My Waterdeep campaign keeps going in strange directions. It began as a Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, but it has become a Waterdeep sandbox campaign. The characters keep on going off and doing other quests.
The characters have just spent a couple of sessions out of Waterdeep saving merchants from orcs, then exploring the very unusual dungeon the orcs lived in. The initial caves were fine. Natural in aspect, with perhaps a little widening by orcish chisels.
However, its deeper recesses led to a deserted stronghold decorated with carved reliefs of knights. The characters also discovered a great tapestry (untouched by age) showing the knights marching towards Mount Waterdeep.
The age of the tapestry was evident as there was no sign of the city of Waterdeep on the tapestry. This stronghold was old! Further stairs descended to a crypt in which the adventurers discovered giant rats devouring the body of an ogre.
They considered exploring further, but, feeling that they had been away from the city too long, they then returned to Waterdeep, bearing the tapestry with them.
I am very happy just to let the players do whatever they like. I come up with potential quests and then they choose which are interesting to do. Or self-direct on their own. Though, for the most part, they follow quest hooks I created. I am interested to discover if they will become more proactive as the campaign continues.
Other fascinating items the characters discovered in the orc caves included:
- the spear of an orc priest that turns into a snake, and
- a map to part of Undermountain that shows the burial location of an old Knight Commander of that ancient order
The map is interesting: It depicts part of the first level of Undermountain. One room is marked as the burial place of that ancient knight, with script indicating he was buried there with many grave ornaments Whether of this ancient king’s possessions remain is uncertain, for the first level of Undermountain has been MUCH explored over the years,
For this campaign, I am grabbing stuff from EVERYWHERE. I have many, many Forgotten Realms products, including a lot of boxed sets for Waterdeep, so there is a lot of source material to work with. And then I keep making more stuff up. Was there an old order of knights depicted anywhere in Ed Greenwood’s work in the area? Who knows – and who cares! Let’s have fun. Canon doesn’t constrain me!
The characters are now going to talk to the factions they are purportedly helping. They may need to do some explaining as to where they have been and why they haven’t been dealing with the problems caused by the feuding Zhentarim and Xanathar’s Guild!
The advancement in this campaign is relatively slow. We’ve been using XP, because they’re MUCH easier when you’re doing a bunch of quests that don’t link to a main storyline. The campaign features a lot of exploration and discovery and quite a bit of combat, though role-playing features from time to time.
The wilderness is dangerous – their third level characters were chased by almost a dozen ogres tonight (they escaped the pursuers!) – and they will likely be happy to be home. As they’ve been gone for a couple of weeks, it’s time to refresh the quests.
I am keeping my preparation on Roll20 relatively simple – with maps that have pre-drawn grids, I turn the grid-snap off on Roll20 rather than trying to align it. Occasionally the map is just an exploration tool and we use Theatre of the Mind for combat (with the Roll20 initiative tracker). Tokens are whatever I can find.
The campaigns I am running are giving me a lot of chances to explore other styles of running Dungeon & Dragons rather than the strong plot-focused adventures of recent times. I’m hoping to bring up strongholds, research, and other world-building activities as the players get a chance to be creative. That’s D&D: the game can be whatever you can imagine!
I haven’t played or read Waterdeep. What happens if they level up beyond what the book recommends for the campaign?
At that point, the campaign is likely to become VERY homebrew in nature. 🙂
The companion book of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage covers a lot of level 5-20 content, though!
A tip, if you haven’t figured it out yet: When you drop your map onto the Roll20 grid, right click and select “Set Dimensions”, then instead of using pixels, select “Units” from the drop-down – these are the squares on the map’s own grid (if it has one). Count out the width and height of the image by it’s squares, and boom – you should now have the map sized correctly to be able to drop it down on the grid, aligned correctly!
Sounds like a lot of fun. My Dragonheist campaign was more homebrew than published material and it was probably my favorite ever running. The adventure book wasn’t the greatest but there is so much Waterdeep source material out there that a DM can go anywhere with it.
Be careful with Undermountain. Our shift from heavy roleplay to dungeon crawling derailed our game. The players got bored. Sounds like you have a handle on it with the map and story of the ancient king’s possessions. Good luck. Sounds like everyone is having fun.
Thank you! And yes, short trips into Undermountain (with goals) is my plan rather than an extended campaign of pure dungeon crawling. Unless the players want to do that! (I saw a LOT of tables of DDAL people running Undermountain who found it a grind).