Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage REVIEW

tabletop RPG campaigns often follow a certain formula kind of an equal balance of things like wilderness exploration visiting towns and cities and of course delving the odd dungeon but what if the entire campaign actually took place in a single dungeon this is of course the idea behind the concept of the mega dungeon and here in water deep dungeon of the mad mage fifth edition has its first true mega dungeon let's take a look welcome to WASD 20 my name is Nate and today we are going to be taking a look at dungeon of the mad mage this is going to be a review we'll be taking a pretty in-depth look and then I'll be sharing my thoughts throughout this video is patron fueled I want to thank these awesome patrons so much for their support you can learn more at patreon.com slash WASD 20 alright so in the first few minutes of the review I'm going to do my best to try to keep it spoiler free and pretty vague for all of you potential players of dungeon of the mad mage out there then at some point in the first few minutes I will give the know players beyond this point warning and you better heed that warning players cuz we're gonna get pretty in-depth and actually look at some of the pages of the book some of the maps and things like that but first the spoiler free review this book is really good alright I'll give you a little bit more detail than that this is a level 5 through 20 adventure now you might remember that Waterdeep dragon heist took players levels 1 through 5 and so this is the natural continuing off point for that of course both of these books take place in water deep so there's just a natural fit these books are meant to go together but in some ways the fit might not be so natural first off you might remember that dragon heist is a heavily urban adventure in which combat is featured however the players are gonna have to use their noggin seriously in this one and they're often going to have to talk their way out of sticky situations make alliances rather than just fight their way through dungeon of the mad mage on the other hand is a huge gigantic dungeon crawl where combat is going to be much more heavily featured however there are actually some more similarities than you might I think there is a fair amount of combat in dragon highs and I think you can really benefit from using your head in any dungeon crawl and you can make alliances and talk your way out of certain situations as well still the book is in fact a mega dungeon almost the entire thing is just one dungeon levels 1 through 20 roughly of a dungeon so it's huge it's it's a lot it's a full campaign and it's actually I think the page wise the biggest adventure module for 5th edition yet so if you had any complaints about the scant quantity of adventure in Dragon heist you will have no such complaints about this book right here you're getting a lot of bang for your buck in this thing to give you a feel for the story in this one I'm just gonna read the back of the book it's pretty vague and spoiler free just very general so here it goes in the city of Waterdeep rests a tavern called the yawning portal named after the gaping pit in its common room at the bottom of this crumbling shaft is a labyrinth in dungeon shunned by all but the most daring adventurers known as under mountain this dungeon is the domain of the mad wizard Hollister black cloak long has the mad mage dwelled in these forlorn depths seating his lair with monsters traps and mysteries to what end that question is a constant source of speculation and concern and he goes on a little bit from there so really this is a recreation in the fifth edition treatment of the classic mega dungeon under mountain that has been around I think since the early 90s in various iterations getting back to water deep dragon heist there's really not much in terms of story continuation between the two so you can easily jump in at this point and you can pretty easily make some connections if you've played dragon heist I think it would have been nice to have another page or two just saying how you can connect the two a little bit more there's really surprisingly little of that in here but some things that you are going to notice is some familiar NPCs Durnan and the yawning portal of course will be featured heavily in both the zenith our guild will definitely be heavily featured in both so there are some natural connections there some recurring NPCs your players are likely to find but in terms of the overall story continuation and there's very little it's really up to the dungeon master to make those connections and I think there are some fairly easy ways to do it I've heard of other people saying that they're going to run their players through lost mine offend elver first and then go into water deep dungeon of the mad mage and I think that's a fine option as well or you can just roll up some fifth level characters and start with this book I think that's totally fine so getting back to the notion of story there's really a very thin overarching narrative in this book there's really not much there that's one thing that definitely sets it apart from some of the previous adventure modules for fifth edition it's a mega dungeon and each level of the dungeon has kind of its own little story and certainly there's the story of the mad mage there's some ideas in the beginning of the book for what the mad mages motivation might be and for why he might allow the players into this dungeon and there's several options for you to choose from and of course because he's insane you can change those reasons at any point they encourage you to do that so the book really has no qualms about being just one big dungeon there's a lot of good story here there's a lot of really interesting things that take you far beyond just hack and slash but it is one big dungeon and an overarching complex narrative is really not present it's going to be up to the dungeon master and the players to try to figure out why the players are even delving this dungeon in the first place and you know if we go back to old-school D&D you don't really have to do that I guess why do the players want to do this because it's a dungeon because there's treasure because killing things is fun and that really is a callback to an older style of play in Dungeons and Dragons that I think is refreshing I think some people are really gonna like that and they're really gonna have a whole lot of fun with that okay I think that's probably enough for you players so players turn away and Dungeon Master's stick around as we take a bit more of an in-depth look and crack this thing open so here we are actually looking at the book the cover does feature Pallister the mad mage as well as some drow gift and a mind flare and it looks like a gigantic beholder skull there the back of the book has a dragon here as well pretty standard in terms of the cover and everything I really love this art of Hollister here looks absolutely insane all these papers flying around them you can see that the binding of my book is exposed a little bit here I'm not sure if I was just a little too rough on it or if that's an issue with others overall I would say that the art in the book is decent I like some pieces more than others I happen to really like this one there's not much by way of like full-page art in this book and overall there's a lot less art than normal the focus is on cramming as much dungeon content into this book as possible and a little bit less on the art but you can see in the table of contents here that level one starts on page 13 and level 23 takes you all the way to 302 so I was wrong there's not 20 levels there's 23 levels there is also a section here on skull port here on page 303 so this is an actual underground city I think it was featured briefly in Dragon heist as well but I don't think they had much location information like they have here so there are a couple ways to access it you can see it's connected to the level 3 of under mountain but there's actually a skull island here which it looks like there's some monsters in there uh-60 bug bear I'm near sixty bugbears 12 gargoyles etc etc and yeah there's a couple of other maps here so it acts as a nice place for the PCs to explore and kind of take a break from the regular dungeon delving there's actually some locations where they can restock and get some R&R so I think that's a really nice inclusion as well you have appendices here we have dungeon denizens an elder runes deck and a secrets deck these are basically like little cards that you can photocopy and cut out please don't cut them out of your book it hurts me to think about that this is a dungeon key which I definitely found myself looking at you're gonna want to get to know these symbols because the dungeons are extremely complex and absolutely huge some tips for running the adventures the different levels here when we say this is a huge mega dungeon we're not just talking about many levels of an underground prison or even natural caverns and all this stuff there is a lot of complexity and variety within each dungeon for example the players could visit city of skull port there's swampy levels a maze level here there's an obstacle course see deeps there's all kinds of interesting things there's even like a an arcane college oh yeah the arcane chambers there so it's basically like a school so there's all sorts of interesting levels and it is cool that there's a lot of variety while it may all be one big dungeon perhaps in practical reality it's really not that different from a typical adventure module you've got this familiar crew here this little group of kids screwing around like they were in the dragon heist book dungeon history the yawning portal adventure hooks and so yeah you've got these starter quests and they also give you some future quests and they kind of tell you what level these would be so these seem like they're optional things probably that players could encounter at certain levels from certain NPCs here's Volvo Volo theft get armed himself and that one and of course Durnan is heavily featured as well the patron of the awning portal there's under mountain secrets a little bit how magic work seems like they may have put some of the magic stuff in here just to keep it a little bit more difficult to break the game but here are the Hollister's goals I was talking about so there's several different goals he could have or multiple goals and there's also some thoughts on you know why he might be allowing the players to be here now the elder runes are kind of an interesting aspect throughout the players will discover certain portals and the elder runes have certain magical effects and it's kind of up to the role of a die I think whether it will be a bane or a boon so those are really interesting I like those there's also ways in which the players can find out secrets of Waterdeep and they can pull a card from the secret deck so that's also pretty cool I am NOT gonna go through this whole book but I want to give you a feel for some of the levels now first off the maps I don't really like the maps all that much perhaps it wasn't necessary compromise just because there's 23 of them 23 plus I should say and for one artist to do all those maps might just not have fit the timeline so they went with a pretty simple style the artist who did these clearly you know made them on a computer and it doesn't look like they took all that long that said I think the advantage of this style is clarity there are they are very large and complex dungeons and in this style everything is very clear if you had a bit more of a hand-painted style like like a Mike Schley or a Jared Blanda style I think that that wouldn't read very well when you're this zoomed out you would have to have a lot more of them the symbols that do provide a lot of clarity could be lost so while I not a big fan of them I understand it probably is necessary and for the greater good to have maps like this I kind of wonder how the dragon high style maps from Dyson would have looked in this style I think I probably would have preferred that which is also a pretty simple easy to read style but anyway it is what it is one square is 10 feet here so this is an absolutely gigantic level of a dungeon in each chapter they give you what dwells here The Undertaker's and the Zanna thar guild are two kind of groups that dwell here and then of course you also have wandering monsters so these can be encountered as a dungeon master sees fit or they can roll for random encounters and these are some things the players are likely to find and then you get into the various sections here so section 1 2 and of course you're gonna want to find where these are on the map it would definitely be a lot of work to run an adventure like this there's just a lot to read one interesting thing that I noticed is that they didn't use any like description boxes the breakout boxes like they have in other books and I would really like that it just makes it a lot easier especially as it's hard to read enough to know where your players are gonna go in a given session and it just seems like it would be a challenge to really quick say alright hold on guys let me read this so I can figure out what I can tell you that said players might be encountering things from different angles and maybe different things are there depending on what they did in the previous room of the dungeon and so it might be a bit tricky to provide that boilerplate description that would fit all groups so really huge dungeons I can't think of a dungeon I've seen in any of the other books that is as big as this and this is just one level I might be wrong I don't own all the D&D 5th edition modules but the point is it's huge so this is all here part of level 1 and then you get to level 2 now one thing you might have noticed is there's very little by way of art and in here I would have loved to see more art but again the focus is the dungeon so you have your art piece in the very beginning here not a huge fan of that piece and then you've got your map and then you've got like I don't know 10 pages or so with absolutely no art now you do have some chapters that have a bit more art in the middle of chapters but they're few and far between really some of the dungeon levels are only going to be 4 or 5 pages but most of them are I would say are about 10 to 12 there's some art mid chapter so I'll show you a few more of the maps here as well you can see that this one we're looking at right here has many more natural caverns this is level 19 we'll keep flipping through here and see if we can find some others level 16 the crystal labyrinth here you see has kind of two different levels one of them is the star dock so yeah you're getting a bit more unique in some of these this one here is pretty standard it's got some manufactured corridors but then also has some natural and that's pretty common on a lot of the levels here this one right here is called tour brianne's graveyard another unique thing about this is at points you've got kind of dungeons within dungeons and in various locations within dungeons this one right here is actually a settlement and then you've got the maze over here this one here is much more natural caverns that's a huge one right there this is a great example of the dungeon with in a dungeon idea basically there's this miniature Castle here that the players will shrink when they enter into it's called mad Goths castle and it's actually a throwback to a previous adventure that was not a part of under mountain I don't think but that they brought into it because it's just really cool there's this castle in the middle of this dungeon level and the players will and enter right in so we could talk now a bit more about what you can expect in this book first off you can expect a lot of variety in each level of the dungeon as I've already mentioned you can expect a lot of different factions on a lot of politics on each level different stories you know the backstory of certain monsters or NPCs will play prominently and the players will be discovering not just treasure and creatures to kill but some really interesting stories throughout there's also all kinds of interesting magic items some of them are really powerful magic items others are totally ridiculous like there's one I think there is a staff in level 1 or 2 that the players can men they can sense some magic and if they amend the staff it's broken then it laughs maniacally or no no it says help help help me and then it and then it breaks and it's it's just magic gone forever so there's some really just kind of ridiculous and quirky things like that or really really powerful magic items - there's also a lot of puzzles a lot of traps and all these things that you would expect in a really good dungeon that the team here has really lovingly crafted this dungeon there is so much attention to detail so many interesting little quirks and politics and stories within one dungeon a wide variety of environments and one of the coolest things is I think that this book will be extremely useful for me even though I'll probably never run the entire dungeon if I have a level 6 party I can pull out a level of this dungeon that is appropriate and I can throw that into my game in my game world as a totally different dungeon each one can kind of act as its own standalone dungeon there are fingerprints of the mad mage throughout for sure but you can also take an individual dungeon level and strip it of any mad mage business and just run it on on its own and it can still be really really good with some interesting stories so well I don't think this book is for everyone you know a mega dungeon simply does not fit everyone's style of play but if you are up for it and if you can see using even parts of it I would recommend getting it personally I will probably have an under mountain in my game world and it'll be something where the players don't have to go there but it is there waiting for them if they choose to and sometimes here and there they might have to delve to another it can just be something that's there for the dungeon master to use if they need a location for something to be hidden or something to be deeply buried or something the players need to get or the players can just decide you know what we need more treasure they're saving up for something and they need large quantities of treasure or they've got some downtime and they just want to go kill some things so Wow I really like this book and I do recommend it you know I think there are some problems and I think I've already mentioned most of them I do wish there was more art in this book I do wish that the dungeon map style wasn't quite so plain and I do wish they had a little bit more here for people who have played through dragon heist to help them connect this adventure to what they've already experienced so hopefully I've given you a pretty good feeling for whether or not this book is for you and if you do own this book I would really love to hear your thoughts on it down in the comments below the book is out now as of a couple days ago anywhere that you can normally buy your D&D products I have an Amazon affiliate link down in the video description and buying through those links is a really great way that you can support the channel so that's all for this one everybody thanks so much for joining me make sure you like if you enjoyed this video subscribe if you're not already subscribed and everybody take care you'll see me again very soon [Music]

Channel: WASD20

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Keywords: d&d, dungeons and dragons, dungeon of the mad mage, waterdeep, dungeon of the mad mage review, waterdeep review, dungeons & dragons, ravnica, dnd, 5th edition, dnd 5e review, 5e, chris perkins, jeremy crawford, wizards of the coast, halaster blackcloak, wasd20, review, tabletop rpg, fantasy, forgotten realms, ttrpg, role-playing

Id: 0Myg38ZnTxs

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 22 2018