RPG Review: Tyranny of Dragons

Tyranny of Dragons was the biggest campaign I’ve ever ran; not only in the number of character levels, but also in the sheer number of players.

Picture this: it’s 2014, and I’m running D&D for the FLGS I’m working at. I was getting paid to run D&D, and when we finished up Lost Mines of Phandelver with 6 players, we had a bunch more players interested in playing, but no one wanted to DM. I’d like to think that they all just wanted so badly to play at my feet, but I think we just didn’t have anyone confident enough to run the new 5e. I ended up with 12-15 players sitting at my table. It was an absolute blast. But I’ll have to talk about that later, because today, we’re looking at the new rerelease of Tyranny of Dragons, which you can pick up at your FLGS today.

Tyranny of Dragons has been published in celebration of the 5th anniversary of 5th Edition, with a brand new cover by Hydro74. The book merges the two adventures Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat into one large book. And large it is. This one’s thicker than previous books, at 224 pages printed on the thicker, non-glossy paper the first two books were released with, perfect for writing your notes in the margins.

The adventure takes players from 1st through 15th level and recommends milestone advancement. The heroes are thrown into a city in flames as an army bolstered by an adult blue dragon raids the city. The heroes’ journey will take them across the Sword Coast, until they finally confront the Queen of Ultimate Evil herself, Tiamat. Along the way, they’ll venture into a cloud giant’s flying castle, meet the Masked Lords of Waterdeep, and encounter a whole host of dragons defending their goddess.

One major change to the book is they’ve reworked chapter 1 a bit, making things a bit clearer, and advancing them to 2nd level as soon as they reach the keep. I was expecting the whole chapter to be completely reworked, but I recommend checking out Sly Flourish’s old breakdown of chapter 1 (and frankly every chapter breakdown for the adventure.) If you’re running the adventure, I recommend really going over this chapter a few times and making notes before running it.

One problem that some people had with Horde of the Dragon Queen was the long caravan ride that takes place right in the middle of it, but I really enjoyed running that part. There are all kinds of NPCs you can meet along the way, and lots of little adventures you can run as they travel. It also makes for a good chance to introduce your own side adventures if you want as well. The climactic conclusion to Horde, where you take to a massive castle in the sky, is a fantastic end to the adventure.

The book didn’t fully merge the adventures, so Horde of the Dragon Queen has a definite ending before launching into Rise of Tiamat, so if you only want to play the second half starting at 8th level, you can do so. Rise of Tiamat involves rallying the Sword Coast to confront the forces of Tiamat. Given tasks by the Council of Waterdeep, this part of the campaign is pretty open-ended, giving you lots of missions you can accomplish. While some are much tougher than others to provide a challenge as you level up, you don’t have to accomplish them all in order, so it feels to the players like they have a ton of freedom to do whatever they’d like. Rallying metallic dragons to your cause, hunting for green dragons in the swamplands and more are all options to weaken Tiamat and her forces.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the adventure. Back when I was running it five years ago, it felt like I was running a new classic, and it feels the same now. Tyranny of Dragons has a fantastic arc, making the characters feel like they’re really saving the world, getting to face off against one of the greatest villains in D&D history. And the final confrontation feels truly epic. Tiamat is statted up here, and at CR 30, is an impossible task for even the 12 15th level players I had at my table. Tiamat’s powers and HP are weakened by accomplishing various goals in the campaign, so you work off a checklist to see exactly how weak she’s become.

The back of the book is full of gorgeous concept art which wasn’t there before. You can see the rankings of the Cult of the Dragon Queen as well as their factions. The art for the various kinds of dragons is beautiful, and it’s nice to see all the Dragon Helms laid out, which I had to sort of make up the appearance of on the fly when I was running before. I hope to see all this concept art released by WotC as individual images so I can put these out on the table for my players when I rerun this. I was looking for an adventure to run for my son and his friends, and I think I’ve found it.

Tyranny of Dragons is a fantastic adventure that feels like a fresh classic. I imagine players 20 years from now talking about the adventures they had battling Tiamat’s forces just like older players today talk about the classic 1st edition adventures they played in.

WotC provided a copy of Tyranny of Dragons to Dice Monkey for review.

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