Waterdeep: In Deep

I DM’d a year-long Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign that wrapped up at 2:30 this morning. It was a multigenerational family game, with a friend I played DnD with in middle school, three of his sons, and two of my sons. Fun. I’m planning to do a braindump of my approach and share some highlights in the next few days eventually, but I wanted to first document a mechanic I created to address the fallout of the party’s poor decisions.

In early sessions, I frequently stressed the importance of following Waterdeep’s laws, reinforced by nifty hard-copy printouts. The party managed to steer clear of murderhobo shenanigans for 6 or 7 sessions. Things went sideways during the Fireball chapter. In combat at Gralhund Villa, one of the characters turned on the City Watch and the other five joined in without any deliberation and against my warnings. Although they cleared the villa, once the Watch’s clerics did their post-mortem interviews a la Speak with Dead, the party became wanted.

This catalyzed a parallel series of events that I loosely tracked the remainder of the campaign, resulting in a change of overall tone. They had to lay low, couldn’t return to Trollskull Manor, etc. When they traveled anywhere in the city, the party had to roll a survival check. To account for the spread of information and increased public awareness, I increased the DC over time. The first check was DC 5 and by the time they got their grubby hands on the Stone of Golorr, it was DC 13. If two of the six players failed any check, it led to a negative consequence. Sometimes those consequences were just a couple of passers-by pointing and whispering (to build tension) and other times failed checks led to confrontation by the Watch. The most significant of which happened during the alley encounter.

Through a series of events at the vault, a few excellent rolls, and the grace of their DM, they were able to find mercy with the Watch in the end.