Waterdeep: Dragon Heist

One thing I find interesting about fifth edition is that a lot of the books seem sort of unfocused.  Volo’s Guide to Monsters is about 45% lore, 10% player options, and 45% Monster Manual 2.  Mordenwhatever’s Tome of Foes is half lore and half Monster Manual 3, with a tiny sprinkling of player options.  Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is basically whatever extra notes they had lying around at the D&D offices.  Which is not to put down any of the above.  I love all three of the aforementioned books, especially Xanathar’s.  Yeah, it can be a bit of a rip-off for non-DMs who only want character options (I admit that the Tabaxi race is like 50% of the reason I bought Volo’s), but they are solid books.

Still, those are all lore/options splatbooks, not adventure modules.  Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is about 50% lore, 50% adventure, which I find unusual for a module.  Sure, Curse of Strahd gives you all sorts of details about Barovia, but it does so by taking you there, over the course of the adventure.  W:DH is divided into three sections: lore, adventure, and more lore.  The adventure itself is arranged so that it can be played four times and deliver a different experience each time.  The four options – based on which season it is when you start the adventure – determine the identity of the villain as well as the order of events.

I haven’t run or played it yet, but it looks like it’s not a very long adventure.   Not only is the adventure section only about 77 pages, but since the adventure can be run four ways, a lot of the events are described four times.  So while replayability isn’t a problem, longevity is.  Still, the right kind of DM and/or group can probably draw it out for months, simply because there are so many things to see and do in the City of Splendors.

It also doesn't look like the adventure is heavy on combat, though that probably depends on how your party tends to handle things.  Personally I love that, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea.  There's a lot for rogues to do in this adventure, but some fighters might get bored.

One thing I love is the diversity.  Before the book even hit the shelves, bigoted neckbeards were already complaining about how PC it is.  "Oh my goodness, there's a non-binary elf!" they exclaimed, clutching their pearls, while somehow simultaneously accusing SJWs of being too easily offended.  That's not the only example of inclusiveness in the book, but it's the one that stands out the most.

Obviously a city as cosmopolitan as Waterdeep is going to be diverse.  Anyone who says it ruins D&D for them is playing D&D for the wrong reasons. The whole idea is new universes filled with fantastic locales and exotic creatures means leaving human preconceptions behind.  If all you want to play is "Archie Bunker: The RPG", that's fine, you be you. But please stay off the message boards.

Anyway, I also really like the maps.  They are incredibly detailed, and they make me want to abandon the cities I've been designing in my head and just use Waterdeep for my next campaign.
 
Overall, I feel like the book is less an adventure module, and more of a "Waterdeep Campaign Setting" with a sample adventure thrown in.  But that's not a bad thing, and all things considered I think it's worth the money.