Dragon Delves — Ten dragons for ten adventures

Dungeons & Dragons games of the past might have had a whole lot more dungeons and dragons than they do now, although who knows for sure what’s actually happening at all the gaming tables around the world. I know that at my gaming table, the games have evolved enough that a dragon is a rare sight. In fact, one of my groups’ encounters with a juvenile red dragon – in a dungeon no less – in an adventure that took place well over a decade ago stands out in my memory. The group talked about it for weeks after the fact and I struggled for a while to keep the rest of the campaign as exciting as that one dragon encounter. That’s how influential a dragon can be to a Dungeons and Dragons game. While Wizards of the Coast has published the dragon-themed adventures Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat (and a few shorter ones), they’ve given us a new one to sink our fangs into: Dragon Delves.

Dragon Delves is an adventure anthology similar to Tales from the Yawning Portal. Each of the ten adventures in the book revolves around one of the ten standard types of dragons in the D&D universe. It comes with two covers, like most D&D 5e books. Artist Greg Staples provides the standard cover with a beautiful array of five chromatic dragons towering over a trio of adventurers. It’s an excellent painting that clearly shows the features of chromatic dragons. The alternate cover, by artist Justine Jones, centers on a psychedelic purply red dragon framed by stylized dragons and crowned by a dragon eye above the book title. Both covers are well done, and they fit right in with the other covers in this edition.

This anthology is designed to be played as a campaign that would take player characters from first level to twelfth. There are several options presented in the book for running the adventures as a campaign. There’s the fairly standard patron that sends the characters on the adventures for their own mysterious purposes, an option of searching for specific treasures in the various dragon hoards, and an option that ties in directly with one of the adventures involving carrying a dragon egg from hoard to hoard. Any of these options are fine, but except for the additional structure provided by the campaign suggestion for moving the egg around, none of the adventures in the book are related to each other. They all take place in different locations, they are all setting agnostic, and they all can be used as a one-shot or dropped into an ongoing campaign. Overall, it’s a pretty flexible setup, although I’d say that the campaign options feel tacked on. Dungeon masters may want to look into the Tyranny of Dragons boxed set for a better campaign option involving dragons.

While all of the adventures are playable by a standard-sized D&D group, say four to six characters, there are three that can be soloed, which is a nice option for those tiny two-person groups out there. The introduction to the book gives DMs the information that they need to toughen up a character in order to make it more likely that they will successfully take on the solo adventures including a Supernatural gift, the Blessing of the Lone Champion, which gives the character Heroic Inspiration and Temporary Hit Points for the duration. The adventures that can be soloed also come with some additional guidance for the DMs specific to that adventure.

Wizards has made some changes to the formatting and structure of the adventures which improves the usability for the DM. Starting with a call out right under the adventure title letting you know what level the adventure is for and how many sessions it is designed to take. That is useful information, and I love having it right up front. I like the fact that they say that the adventure is “designed” to fill a certain number of sessions. I think that there will be wildly varying results on that estimate, since every group plays at their own pace. My groups have been historically slow to get through everything, so I’d easily double or even triple those estimates, but at least you start out with an idea of what the designers were expecting. Plus, all but one say that they are designed for “one or two sessions of play” and the oddball is for “three or four”. That means they estimate you can run a group from first to twelfth through ten adventures in twelve to twenty-two play sessions. The next entry in each adventure is a Key Plot Points section that provides a very brief overview of the main things that should happen in the adventure. That’s followed by a Preparation section that provides DMs with a step-by-step list of how to prepare to run the adventure. The last step is a list of which stat blocks you will need from the Monster Manual during the adventure.

Next is the Key NPCs section, which lists NPCs that are important to the story in table format. You are told the NPC’s name, their role in the adventure, which Monster Manual stat block to use and the location they can be found in in the adventure. The Adventure Background section that comes next frames the adventure for the DM, providing the setting and the important events, characters, and things that have led to the current situation. Finally, Beginning the Adventure leads the DM through getting the characters involved in the adventure. While the Adventure Background and Adventure Summary (Key Plot Points here) are features that have been in Wizard’s published adventures, the order and way they are presented just feels more functional in Dragon Delves. These formatting changes really work for me.

Another big change in Dragon Delves is the lack of stat blocks. Seriously, there aren’t any stat blocks in the book. Every monster in the book is referenced to a stat block in the Monster Manual. There is no appendix in the back with new monsters. This seems to be a departure from previous published adventures, which provided a steady trickle of new stat blocks into the game. The lack of stat blocks actually helps clean up the presentation of the adventure. You don’t have a stat block in the middle of the adventure text and you don’t have to flip back to an appendix while also grabbing your Monster Manual (or clicking through D&D Beyond).

Speaking of referencing other books, Dragon Delves gives us an opportunity to see how backwards compatible the post-2024 update publications really are. According to Wizards, players that stuck with their 2014 rules will be able to play new material. That appears to be true, but there is going to be some work that comes with that. If you are trying to run this post-2024 adventure with 2014 core rulebooks, you will need to account for name changes to some monsters. That’s not too bad, because the new Monster Manual has a table in it to tell you how things are converted… however, if you didn’t convert, you don’t have that book, therefore you will have to find that list elsewhere. For instance, in the adventure The Forbidden Vale, one of the NPCs is a Tough Boss. For someone with a 2014 Monster Manual, they will have to figure out somehow that the stat block equivalent in their book is the Orc War Chief.

As each adventure in the book is focused on one of the ten dragon types, each of the adventures is preceded by a “History of…” section that focuses on the artwork over time of the dragon type that is in the following adventure. A brief paragraph introduces each section, pointing out some distinguishing features, then about six pages of artwork ranging back to the 1970s show the way the dragons have developed – and stayed the same – over the last fifty years. They even have Magic: The Gathering cards that feature the D&D dragons. Each one is a nice retrospective and probably a good opportunity for new players to see some of the artwork that older players were able to appreciate years ago.

When it comes to the content of the adventures, I am impressed. Without going into any details on the adventures themselves, I can say that they are well constructed and make sense. Each one has a premise that the players can follow and the interactions between the characters and the NPCs are logical. One thing that stands out to me is that the red and gold dragons are not for high-level adventures, you get the gold very early on. So, as you can imagine, at these levels, the dragons are mostly juvenile and young, but those are still some dangerous foes. But that’s ok, because the adventures aren’t just about killing the dragons. I suppose that makes sense with the inclusion of the metallic dragons (which are traditionally good), but just because a dragon is metallic, it doesn’t necessarily mean it cannot be the adversary in an adventure. And, as any experienced DM should know, players often resolve differences with adversaries in violent ways. But if they aren’t too hot-headed, the players should be able to solve a lot of these adventures without killing everything.

So, here we have a collection of adventures that have pretty solid hooks, interesting characters, and multiple ways to resolve the adventure. Their generic, non-setting-specific locations are perfect for dropping into a random campaign and the variety of how the dragon factors into the adventure means you can use multiples of these without issue. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why a campaign based solely on the adventures in Dragon Delves is workable – it’s not just killing ten dragons in a row. There are mysteries to solve, arguments to resolve, power struggles and magical frost giant tattoos. Plenty of the adventures can be resolved with the dragons still alive and, if they are lucky, the players characters too. The characters and concepts that each adventure has are well thought out and the focus with these adventures is broad enough to keep things fresh through multiple adventures. The dragons fit well into the stories of the adventures, even when the driving purpose of the characters is only tangentially related to the dragons, they still fit in well. There is not an adventure in here that I didn’t like – although there is one that leans heavily into the Hansel and Gretel fairytale that may play better with groups and settings that are more whimsical and Feywild oriented… it could fit in well in the Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

Wizards continues to maintain their artwork standards, both in the retrospective history sections with old artwork revisited, and in the new art commissioned for this book. Each adventure appears to have been illustrated by a different artist, and they are all up to the task. While not every style was to my taste, there is no denying the talent that Wizards has been able to bring to bear. The endpapers just inside the covers of the book are decorated with top-down silhouettes of all ten dragon types, giving probably the best view so far of the new gold dragon design. The maps throughout the book are well done, clearly illustrating what the DM needs to know. Although one map of a village is pretty small, making its usefulness questionable. On D&D Beyond, some maps come in DM and player versions for ease of sharing with players, which is probably the best feature of the online version.

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