The first thing to notice is the fact that this adventure was "farmed out". Wizards employees did not write this. It was handed off to Kobold Press authors Wolfgang Baur and Steve Winter.
Steve Winter is a guy who had been involved with D&D for eons. He worked on Star Frontiers, the 1983 World of Greyhawk boxed set, and even the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game. I love the color chart system.
It is fascinating to me that Wizards' new approach is to go to big name "outsiders" to make their adventure stuff. Did they consider having Paizo write an adventure path for 5e? How insanely awesome would that be? Would Wizards of the Coast ask Monte Cook Games to write an adventure? Imagine that - 5e adventures written by Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell. That would be epic.
Downtime is a new concept for this edition. It is an abstract way to handle stuff the PCs do in town in a simple, swift fashion. You could run this and hand-wave the days in town, or if your players like, you could play it out and you will probably end up with some interesting stuff.
Downtime is discussed on page 68 of the basic rules. Here are the things you can do:
Crafting: If you have artisan tools, you can make one or more items worth up to 5 gold per day, expending raw material worth half of its' value. So, you spend 2.5 gold to make a 5 gold item. You can take days and months to make a single valuable item, like plate mail. It costs 1500 gp, so you'd pay 750 gp and take 300 days to make it.
There are rules on having other people help you with crafting, making the time speed up. Immediately I wonder if it is allowed to have a bunch of NPC allies do it for you. It is things like this that probably caused Shawn Merwin to write this blog post about players who try to "break the game".
Recuperating: After 3 days of downtime, make a DC 15 CON save. Make it, and you can do one of two things:
1. End an effect that prevents you from gaining hit points. Judging from Dead in Thay, there are a ton of monsters that reduce your maximum hit points. This will probably come up fairly often.
2. Gain advantage on saving throws versus one disease or poison currently affecting you.
Research: This is all pretty much determined by the DM. Each day of research costs you 1 gp.
Train: Learn a language or train with tools. Find an instructor and then spend... 250 days and 250 gold. Wow! I like this, as it makes campaigns take years and years in game, and provides opportunities for the characters to get into hijinks in the city during the months they are spending downtime.
How odd is this: at the end of each "episode" of this adventure, the PCs are awarded 10 downtime days, which "can be spent immediately or saved for later use". So.. some PCs spend 10 days making armor, and others spend none doing nothing?
Remember, DMs, you may hear this classic refrain come from your players' lips: "It's not fair". Resist the urge to remind them that they are getting emotional about numbers on a piece of paper in an elaborate game of Cops and Robbers while people all over the world are struggling to find food and a safe place to sleep each day. Do not, under any circumstance, scream at them "Life is not fair!", partly because you will look like a psycho, but mainly because it will not sink in. That's the 20% of your player pool you just have to make the best of.
Now we get into the DM stuff. If you are a player, there's spoilers in here. Don't ruin your own fun. If you want to read about more player stuff, check out my run-down of the player's guide here.
The Cult' and its' dragons are now attacking places to get the masks and to assemble a treasure hoard worthy of Tiamat. That's pretty cool.
Episode 1: Greenest in Flames
The whole adventure starts off with a bang. The heroes are heading to a town called Greenest, which is under attack by a blue dragon and the cult!
This is such a radical departure from previous seasons. I kind of wonder if newer DMs will be able to roll with this.
This whole scenario is pretty awesome. The heroes help defend the town and even have to drive off the blue dragon (once it takes 24 damage it flies off - it will probably take down a PC or two before that).
Episode 2: Raiders' Camp
I am a little concerned here. I am, in theory, supposed to get an entire session out of the heroes coming upon a camp with 8 kobolds and 4 humans. There is tension between the camps, and they eat their meals in separate areas. From what I can see, the idea is that the PCs can deal with each faction separately.
This looks like two quick fights. Though my group does tend to get much less done than I expect, normally.
Once the heroes deal with that encounter and one other one involving the rear guard, our heroes come upon the dragon forces' main camp. Creeping around the enemy camp isn't hard, but if they are recognized, the PCs will be outnumbered. There's about 180 cultists there total.. not exactly a place that the adventurers can just attack (I am dreading/excited about what Hack and Slash Guy will do here).
The camp is pretty cool. I think wizards is doing a great job delivering interesting, "pure" fantasy scenarios for their published adventures. Nothing too out there, just classic fleshed-out fantasy tropes.
Episode 3: Dragon Hatchery
The more I read this, the more I am thinking I will just run it freely and let the players accomplish whatever they can in the 2 hour time frame. I plan on continuing through the rest of Horde of the Dragon Queen at the end of the season, so what's the difference?
Although, I imagine that means we won't have item certificates and it won't be as "official". Maybe I'll ask the group if they want to keep going, or if they want to jump into whatever scenario is next for D&D Encounters.
There are some cool traps in this place. The eggs are black dragon eggs. "If an egg is simply cracked open, the infant dragon struggles for breath, cries and squirms like a human baby for a few minutes, and then dies." That's, uhh... let's just back away slowly and close the door on that little scenario.
The whole thing is pretty awesome. I like that the first adventure for the new edition features dragons, as well as a dungeon. Tiamat is one of the most awesome D&D villains. Overall, it feels like they are getting off on the right foot.