Dungeons & Dragons - Tyranny of Dragons Special Edition

When 5th edition officially got underway, two adventures where released: Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. The first scenario led right into the second, and pitted your players against a cult of Tiamat.

To celebrate the 5 year anniversary of the release, Wizards has published a new book that combines both adventures in one volume, and adds in a sketchbook section.

Today I'm going to go through this book and see what's new, if anything, give my overall thoughts, and reflect on what it was like to run this game when nobody knew if 5th edition would be popular at all.

Links

Back Cover

• You can buy this book here.
• I wrote a Guide to these books in my blog.
• My DMs Guild Guide to Tyranny of Dragons.
• I wrote session recaps of this campaign in this blog, starting here.

Changes

Sketchbook Section - The Dragon Mask

The thing that I am most interested to see is if changes were made in the adventure. There were a few notorious spots where bad guys were too powerful, and I am wondering if they expanded the Thay chapter, which was really brief in the original.

For the most part, this book is the same as the original printed versions.

Hazirawn: They cleaned up a slight error in the stat block of Hazirawn, a rather confusing issue discussed here.

Kobolds: The biggest complaint from the original was that the kobold encounters in the opening chapter were too hard and groups would get wiped out. The very first encounter pitted the 1st level characters against 8 kobolds.

On page 24 of this new book, we see that it is now 7 kobolds, and it is stated that the kobolds assume the heroes are members of the cult and are busy focusing on townsfolk. So, the group should get a surprise round if they choose to fight them.

The Assassins: This one always amused me. The heroes might stop off at a tavern and get jumped by assassins who were way too powerful for a low level group of heroes. Apparently, the reason this was in the book is because when the adventure was written, assassins were much weaker than what ended up being printed in the 5e monster manual.

Checking page 52 of this new book, the assassins have been replaced with 4 veterans.

Still Stingy on Treasure: The white dragon's treasure hoard had no magic items in it! Surely they've changed that in this new edition. Check out page 123. Still no magic items! Though it does say that you can "add potions, scrolls, and magic items at your discretion."

Chuth, the green dragon, has an item-less hoard as well.

Thay: Still tiny!

The Cult Strikes Back: Chapter 13 on page 140 has a few encounters detailing how the cult tries to assassinate the group. If I remember right, the original section included some yugoloths that felt really out of place. Those are gone now!

Overview

Cover: The cover is really great. It is probably my favorite of all the "special edition" covers so far.

Paper: One thing that I LOVE about this book is that they used the same "parchment" type paper they used in Rise of Tiamat. It's thinker, heavier, doesn't "shine" and the ink doesn't smudge off onto your fingers.

The downside to this is that it seems to make the art come out a few shades darker. All things considered, I like this paper more than what the use for their newer books.

Sketchbook: The most substantial addition to this book is the sketchbook section in the back. It has art depicting cult designs, dragon designs, various locations, and what looks to be some comic-book style two-page spreads of dragons.

What Happened to the Dragon Mask? There's a few sketches of the dragon mask, the magic item that the cult can use to pull Tiamat out of the Nine Hells. It's interesting to think about now, with all the lore developments since this adventure was released.

In Descent into Avernus, we see that Tiamat has Arkhan the Cruel working as her agent and, in the end, he might become the new ruler of Avernus. If Arkhan set his sights on it, could he track down the mask and give it to his tortle sidekick to bring Tiamat back to the Material Plane?

Where did the dragon mask end up at the end of Rise of Tiamat? In the hands of the adventurers? In the possession of the Council of Waterdeep?  Could Lord Neverember have absconded with it when he was chased out of Waterdeep? Could the mask have been in the vault at the end of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist?

Cultists! Looking at the sketches of the dragon cultists, I really wish they would have made themed cultists like the ones that are in the Neverwinter MMO. In that game, there are cultists aligned with each of the five chromatic dragon types, and each has a special power relating to the dragon they are aligned with.

For example, a green dragon cultist might be able to spit acid, while a red dragon cultist might be able to cast a fire spell or be fire resistant.

I do like the dragonsouls, dragonwings and others on page 182, so it's not that big of a deal.

Dragon Factoids. I love the dragon sketches. They contain all sorts of little details you can use to help make a dragon come to life. For example, a black dragon's nose slits can seal up, aiding the creature when it goes underwater.

When a blue dragon is about to breath lightning, it "charges up". A humming noise grows as little blots of lightning crackle around its head.

Running Tyranny of Dragons

If you're reading this artcle while wondering if this adventure is something you might want to run, I wrote a LOT of stuff about doing so in this blog. Check out these:

• Addressing the Criticisms of Hoard of the Dragon Queen
• Overview/Review of Rise of Tiamat

I started running games in my local game store in 2008. I ran tons and tons of 4th edition D&D, and I loved it. Despite that, everyone agreed that the 4e rules were flawed.

When the 5e playtest was rolled out, we dove in. In the game store, it was a weird transitional period where I ended up running games for new players. These new players were younger. In 4e, I was running for people in the 20's and 30's. In 5e, I found myself with a group of kids ranging from age 9 to 15!

It was a huge adjustment. I wrote about it a lot in the early days of this blog. We played through Scourge of the Sword Coast, Dead in Thay, and even a "D&D Next" conversion of White Plume Mountain.

As 5e hit, I wondered what attendance would be like. 4e was plenty popular in our store, and we always had a few tables going. I was running 2-3 games per week, and at times I actually had to turn people away!

5th edition launches... and people just poured into the store. There was a massive influx of players, to the point where it got bigger than Magic: The Gathering (which was huge in terms of both attendance and profit in our area).

I wondered if there would be a decline after the first few weeks. There was not. In fact, more people showed up. It just got bigger! It was crazy.

The Blog

I had been thinking about writing a D&D blog for years. I wanted to share the trials and tribulations of being a DM, which can be a weirdly lonely endeavor. Sometimes I would toil away for hours and hours during the week while preparing a module, only for the session to fall flat. The next week, I'd pick myself up and do it again, and the next one would be a home run. It was a wild ride.

I'm glad now that I didn't write a blog during 4e. I wasn't ready at that time, and our group's shenanigans probably weren't fit for public consumption. We had a ton of fun, but I think choosing to wait until 5e was a great idea.

I had begun the blog at the start of 5e, and was spewing forth years and years of pent-up ideas. Everything from goofy D&D stories to whacked-out theories.

During 4e, I had worked out a system for preparing adventures. It involved hand-written notes, both on paper and on the margins of printed-out 4e adventures. Over the span of 2007 to 2013, I had perfected the art of DM preparation, at least for myself.

I realized that the blog was, at the very least, a place to keep all my prep work in a fairly easy-to-find format. I also realized that my DM prep stuff would probably be very useful for new DMs as well. So I sat down and started work on the Guide to Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

It was and still is very popular, and over time, I became known for my guides. I even put them on the DMs Guild, and I now make a living off of this stuff!

It was Tyranny that got the ball rolling for me.

The Campaign

I wrote so much about this campaign, in detail, and I guess there's no need to rehash it.

But, 5 years later, I can say that what I liked about the campaign was running for kids who genuinely enjoyed the adventure. I was very proud of how well-behaved they were, and I marveled at how they respected one another and figured out the rules on their own.

People seem to bash the younger generation quite a bit online. This bothers me. Kids were much worse when I was growing up! It's not even close.

My kids were awesome D&D players. They showed up every week, they paid attention, they never looked at their phones. They were funny and they worked as a team. Heck, one of them even did drawings for me!

We plowed through Tyranny with gusto. When my group was literally fighting Tiamat, the table next to us was still slogging through the endless caravan ride in Chapter 4. They were a great group and I'm really glad we got through the whole campaign.

Overall: So, is this book worth buying? I'd say yes. The adventure is good, but you will need to do a lot of work to keep it running smoothly. It was certainly worth doing, in my experience.

Now, with a more expanded version of the city of Waterdeep available in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, you could really flesh out the council and give greater detail to the group's time in that city. I believe there are a few Tyranny encounters set in Waterdeep that you could merge with some of the Dragon Heist detailed locations and NPCs.

Personally, this special edition of Tyranny of Dragons is more of a trophy than a gaming tool. This book represents an absolutely phenomenal stretch of 5 years both for D&D as a whole, and for me as a person.