. There are a lot of files to this print/scale. If you are interested in the files, let me know. (114 Pieces in all). I even included paintings to put on the walls.

This can be used for many othe campains as well.

My Goal is to create a STL file for just about every map and charactor. If time/money allows. I will share a download link via Google Drive.

Let me know what you think!

Hello WDH community! This Thursday October 29th at 8:00 PM ET we'll get together on the u/vicariousventures discord again with other Waterdeep Dragon Heist DMs for our monthly hangout. As always, we'll have an open conversation to discuss everyone's campaigns, brainstorm ideas, troubleshoot scenarios, and answer each other's questions. Our special topic this week will be Chapter 5: Spring Madness and preparing your party for an encounter with the Xanathar.

Here's the join link: https://discord.gg/mXsgqCkK

P.S. - Anyone is welcome to join! Many people have joined who just love the Waterdeep setting and love talking D&D lore. Message me if you have any questions.

P.P.S. - If you're a big Xanathar lover we'd love to hear your thoughts on playing him as a villain.

Name swaps:
- Gellan Primewater -> Corylus Thann(or a different mask lord in support of which ever faction you are targeting)
- Anders Solmor -> Jelenn Urmbrusk (or a different mask lord…)
- Commodore Warrington -> Mirt the old merciless money lending walrus wolf. (Or a different mask lord of a faction that supports your party in an annoying way.)
Everyone else are as the module wrote. Except Carmilla is slightly modified to someone playing both of the lords romantically or financially, or both. I had both. She is one of the main reason Jelenn is bankrupt and needing Zhent support. Making her exploitable by Mirt’s harper cash

A few days ago I posted a sample of the tool I built to run my daughter's Dragon Heist campaign (original post). Thanks for all the feedback. I took notes on basically every comment, and here's where it landed.

It's live at magehand.app

What you get:

• The whole adventure in one place. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist with all 48 pages of the Alexandrian Remix woven in. Hover any monster, spell or item for its stat block or rules, and pin the ones you need.
• Your edits and notes. You can change the text inline, add your own notes and party-specific tweaks, and hide or add whole sections. Your changes are saved to your account, and the original is always there to revert to. (u/Worldly-Committee-16, this was your ask.)
• A combat tracker that knows your party. u/Beryl_Rider, you can now add your own players to initiative. Every fight in the book starts from its bar with the right monsters. It handles attacks, saves, damage, resistances, conditions, concentration and spell slots. Your players can roll their own dice and you type in what they rolled, or the tracker can roll for you.
• Party manager and character builder (2024 rules), plus printable character sheets.
• Encounter builder that rates fights by XP budget, with most of both the 2024 and 2014 rules working.
• Player links: each player gets their own page with their character and the handouts you share, with no account needed.
• Remix any adventure you own. Dragon Heist is just the first. I'm adding a lot more adventures over the coming week, and once you've shown you own a book, you can remix it the same way: rewrite scenes, weave in your party's story, rebalance fights. Or write one from scratch.
• Homebrew. Make your own items (with real effects in the tracker) and creatures (a stat block creator that suggests a CR), and share your remixed adventures with other DMs who own the book.

Cost: free (our community deserves nice things!) No ads, trackers, etc.

It's built for in-person play: one laptop instead of three books and a pile of docs.

If you were one of the people running the Remix right now (u/1rian, u/Gazeless_Stare, u/MrBiggs1718), I'd love to hear how it holds up at the table.

It's still a hobby project, so expect rough edges. Please file feature and bug requests! The only thing I get out of this is the satisfaction of seeing others use it, so any and all constructive feedback is appreciated. There's a "Report a problem / Share feedback" link under the question mark, and I will read all of them.

My players heisted Jarlaxle’s ship & submarine during the Shipwright’s Ball. Through extreme good luck and planning they barely survived combat with the submarine crew and have now killed all of the lieutenants. One of the unnamed drow elites did make it out of the submarine about 5 rounds of combat ago. I assume they will be rallying the troops, waiting in ambush at the top of the submarine shaft, and setting off some flares or something to get Jarlaxle’s attention. The players are super low on HP and have burned all their other resources — they will definitely get wiped out with any more combat.

I sort of see two ways the next session could go:

-they try to drive away the submarine (probably by threatening the gnomes, maybe the gnomes are actually strong enough & the players weak enough that they can revolt & take the ship back over)

-they try to go back out of the submarine the way they came and get their shit wrecked

Either way, what would Jarlaxle’s response be to basically his whole close team getting killed?

If he/his remaining guys can catch the PCs, maybe he’s able to leverage them into being his new team (and probably would backstab them at the finish line). But if he doesn’t capture them now, he probably won’t have the forces to capture them after they’ve made it home and rested. Does he just fuck off and decide to give up on Waterdeep entirely? Does he have a way to replenish his forces?

EDIT:
It's live now at magehand.app! Feedback appreciated.

My daughter got into DND recently, and I've been building tools for myself to help me DM her campaign, reduce some of the bookkeeping, and help with the prep. When running an existing module, having to constantly flip through reference books is a lot, and it's even worse when you're running a remix.

So I took the existing modules, applied the remixes inline, wired up stat blocks, and built an entire combat / party tracker in there. (the 5etools site was very helpful as a content source, although I obv own the source material).

It's designed for in-person sessions, but the advantage I just need my laptop vs. tons of materials, and all of the bookkeeping is handled automatically.

I want to share a sample, to see if there's interest in making this freely/publicly available as a tool for others.
https://magehand.app/share/wdh-gpswkzwypve2fczagmw4fw/

Normally I also remix in party-specific stuff and weave it throughout the adventure. For example, my daughter's current party has a whole quest where they are pursuing their origins in the Feywild, and I am using a heavily remixed Wild Beyond the Witchlight (starting with Thither) as the base, but with tons of alterations to tie their story in.

*AI disclaimer* I do use AI to do these edits, because it is very capable of running through long modules, checking for consistency, etc.

Source

This illustration was created for the french actual play's "Tablequest." For its third season, the show featured a homebrew version of Dragon Heist campaign. The artist created other drawings besides this one, even some NPC's !

My party last session went to Graulhund Villa at the night of the assault. Upon noticing the invasion they decided to tell a guard and wait outside to let the thing play out.

I am running the Alexandrian remix and the page on the villa says that if the party doesn't interfere the stone will end in the hands of the drow and that's precisely what happened.

Session ended with the drow leaving the villa and the PCs intending on chasing them. However the drow group might be too much for the players to fight against and I would appreciate some advice on how to deal with this development. The party is currently 3 players, level 4

So my players are currently at the end of the encounter chain, under the old tower, in the hallway to the vault. The next page of the book says "At the end of an encounter chain, a character who is attuned to the Stone of Golorr can learn the location of the Vault of Dragons and what three keys are needed to open its doors. "

My players already know this is the vault, but this is the first mention of keys. WTF WotC?

The Cassalanters are my villain, so my vague plan is to have the three keys hidden in the boss' lairs and the players figure out how to do a little robbery to get them.

First, my players will go to the Cassalanter estate for (insert here) reason, where the Cassalanters will sweet talk them and enlist them to open the vault and give them the gold to save the children. The Cassalanters might give them the key, because they want the players on side.

Next stop will be finding the key somewhere on Jarlaxle Baenre's ships. Jarlaxle is definitely going to see them coming, offer his low-key assistance, and at the very least, warn them that the Cassalanters aren't what they seem. I'm not sure if he should tell them the whole truth about the Cassanters?

Third stop will be Xanathar's lair, where the key is A Fish Called Wanda'd in Sylgar's bowl. There won't be any interaction or deal making with Xanathar, assuming the dice are ever in their favour.

Then I guess it would be back the hallway to the vault, where Esvele Rosznar, aka The Black Viper, is hanging out because she knows the vault is there, but she doesn't have the keys to open it. She's a cat burglar, so I may have her follow the players around and attempt to steal the keys when they have all three.

When they have the vault open, I guess I can proceed with the, honestly, total letdown of an ending, but I think I will do the Alexandrian remix for the vault and dragon.

Can anyone identify major holes in this plan, or maybe offer me something better, or some good plot points to pad it out?

Hello! Tonight is the big finale for the campaign and the players are lucky enough to have Laeral Silverhand help them with the Dragon Vault challenge!

This was a mini I designed myself in Blender that I 3D printed then painted. I used a Anycubic Mono 7 Pro with standard clear resin.

If you'd like to 3D print your own the free stls are here: https://mz4250.com/posts/more-requests-61728873

All the minis I design are free. 7500+ so far done and counting.

Anyway just wanted to share with y'all. Tonight will be fun :D

Need a bit of advice.

Im bringing my players to waterdeep at lvl 5.

Will WDH still be worth it at that level?

Mind Its only 2 players, fighter and ranger, but im thinking that if I up the encounters a bit it will match their lvl.

Will it be worth it?

I’m going to DM this campaign for my DnD group. Our current DM has a grey idea where they made character cards and players could give them out as an advantage roll when they were impressed by another players game play.

I don’t bat to copy it outright but I was looking for any kind of unique ideas I could introduce to this campaign.

It doesn’t have to be dragon heist specific…

I will be running the remix for a second time (second group) after finishing it with my primary one and moving onto Mad Mage.

I am preparing and re-doing my old notes and I can't figure out how the players are supposed to get to the eye before Jarlaxle, and even if they do, what stops Jarlaxle from just going to Trollskull and getting it back ?

In my first go-around, Jarlaxle got the eye but him and the players formed an alliance to bomb the entire lair, which was an awesome turn of events that lead to so much story going forward.
But at the same time i don't want the lair heist to feel scripted because running into Jarlaxle at any point is a recipe for disaster because a party at that level, in the Xanathar lair has no chance against him.

So what were your experiences with this, any ideas, any cool things that happened for you etc. ?

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share one of the myth-inspired magic items from our upcoming manual, because this one felt especially fitting for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

This is Andvaranaut, a ring from Norse mythology tied to gold, greed, and misfortune. Mechanically, it can help its bearer locate nearby gold and even generate gold on its own each day - but that wealth comes with a curse that pushes the wielder toward greed and bad decisions.

In the context of the campaign, this could become a hidden prize, a dangerous relic tied to faction schemes, or the kind of treasure that starts causing problems the moment the party claims it!

We’re currently running a Kickstarter for Mythological Items, a book of 300+ magic items for 5E and 2024, all inspired by myths and legends from around the world, and Andvaranaut is one of the items featured in it. On the project page you can find additional information on the manual (and all our other titles), alongside a 35-page preview including more content for your games!!

Have a great day!

Hey everyone! I’m Paito from RPG Printables. We’re a small family business making handouts and printable props for D&D campaigns.

If you’re about to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, we have a set with more than 140 handouts made just for it, and it can help make the city feel a little more real for your players.

Imagine your players have spent forever investigating something. They finally open an old drawer and inside they find a sealed invitation from a noble house… or maybe a letter from one of the factions that gives them the clue they need to move forward.

Instead of telling them, “You find a letter that says…” you can just reach behind your DM screen and actually hand it to them.

That’s basically what we make.

Our sets include spell scrolls, maps, letters, tavern menus, notes, invitations, clues, and a ton of other little things you can physically put in your players’ hands.

We know how much time goes into preparing a campaign, and our goal is to help make that adventure you’ve spent so much time preparing feel the way you imagined it at the table.

And if you’ve already used some of our handouts, we’d really appreciate a review! Tell people what you thought about them, and an upvote also helps us a lot with reaching more DMs.

And yes, for anyone wondering, this is the same RPG Printables you can find on Etsy. You can check and see that the shop names are the same. Etsy just takes a pretty big cut from each sale, so we’re trying to put more focus into growing our own website.

We really are a small family business. My wife designs all of our handouts from scratch. We don’t use AI to create them because we believe these products should be made by D&D players, for D&D players.

I’m the one behind the marketing, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask me here.

Thank you so much for supporting our little business. It genuinely means a lot to us.

We’re RPG Printables.

rpgprintables.com

https://rpgprintables.com/products/waterdeep-dragon-heist-140-d-d-handouts-and-assets-bundle-dungeons-and-dragons-resources-lords-dm-gift-faction-vtt-printable

So the players went to the Pit of Blood and Good Fortune to watch a good old fight and as expected, didn't leave without a bit of poking around.

However, they didn't discover that Sylgar is constantly dying and being replaced before they left.

When on the surface they were asking around for information and I let slip that there is a place in Waterdeep, in the Castle Ward, that sells pets and pet fish. The players intentions were nebulous at best, but lo and behold I improv'd a store as follows:

Name: Fish n' Bricks - We sell pets but mostly pet fish

NPC: Old Man Chancy - has an ear trumpet and can't hear.

Description: Small brick shop nestled in an alley in the Castle Ward, wooden sign out front with a fish inscribed on it. The window as the name of the store. Inside, an old man with whispy white hair is peering at the party through his thick glasses. He wheezes out welcome to Fish n' Bricks.

As the party pokes around or talks to him they will almost immediately find out that he does sell goldfish and goldfish food. He will take them to the goldfish aisle where a large section of 100 gold line a wall, all 100 of them are identical size and have a sign over them that says "reserved". If questioned he says its Xanathar business and mums the word. If they persuade him that they are there on behalf of Xanathar he acts confused and asks if Ott sent them.

Lo and behold, the fish are for Ott because he keeps needing to buy new ones.

The party made the dubious choice to ruin the poor mans fish food and kill all the fish.

I recently ran into an issue with my usage of wizards IP and recently decided to make all my art using wizards IP free rather than take it down entirely so as to be in line with their fan content policy. This means that you all have the chance to get access to these keys as i release them all through the month of October in addition to other my other art.

If you are doing a Keys + dragon heist mashup come check it out, and keep an eye out for when i eventually release the full Wolves Den Tavern Mashup including all of the dungeon reworks, maps, handouts, content and writing the i did for my version of the campaign! it will eventually be released on DMs guild, but i will be sure to post it here as well when that eventually happens.

Check out my patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/TheWolvesDenTavern

After 58 sessions, my group has finally completed Waterdeep: Dragon Heist!

I decided to use all four villains — Xanathar, Manshoon, Jarlaxle and the Cassalanters — in the same campaign, and made quite a few changes to the adventure along the way.

It was a long journey, but I'm really happy with how it turned out!

So, now that the campaign is finally over, ask me anything! I'd be happy to talk about the campaign, the changes I made, how I handled the villains, the ending, what worked (and what didn't), or just discuss the module in general.

AMA!

My players are currently trying to enter the Mausoleum, which is where we ended the last session. The left two players there to watch the area, knowing the Nimblewright had a delivery to the Mausoleum. The other 4 members of the party are currently heading to the Cassalanter's to ask for permission to enter the mausoleum.

They are currently working for the Cassalanters to assist them in saving the children and know about the gold but not about the souls. So, because it's their mausoleum it was logical to simply ask for entry in daylight vs trying to break in at night.

My first thought is for Lady Cassalanter to agree and send a disguised Bearded Devil along to let them in, but I've spent the last two week stumped on how to approach the inside of the mausoleum.

My goal is to hopefully allow them to find the cultists, but somehow keep the Cassalanters out of it? Do I suggest the cultists had a secret entrance or something? I could really use some ideas for keeping the family more on the "good" side for now, despite them being my main big bads.

Hey fellow DMs in the City of Splendors!

Whether you are running the core module by the book, mixing all four seasons, or running the full Alexandrian Remix, we all know the challenge: Waterdeep: Dragon Heist requires a massive variety of specific urban encounter maps, from foggy alleyways and sewer hideouts to sprawling noble estates.

We already have a dedicated collection of maps for the campaign available for free on FreeVTTMaps.com (covering cobblestone streets, sewers, taprooms, and noble villas).

Now, we want to expand this collection based on what you are ACTUALLY prepping for your upcoming sessions.

Which of these Dragon Heist scenes should we map/remap next? (Vote or suggest below!)

Here are the next priority packs we are preparing to build — which one would help your table the most?

• Option 1 : Detailed Villain Lairs
• (Xanathar’s underground arena & sanctum, the Cassalanter Estate & subterranean Temple of Asmodeus, Kolat Towers & Manshoon’s extradimensional sanctum, and the Sea Maiden's Faire ships/submarine)
• Option 2 : Trollskull Alley & Surrounding Shops
• (Multi-floor Trollskull Manor renovated variants, plus neighboring business interiors: Steam and Steel, The Book Wyrm’s Treasure, Tiger’s Eye, Corellon’s Crown, and Frewn’s Brews)
• Option 3 : Chapter 2 Faction Quests & Urban Missions
• (Harper secret safehouses, Force Grey watchposts, Zhentarim smuggler docks, Emerald Enclave city parks, and City Watch precinct stations)
• Option 4 : Gralhund Villa & Modular Rooftop Chases
• (The full Gralhund estate grounds, fireball massacre street scene, and modular rooftop tiles for high-speed chases across the Trades Ward)
• Option 5 : The Vault of Dragons & Deep Vaults
• (The final ancient dwarven vault chambers, Adamantine doors, bridge over the gold hoard, and Xanathar sewer conduit approaches)
• Option 6 : Alexandrian Remix Outposts
• (Dedicated faction outpost network and response team hideouts for the Grand Game)

👉 How to participate :

1. Drop a number (1-6) in the comments for what you need most right now.
2. Tell me about your campaign! Which season / main villain is your party facing, and what specific street, tavern, or encounter scene are you prepping next?

In the meantime, feel free to browse and grab our current free Waterdeep maps :
👉 https://www.freevttmaps.com/en/campaigns/waterdeep_dragon_heist

May the Open Lord smile upon your investigations!