Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an enjoyable adventure set in the City of Waterdeep, where you get to work for some of the factions of the City whilst stopping other factions from looting a great hoard of gold from a hidden vault.

The adventure takes you from first to fifth level, much as does the D&D Starter Set adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver. So, what do you do next? Here are some suggestions from the official adventure line, with suggestions for linking the adventures together. This is based on my previous article on What to Play After Finishing the Starter Set, and some advice is very similar. Others are subtly different…

Tyranny of Dragons – Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat

There’s a basic problem with using the Tyranny of Dragons storyline: the plot of Dragon Heist is based on something that happens during The Rise of Tiamat!

If you still want to run Tyranny after Dragon Heist, there’s a couple of changes to make.

First, don’t talk about the dragons during Dragon Heist. The Cult of the Dragon hasn’t acted yet!

Second, Lord Neverember never appears on the Council in Rise of Tiamat. He embezzled from the city and ran already before Dragon Heist began, and Lady Laeral is already the Open Lord.

You can introduce characters into the Tyranny storyline half-way through Hoard of the Dragon Queen. A suspicious caravan is leaving Waterdeep towards Neverwinter. Is this a further portion of the embezzled hoard? Does Lord Neverember have anything to do with it? And why are there rumours of dragon attacks?

Any faction contacts the characters have (especially with the Lords Alliance, Order of the Gauntlet or Harpers) would like the characters to investigate.

From this point, you can play through the rest of Hoard as written, and then continue through Rise as well.

Elemental Evil – Princes of the Apocalypse

The main adventure in Princes of the Apocalypse is for levels 3-15. It is a sandbox adventure, which allows the players a lot of freedom of where to go. As a result, players can get to dangerous areas quite quickly.

Material is also provided for levels 1-2 in a chapter of side treks, but this isn’t important for people moving to this adventure from Dragon Heist. For higher-level characters, the main adventure hook is the missing trade delegation; the characters need to be sent to look for it. Several NPCs the characters befriend in Dragon Heist would be very interested in finding out what happened to the delegation; choose one or more of them to hire the characters.

You don’t need to adapt Princes very much to play it after Dragon Heist. The major problem – that the characters are level 5 instead of level 3 – is negated by the sandbox aspect of the adventure. Yes, there will be a couple of locations that the party will find easy, but that’s part of this style of adventure. (They’ll probably end up in one of the high-level sections too early, anyway!)

Rage of Demons – Out of the Abyss

Out of the Abyss is an adventure for levels 1-15. It begins with the characters prisoners of the drow! Obviously, this will not lead to a fulfilling and happy life (or a particularly long one), so the characters need to escape. And that’s the start of the adventure. The players need to escape the drow, and make their way back to the surface. That journey will get them to around level 7. They’ll get hints on the journey up that things are even weirder than they suspected in the Underdark, but eventually they’ll emerge to the surface. Where? Oh, in the north of the Sword Coast, not too far from Phandalin and Neverwinter.

And sometime soon after that point, King Bruenor Battlehammer summons them, informs them that things are now Really Really Bad in the Underdark, and having heard of their exploits, he thinks they’re just the people to save the situation. Well, one of the situations, because there are probably other parts of the storyline which characters in the novels (Drizzt) and computer games and D&D Expeditions adventures are dealing with… And so they head back underground to deal with the rest of the adventure.

There are two obvious possibilities for transitioning between the adventures.

The first is to have King Bruenor to summon the characters after hearing of their exploits in Waterdeep, and tell them of the dreadful trouble down below and send them to face it! This will likely mean they’re a couple of levels too low, but throw a few of the Underdark encounters at them they missed from the first half of the adventure, and they’ll gain those levels quickly. Or find a transition adventure, such as White Plume Mountain (from Tales from the Yawning Portal) to give them a couple of levels.

The second is to just have the drow capture them anyway. Starting Out of the Abyss at level 5 will make escaping easier, but the Underdark will still be challenging. This would be my preferred option. The travels through the Underdark will allow them to understand what’s going on, and the adventure is written so the party should escape when they reach level 7 or 8 in any case.

Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is written for level 3-10 characters, so characters coming out of Dragon Heist will be slightly higher than its starting point. As with Princes of the Apocalypse, this shouldn’t affect play that much: the first few challenges will be easier than normal, but you’ll soon find yourselves in a part of the adventure that is more challenging.

Curse of Strahd is a much more exploration-based and role-playing heavy adventure than the others currently available, mainly because it draws upon the tropes of Gothic Horror for the story.

Incidentally, the adventure name is the same as the season name – something that occurred from then on.

No changes need to be made to the start of Curse of Strahd, except that you can omit the optional level 1-3 section, Death House. The letter from the Burgomaster can come to the characters as they’re relaxing in their tavern after their efforts in Waterdeep.

Alternatively, the characters could be On The Road, as they look for other opportunities outside of Waterdeep, when they receive the joyful summons to Barovia.

Storm King’s Thunder

The main play of Storm King’s Thunder is levels 5-10, so you need to ignore the opening section of “A Great Upheaval” and instead just get to the main adventure.

The adventure features a lot of wilderness travel in the Savage North, much fighting against giants, and some negotiating with other giants! It also plays differently each time, depending on the starting town (three choices) and giant lair visited (five choices).

The main adventure starts in one of three towns; the challenge is just to get the characters there. I suggest using the hooks from the opening section (A Great Upheaval) and just changing the quest-giver to one of the party’s allies in Waterdeep.

Tales from the Yawning Portal

The adventures in Tales from the Yawning Portal don’t link together, and could be played whenever the characters are at the right level. I’m very fond of White Plume Mountain, which is for level 5-7 characters, and it provides a good contrast with the action of Dragon Heist. You can also use The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan for a very different type of adventure.

In these cases, just introduce the characters to a few rumours as to what’s going on and send them on their way.

The original introduction to White Plume Mountain has the characters hired by the owners of the three magical weapons to retrieve them; I’d use that (just changing the location of the owners from Greyhawk to Waterdeep!)

Tomb of Annihilation

The initial section of Tomb of Annihilation, which is where the characters search the jungles of Chult for clues as to the location of the Soulmonger, is levels 1-5. I suggest that when the characters are given the original mission, they are also given the location of Omu; in that way, they can travel directly there and enter the main section of the adventure.

The beginning of the adventure where the characters are recruited by Syndra Syldane can still be used, but just have Syndra tell them that the Soulmonger is somewhere in Omu. Adjust the amount of time the players spend in the jungle to suit your playing style. Typically, I wouldn’t spend that long there – just the journey to Omu.

Consider including Syndra as a patron at the party’s tavern earlier in the piece, so at least they know her beforehand. (She could even replace the Harper patron).

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage is an adventure for fifth to twentieth level, and by its very nature works well as a drop-in, drop-out sort of dungeon. You can mount individual expeditions into Undermountain whenever you like.

Although it’s the second of the Waterdeep adventures, there’s nothing that makes the characters at the end of Dragon Heist automatically want to go into Undermountain, but it’s a natural fit!

D&D Adventurers League adventures

You can also use your characters to play any of the D&D Adventurers League games that are available through the DMs Guild. If you keep an up-to-date Log Sheet, you can play your character at any store or convention running D&D AL content, and you can even run them at home!

Note that the adventures have limits on what level characters can play them: tiers of levels 1-4, 5-10 or 11-16 at present. So, make sure you have a character of the proper level. (A character at level 4 or 10 can spend downtime and gold to immediately advance to the next level, which is useful when you’re just short of having a character at the proper tier.

There’s a lot of adventuring opportunities out there. So, if you’ve started with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, there’s no reason not to just continue with those characters into any adventure that interests you. There are adventures made by other publishers. Or you could always write your own adventures!