Wizards of the Coast

It's not perfect, but it's very, very good.

This adventure is the best I've seen from Wizards of the Coast in terms of DM ease-of-use. I'm coming to this from Princes of the Apocalypse, which is a royal mess, and this is a breath of fresh air. While PotA requires massive amounts of page flipping simply to find the basic storyline and What's Happening, Dragon Heist instead includes everything the DM needs to know up front. If you're good at improvisation at the table, you truly could read the first chapter to get the main ideas and invent the rest on the fly.

That being said, there is plenty here to run with and you won't run out of content. The adventure is presented flexibly enough that you can modify it on the fly, but with enough information that you don't have to.

You like flowcharts? There are flowcharts.

Encounter maps? Lots of those (older style, not like the Mike Schley maps you might be used to if you've only played hardcover 5e adventures).

Encounter variety? Check.

Factions are useful, relevant and interesting; NPCs have personalities and motivations (though modern politics seeps its way into them); players have freedom to explore; villains are interesting; and the adventure is highly replayable.

Finally, you get Waterdeep. The City of Splendors. Personally, I'm coming to the adventure with very little prior lore knowledge. But there's enough background information presented here that I can see it being quite easy to make the city real and unique at the table.

In all, it's an introductory adventure that contains an incredible amount of useful and easy-to-use information for the DM. If your players are interested in an urban intrigue roleplay-heavy campaign, give it a shot.… (mere)

My SO and I bought this so we could do a 2 player game because we missed playing and aren't sure when we'll be able to play with our group again. We've been playing for 3 years, but neither of us has ever DMed. My SO is the DM and said the adventure left a lot open to add details to the story and customize to the PC's backstory. The rulebook only has the common races and a few classes and subclasses, but you can play any.
I'm playing a Dwarf Forge Domain Cleric (from [b:Xanathar's Guide to Everything|35378941|Xanathar's Guide to Everything (Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition)|Wizards of the Coast|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501465919l/35378941._SX50_.jpg|56737486] )… (mere)