Our time with Dragon Heist is drawing to a close. I have a few more Addendums I want to explore, and there are a number of Running the Campaign columns based on my actual play that I think are likely to provide useful insight and cool ideas. But the core of the Alexandrian Remix is complete.
When I wrote my original review of Dragon Heist in November last year, I did not anticipate that the campaign would become the central focus point of the Alexandrian for the next several months.
Even when I started writing the Alexandrian Remix of the campaign a few weeks later, I wasn’t expecting to still be writing about it in February. My rough plan was that it would run through December and wrap up. What happened?
One of the major shifts was the decision to do full adversary roster breakdowns for each heist in the campaign. This was basically essential for me actually running the campaign, and it turned out to be a great opportunity to introduce a wide swath of new GMs to these really powerful techniques. But it was also the seed which saw my original intention of more-or-less briefly saying, “Use this lair to run a heist!” grow into a much more expansive concept of breaking down the entire heist structure and showing how each lair could be fully adapted to that structure.
The Faction Outposts also outgrew their original scope. My plan had been to highlight how material from the chase sequence in Chapter 3 of the book could be repurposed, and my expectation had been that I could basically say, “Use the Autumn Version of this location.” In order to balance the number of outposts between each faction, however, I ended up adding several all-original locations to the campaign. The process of making the clue-progression of the campaign more robust also meant including significantly more material with each outpost.
For something that stuck much closer to the original spec, look at the Faction Response Teams: The Faction Outposts were supposed to look more like that, with one post for the outposts and one post for the response teams. (Although the response teams actually expanded, too, as I realized that response teams should be included for factions beyond the four villains.)
In the end, a feature that I had originally thought would be perhaps 10,000 words ended up being more than 55,000 words. Seeing this, some have suggested that my early comments that the Remix primarily represents what the campaign could have been and arguably should have been was in error. (That clearly adding all of this new material would have considerably expanded the size of the book.) I don’t think this is accurate; reshaping material (and explaining the design choices I was making) is often more costly in terms of word count.
I primarily mention this length, however, to explain why this final installment of the Remix is necessary.
You see, when the original intention was a fairly short series of a little over half a dozen posts, I decided that the best structural organization was design-oriented:
- Discuss general principles (how the factions are organized and the new, heist-oriented structure of the campaign)
- Introduce adversary rosters and a proto-heist (Gralhund Villa)
- The path from Gralhund Villa to the Eye Heists (Faction Outposts & Response Teams)
- The Eye Heists (the heist structure and the four villain lairs)
- Making the Three Clue Rule and node-based scenario design of the campaign more robust (revised revelation lists tying all of the material together)
Most of these, with the exception of the Eye Heists themselves, were visualized as being one post. In actual practice, only one of them – Gralhund Villa – actually achieved that goal, and the tail end of the series also saw feature creep (adding full remixes of both Finding Floon and the Nimblewright Investigation, plus reference timelines and faction reports).
As the length increased, the original intention became obfuscated. The material had also become more specific than originally intended, encouraging GMs to simply pick up the Alexandrian Remix and run it… except the material wasn’t actually organized for doing that. It was organized as a design discussion.
All of this created a lot of confusion and frustration, particularly as the series began attracting new readers who weren’t necessarily familiar with the Alexandrian or the discussions out of which the Remix had arisen.
RUN-TIME ORGANIZATION
As I’ve discussed these issues with people, there has been some confusion about what the distinction is between a design-oriented structure of the material and a run-time organization of the material.
Here’s what the final organization of the Remix series here at the Alexandrian looked like:
Part 1: The Villains
Part 1B: Other Factions
Part 1C: Player Character Factions
Part 2: Gralhund Villa
Part 3: Faction Outposts
Part 3B: More Faction Outposts
Part 3C: Response Teams
Part 3D: Other Response Teams
Part 4: The Eyes of the Stone
Part 4B: Bregan D’Aerthe – Sea Maidens Faire
Part 4C: Cassalanter Villa
Part 4D: Xanathar’s Lair
Part 4E: Zhentarim – Kolat Towers
Part 5: Clues and Timelines
Part 5B: Finding Floon
Part 5C: The Nimblewright Investigation
Part 5D: Backtracking Dalakhar & Kalain
Part 5E: Outpost and Lair Revelation List
Part 6: Golorr Artifacts
Part 6B: The Brandath Crypts
Part 6C: The Vault
Part 6D: Faction Reports (Gralhund/Jarlaxle)
Part 6E: Faction Reports (Cassalanter)
Part 6F: Faction Reports (Xanathar/Zhentarim)
Part 7: How the Remix Works
(To aid with navigation, this table of contents has also been added to the first post of the series now that it’s wrapping up.)
As noted, this was a design-oriented structure: I was grouping the material, and discussing the material, by the method of design. For example, the revision of the Floon investigation came almost last because it was part of the discussion about how to structure revelation lists in investigations throughout the campaign.
From a run-time perspective, of course, this makes no sense: The Floon investigation should come first because it’s the first thing that happens in the campaign, and it shouldn’t be grouped with the Nimblewright Investigation because they have virtually nothing to do with each other. So when I actually sat down to run the campaign, this was how I organized the material:
0.0 Campaign Overview
1.0 Finding Floon
2.0 Trollskull
3.0 Nimblewright Investigation
3.1 Gralhund Villa
4.1 Faction Response Teams
4.2 Faction Outposts
5.0 Heist Overview
5.1 Bregan D’Aerthe – Sea Maidens Faire
5.2 Cassalanter Estate
5.3 Xanathar’s Lair
5.4 Zhentarim – Kolat Towers
6.0 Brandath Crypts
6.1 The Vault
The difference is stark, and I suspect abundantly clear to anyone who has been reading the Alexandrian Remix.
(Patrons of the Alexandrian can find my own run-time files on Patreon as a patron-exclusive example of this.)
It should be noted that I largely don’t regret presenting the Alexandrian Remix in the way that I did: A design-oriented approach was valuable and allowed the presentation of material that would not have been possible in a run-time presentation. A run-time presentation, by its very nature, is stripped down and utilitarian, and I believe there was value in actually discussing and exploring the design choices I was making in a step-by-step fashion.
But if you’re actually looking to run the Alexandrian Remix (which I heartily recommend), you’d probably benefit from ripping it apart and putting it back together in a run-time organization. In many ways, this was always my intention: That GMs would take the Remix and then put in the work to finalize it into their own campaign.
HOW THE REMIX WORKS
To that end, allow me to wrap things up with a concise summary of the structure of the Dragon Heist campaign.
If you’re running Dragon Heist as it was published, the structure of the campaign looks like this:
This structure is lightly accented with contrapuntal Faction Missions unrelated to the core structure of the campaign, although the application of these missions is limited because the Nimblewright Investigation, Gralhund Villa, and subsequent chase sequence are likely compressed into a very limited span of time (probably 24-72 hours at most), which means that faction missions will largely occur between Finding Floon and the fireball explosion. (And, of course, the lairs are completely absent.)
If you’re using the Alexandrian Remix, on the other hand, then the macro-structure looks like this:
(click for larger version)
This macro-structure is accompanied by two strong contrapuntal elements: The Faction Missions and the Faction Response Teams. What is essentially the expansion of Act III of the campaign (the investigations culminating in the Eye Heists) also allows these contrapuntal elements to be more thoroughly interwoven with the core structure of the campaign. In other words, the PCs will be called upon to complete faction missions while continuing their ongoing investigation into Neverember’s Enigma, thus complicating the action and possibly requiring them to make some tough choices.
(It can also be argued that the event timeline of the Fleetswake & Waukeentide festivals also constitutes a third weak contrapuntal element.)
It should be noted that the distribution of clues throughout the Alexandrian Remix will belie the straight, parallel lines of investigation implied by the diagram above. For example, here’s what a tiny selection of possible investigatory paths looks like in detail:
But in terms of actually running the campaign, it’s the macro-structure you need to pay attention to: The PCs investigate a villainous faction. You point them at an outpost. The outpost will contain clues that point them to a lair. Performing a heist at the lair will get them the Eye in the lair. Repeat to obtain the other Eyes.
If the players are struggling, use one of the proactive elements of the campaign (their faction allies or the faction response teams) to dump a lead in their lap.
Beyond that, just follow the players’ lead and everything else will take care of itself.
A SIMPLE CHECKLIST
A number of GMs — particularly new GMs — have told me that the ideas of the Remix excite them, but they feel overwhelmed by its complexity. In practice, however, the Remix can all be boiled down into a very simple structure:
1. Are the PCs looking for a lead to one of the Eyes? If yes, pick a Faction Outpost and point them at it.
2. Did the PCs just piss off one of the Factions? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs.
3. Are the PCs floundering and don’t know what to do next? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs. (If you’re not sure how they might target the PCs, just have them show up and try to kill them.)
Repeat until the campaign is done.
A GUIDED TOUR
With all of that in mind, let me just briefly walk you through the design-oriented posts on the website from a run-oriented perspective:
FIRST: “Finding Floon” is the beginning of the campaign. The revised “Finding Floon” investigation is Part 5B. An enhanced opening scene for the campaign is presented in Addendum: First Impressions.
SECOND: The PCs are rewarded with Trollskull Manor and are recruited into one or more factions. Spend some time allowing them to fix up their new home/business and run perhaps 1-3 faction missions. This is discussed briefly in Part 1C .
THIRD: The explosion happens. The Nimblewright Investigation which follows is covered in Part 5C and Part 5D.
FOURTH: The investigation leads them to Gralhund Villa. This scenario is given an adversary roster and other tweaks in Part 2.
FIFTH: After Gralhund Villa the PCs will either have the Stone of Golorr and need to find the Eyes (leading to the Eye Heists), or one of the factions will have obtained the Stone of Golorr and the PCs will need to find that (as an “Eye” Heist) and find the Eyes.
This is the core investigation loop: Point them at Faction Outposts (Part 3 and Part 3B) which will lead them to the Faction Lairs (Part 4).
SIXTH: With the Stone reconstituted, the PCs will be able to go to the Brandath Crypts (Part 6B) and access the Vault (Part 6C).
PROACTIVE ELEMENTS: In addition to the faction missions from the Dragon Heist book, use the Faction Response Teams (Part 3C and Part 3D) to actively bring the Grand Game to the PCs.
REFERENCE:
- Part 1: The Villains and Part 1B: Other Factions provide a high-level overview of the major players in Dragon Heist.
- Part 5: Clues and Timelines has a reference timeline and revelations pertaining to the macro-mysteries of the campaign.
- Part 5E: Outpost and Lair Revelation List has revelation lists you can use to track the primary investigation paths in detail.
- Part 6: Golorr Artifacts provides an overview of how the Stone of Golorr operates and how it can be used / has been used.
LEVELING UP
This is alluded to in various places through the Remix, but I recommend leveling up:
- After Chapter 1 (when they rescue Floon).
- After the Gralhund raid.
- After each of the heists.
There are four available heists, although the PCs may only need to do two or three of them. So the PCs will either be somewhere between 5th and 7th level going into the Vault. (In the case of my campaign, the PCs did all four heists, but we were on a race to the end and I forgot to have them level up. So they were 6th level heading into the Vault.)
This means that heists done later will be easier. This seems to either provide a satisfying experience (“we’re getting better at this!”) or allows players to kick a heist they find particularly daunting or difficult down the road until they’re more powerful.
Check out Addendum: The Dragon of Dragon Heist for a detailed look at how the Vault itself can be handled.
A FOND FAREWELL
And so we come to the end of the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist.
If the Remix has brought you to the Alexandrian for the first time, I hope you’ll stick around. Not only for more Dragon Heist material (as I mentioned above, there are several addendums and Running the Campaign columns that are likely to still appear over the next few weeks), but for all the other cool stuff we do here. If you haven’t checked out Gamemastery 101, it’s a great place to take a deep dive into a lot of the material that underlies the work I’ve been doing on Dragon Heist.
If you liked what I did with this remix, you can check out a very different one with the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies for the Trail of Cthulhu RPG. The Eternal Lies remix is much less about fixing the structrure of the campaign and much more about enhancing it – adding 300 + props, 150+ diorama elements, 450+ pages and 130,000+ words (including two completely new scenarios) to an already amazing campaign by Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, and Jeremy Keller.
As you get your Dragon Heist remix campaigns to the table, I hope you’ll also come back here and share your own stories, tips, and modifications. Not only because I love hearing stories like that, but because I’m a big believer in GMs sharing their lore. It benefits the community and it encourages you to think deeply about your own campaigns, which is the first step towards improving your craft as a Game Master.
Good gaming, my friends!
Addendum: First Impressions
Addendum: The Twin Parades
Addendum: Fancy Props
Addendum: Other Collaborators
Addendum: A Night in Trollskull Manor
Addendum: The Dragon of Dragon Heist
Addendum: Timelines & Starting the Campaign
Addendum: The Blinded Stone
Forgotten Realms: A Textual History of the Yawning Portal
Running the Campaign: A Party at Shipwrights’ House
Running the Campaign: The Manshoon Heists
Running the Campaign: Creating the Characters
Dragon Heist: The Final Session
Thank you, thank you, thank you! This remix is exactly what I wanted. I knew the lairs would be amazing for running heists in, and now the story fits with that goal. You are amazing!
Also, as a request, would it be possible for you to mark the fancy props document with where each note is found in the adventure? That would greatly help me understand what props I should have prepared when my PCs head to a location, instead of hunting through your articles for the matching document.
Again, amazing resource, and a great schooling in campaign and heist design!
Hi, I’ve never commented on your articles before, but I’ve been reading dozens of them.
I can’t thank you enough for this. When I first read reviews of Dragon Heist, it was actually back when you first posted about it and the fact you were going to do a remix. I had been gifted the module, but was utterly disappointed to hear about how confusing and disjointed the plot was. Now that you’ve wrapped this up I’m gearing up to run it myself in person in the next month. I honestly feel really lucky with the timing! The information you’ve shared here, the ideas, the discussion, completely changed my mind about Dragon Heist and made me so excited to finally run it for my group. I have recommended your work to other DM’s setting up Dragon Heist as well.
This write up in particular is exactly what I was praying for as I started putting together the pieces of the remix for my own game. You are an excellent teacher, a great writer, and all I can say is thank you! Also, I could probably donate to your Patreon, so I’m gonna do that too. Thank you!!
Thanks for this outstanding series. Seeing your writings over the years put into practice like this was very helpful to me. And I want to run Dragon Heist now!
The macro structures of the campaign are something I’d be interested to see in one of the follow up articles. Specifically, in how far do you plan a campaigns macro structure beforehand? And in how far do you plan all the different nodes beforehand? Or is this more a guideline to make things up as you go so to speak?
As an aside, I was getting frustrated with Curse of Strahd so if you’re ever planning to do another remix I’d love to see one for that module.
Hey there Justin. I’m planning on running your Remix and I wanted to make sure of a particular detail. The Enigma is the name of the conspiracy. But is Ranaer telling the party about what the Zhentarim questioned him about where the party is first meant to learn that the conspiracy is the missing half million dragons?
@Kyle: I think that’s the first place they’re able to pick that information up.
My group got distracted and interrupted Renaer before he told them about what the Zhentarim had been questioning him about, so they didn’t learn about the half million dragons until later.
@Sjoerd: That does sound like a good idea for an article. I’ve noted it for later development.
The short version is that proximity breeds detail: In my Ptolus campaign, for example, I started with a very broad concept of what the five act structure was likely to look like. For Act I had laid out specific scenario nodes and scenario triggers, and had fully prepped the first several scenarios. (Several of the scenarios were never fully developed because the PCs didn’t go that direction.) I had a good sense of what Act II’s content was going to be, but hadn’t actually designed all the connections. For Acts III-V, I didn’t really have more than a couple paragraphs broadly outlining the concept.
For Dragon Heist I basically prepped the whole thing before playing, and would have likely done so even if I wasn’t adapting a printed campaign. DH is more like one very big scenario than it is a campaign made up of many different scenarios, though.
I have been running WDH for 9 sessions now. I’ve been diligently working The Alexandrian remix and delaying with side missions like Blue Alley or the expanded faction missions off Reddit so I had time to digest the posts and try to organize them for my run-time perspective.
I comment simply to say, thank you! I’m creeping up on the last ten-day before the Fireball and know it’s about to take off like a shot. This will help me feel prepared. Oh and I’ve upped my Patreon pledge 🙂
Keep this glorious, considerate and organized help for DMs coming!
I can’t thank you enough for this remix, so I hope a Patreon pledge will suffice! I started running DH around November last year but only recently came upon your remix. Slow progression comes from biweekly meets of only 3 hours a piece; so, we’re in chapter 2 still, which is plenty time to steer the ship into your plot lines. I’ve been having fun homebrewing sidequests, but I was dreading running the rest of the module because it was so disjointed and railroady. This remix has upped my confidence considerably. Thank you so very much.
Hey there! I have to say, I absolutely LOVE what you’ve done with the story and plan on using as much of this as I can for my campaign that I’ll be running in a couple of months! I do have a question though: how long does this version take to run? Is it also intended for levels 1-5? thanks in advance!
I recommend leveling up after Finding Floon, after Gralhund Villa (if they participate in the raid), and after each heist (minimum two, could be four). You’ll wrap somewhere between 5th and 7th level if you use that method.
There are a number of variables when it comes to the length of a Dragon Heist campaign, but the two major ones for the Alexandrian Remx are:
1. How much time do you spend in Chapter 2 (setting up Trollskull Manor, running factions missions, etc.)?
2. How much time does it take your group to execute one of the heists? (Are they meticulous? Quick? Do they faff about? Do they buckle down to business and get it done?)
For my group, it breaks down roughly like this:
– 1 session for Finding Floon.
– Chapter 2.
– 1 session for the Nimblewright Investigation / Gralhund Villa.
– 2 sessions per Eye heist (which includes the faction outposts leading to the lairs).
– 1 session for the Vault.
If your group can typically wrap up a modest dungeoncrawl (a couple dozen keyed areas) in a session, then you’ll likely have comparable results.
Note that you only actually need to execute two Eye heists, not four. (If Jarlaxle never manages to steal an Eye from another faction, then the PCs don’t need to do that heist. And if the PCs are working for the Cassalanters, then they don’t need to do a heist to get the third Eye from them.)
So the big question mark is Chapter 2: Depending on how you handle this material, it can easily expand to 4 or 6 or 10 sessions. Just interacting with factions, remodeling the tavern, doing various faction missions, forming relationships with NPCs. It’s also not unusual for DMs to add additional scenarios into this section of the adventure.
But it’s also just as easy to keep Chapter 2 relatively tight: If you keep it tight, you could wrap it up in a single session. Or, honestly, you could skip it entirely. (The PCs don’t need to open a tavern or join a faction in order to follow the rest of the scenario. You just need to have a fireball go off somewhere near them, possibly killing someone they care about, in order to hook them into things.)
For example, you could very easily say at the end of Chapter 1, “Volo thanks you for your help and pays the agreed amount. Two weeks later, however, you receive a note from Renaer Neverember. He says he needs your help and asks you to meet at a such-and-such a tavern.” The PCs show up for the meeting, Renaer tells them he wants them to meet his friend Dalakhar who should be showing up any minute… and BOOM! Dalakhar is dead. Trigger the investigation.
So if you’re willing to just cut Chapter 2, I think you could run an otherwise comprehensive version of the Alexandrian Remix in 7-9 sessions.
Thanks so much! loving the content in this. Only problem I am having is balancing it with the parts that we still use in the book. Any ideas? It has been my main problem lately :\
Thank you for this remix.
I particularly like:
1. Incorporating the villain lairs for heists. I wanted this subconsciously but didn’t know it until I read the remix
2. Breaking up the linear structure of the published adventure.
3. Using all the villains.
I was scratching my head about the structure until I read this post.
I’m going into session 3 of my run. Wish me luck!
Fantastic work. Extensive and extremely useful.
One question: with this much added content (over a normal by- the-book run…) how do you deal with leveling? Do you just let them “over level” and simply increase thre difficulty of fights… or do you have them going 10 sessions between levels?
I discuss leveling here.
I ran for 21 sessions, and they would have leveled up to 8th at the end of the last session. So they leveled up about once every 3 sessions. I frequently ran long sessions, so you might find that it’s actually once every 4 sessions. But there was also a lot of material injected into the campaign as a response to the PCs’ actions, so you might also find the opposite.
If you think of the campaign as generally being 1 session of heist investigation/prep and then 1 session of actually running the heist (with the PCs leveling up after each heist), you can get a pretty good feel for the pace.
Why is WoTC not hiring you to write their adventures?!? 😀
Seriously!
Great stuff as always.
Thank you very much for this remix, it fixed all the things I didn’t even knew I didn’t like in the campaign.
I have some questions:
1-How am I supposed to handle the aghairon staff? Were the staff a gift from Dagult? How did he got such a powerful item? Is the magical dragon-barrier around the city active? If the players are supposed to kill the dragon they get to keep the staff?
2- I really like Kalain and the information she gives them is very interesting and I just wanted to increase the chance that she appears in the story, how would you do it? You mention that Orond visited her some time before, maybe he slips the info to the players by acident(because if he actually gave them intentionally he would just give the full information and they wouldn’t need to go there and meet her), or Reaner could mention her at some point, not sure when or why tho.
Anyways I very much appreciate all of your work and although this was my first experience with the Alexandrian definitely will not be the last.
@Igor:
1. I talk about this a bit in Part 6C, but I just dropped the staff of Aghairon entirely. Mostly because I found the continuity around it too convoluted and, frankly, irrelevant.
The entire final encounter, as I ran it, can be found here.
I did end up using the staff, but mostly as set dressing in possession of the Harpers.
2. A few thoughts:
Cut down the number of steps to get to her. If the PCs just make a Charisma (Investigation) check to look into Dalakhar’s background, they can get a direct lead to Kalain (a known associate).
Or maybe Dalakhar used her as a cut-out in contacting Renaer. So when he comes to talk to the PCs after Dalakhar’s death, he can point them more directly in Kalain’s direction.
If you’d prefer to just have a “second chance” to double back to Kalain (so to speak), I’d go with the approach you suggest: Orond or maybe the Cassalanters tracked Kalain down (or were perhaps thinking about tracking her down but haven’t done so yet) and mention this in their notes.
Thankyou for this incredible creative masterpiece, The level of commitment to restructure this adventure is astonishing. I’m new to your work, but I will be running your WDH remix as my group’s 50th Anniversary game. Ive been running a personal remixed Phandelver/Hoard/Rise of Tiamat game for a decade now, the players have just emerged from the dungeon of the mad mage following a quest by the draconic council to recover an ancient stolen tome from Halaster. As there are only 2 of my original characters left (I lost 4 in the undermountain! and one of the original members is now inadvertantly a warlock of halaster) I’m using the Cassalanter variant of your WDH as a backstory ‘memory/cut scene’ for the newer party members tracing their arrival in Waterdeep (also as 2 of the players are pretty new to D&D running 11th/12th level characters was a nightmare, so tracing the origin stories of their characters is going to be great)… Starting next week!
Sounds like you have an amazing group, Andy! Hope you all enjoy the campaign!