Great adventure. I love the option to resolve conflicts by "talking it out" instead of having to resort to combat.

While I would have liked more maps than the quarentine zone one, they really aren't needed. This is a good mod for theater of the mind style of play, as any combat takes place in close quarters.

I love the gumshoe feel and lots of varible outcomes. I expect players to take a different direction each time I run..........................

I've run this twice now, as a fill-in AL adventure when we weren't otherwise expecting to run an adventure. Both parties loved the adventure! It is one of the better titles I've purchased on DM's Guild. The gritty feel of things is well-executed. The players really enjoyed the puzzles as well. It got them thinking beyond character stats and what spells to cast in combat. Well done!

I ran this for a group of experienced players as something light to give us a break from a very heavy storyline of our current campaign. It was a wonderful distraction, and very enjoyable adventure. Everyone enjoyed the noir detective vibes, and the investigation puzzles. I know my players are pretty good wargamers, so I altered some of the combats to have higher CR monsters that fit the story.

Which leads me to my only complaint of this adventure. It appears the design solution to make combat tougher is mostly to just add more monsters. While this would work, I don't feel it provides the most interesting possible combat situation.

All in all, this is a great adventure! I highly reccomend it for anyone looking for something urban, light, and fun!

I also had the honor of playing this adventure with Will Doyle at the Mtl ComicCon. The mood of the adventure is amazing, it made me feel immersed in one of my favorite movies (Dick Tracy), the intrigue is there from the go, and one of the things that made me love the adventure is that whenever combat ensues, it feels like its moving forward the story.

We missed the first cipher puzzle at the beginning, but its one of those things that the story doesn't stonewall you and lets you know that you missed something, we double cheked the handouts and one of our players solved it without the cipher.

Overall great adventure, I highly recommend it. Big Kudos to Will and Lysa for creating a great module.

Had the privilege of playing this at a convention in a game run by Will Doyle himself.

Great detective novel aesthetic, with a good amount of puzzles and intrigue. My group did seem to latch onto clues and solve the puzzles quite quickly, but we were still left guessing by the third part of the adventure. In any case, be aware that your players progress might be impeded if they get stuck on a puzzle or forget key information they found, so don't hesitate to give them a nudge.

I enjoyed that the adventure used some of the wackier aspects of the D&D world, but I recognise they could be jarring to new players.

Well worth your time. I can't wait to run it for my players.

Had the privilege of playing this at Montreal Comiccon with Will Doyle himself as DM.

Unlike other reviews I've read, our party was able to solve the puzzles fairly quickly; one of our players even solved the first cipher puzzle without the cipher! It might be that these puzzles are harder than your average ones though, so please keep that in mind and be ready to help your players out if needed with hints or pushing them in the right direction!

Overall I really enjoyed it, there were many tense moments with the NPCs and the intrigue kept up until the end!

I'll definitely be running this at others events!

Depite having some fun reading and running this, at the end of it, I can't really recommend this adventure whole-heartedly.

Let's start with the good points: The noir narration in place of box text was a perfect addition, the adventure does involve some twists and turns, but the core plot is very simple--two lovers have their faith shaken by betrayal-- and it allows for investment into the characters that don't have a lot screentime being a one-shot module. It's very well done from a flavor point of view.

That bad: The actual mechanics are a complete mess. The combat is a chore and not exciting at all--there was so much build up in terms of conflict, and you fight......thugs, a complete wasted opportunity. The puzzles are time wasters, the word search is one of the worst cases of puzzle design I have EVER seen. The ciphers are really cool--but the answers should be included, so that if the players figure it out (and don't want to spend 30 minutes figuring them all out), the DM can just give the other answers. The Mystery solves itself automatically, without any input from the players, which kind of defeats the purpose of the excellently built noir atmosphere. Never once did my players feel like they solved anything--they were just along for the ride. The rewards are completely useless--the archtypes are not just bad, they are unplayable. The rat king is only useful for urban scouting(because that's what I need from a ranger, URBAN scouting), and the druid revolves around killing people with poison/necrotic damage, so poison spray and blight, those are your only two choices. The archetypes were clearly design around flavor without any thought spared towards the actual mechanics of the game--classic poor game design.

A tragic module to be sure--it had so much potential--people were so exciting to see a waterdeep noir adventure, unfortunately the excitement pretty much ends there.

Probably the most fun I've had behind the screen, and I hope I have the chance to experience it as a player before long. This has me very excited for next season's books/adventures and seems like it'd be a great introductory adventure to Waterdeep for PCs going into them.

I have run this as a session in between SKT chapter 1 and 2 when my players wanted to visit Waterdeep on their way to Goldenfields.

It is really well made, and the authors also worked on the upcoming Waterdeep related official WotC adventures! For good reason, in my opinion.

Thanks for your work, I, as well as my players enjoyed every bit!

I changed that the Xanathar appearance was an illusion. Just because I think he/it would be too afraid to "openly" wander the streets. Also I added a secret back door in the secret room to some back alley.

I have run this module twice since it was made legal for Adventurer's League play. My players enjoy it immenesly! One thing that I liked about it is that you are presented the adjustments to the encounters at the beginning of the modules, so if a DM picks this up and needs to quick start, you already have an idea as to what you can add in thematically without having to slow down the game to do it later. I really enjoyed the supporting artwork of Will Doyle. You have just enough of the city to be able to present the module.

This adventure's protagonists were freaking awesome! While my plyers did not get to enjoy the plague doctor or rat king variants, I did have one player take the detective background and he loved it!

Great story! Great presentation. There's good balalnce of interaction, combat, and investigation.

The Rats of .Waterdeep is an excellent Adventures League Module. It has a very strong focus on mystery and solving the mystery is the primary focus of the advenyture. I think this is a nice change of pace and will be enjoyed by players looking for something different than a dungeon crawl, though there is enought combat to kep the "fighters" entertained.

Overall I rate this a top notch adventure

The Rats of Waterdeep is an absolutely fantastic adventure! It develops a rich and slightly silly setting, where characters explore the docks of Waterdeep as the city is beset by plague and literal monster gangsters stalk the streets. It occasionally veers a little too close to self-parody, but is just steeped in such a wonderful film noir flavor that I couldn't help but love it.

The Good:

• Extremely well-developed NPCs help to get the characters invested in the story of the adventure.
• The plot sets up a genuine mystery, and relies more on the players to deduce what's going on than their characters making good Investigation rolls.
• The adventure is chocked-full of handouts for the players to read, interact with and pour over. It's an absolutely fantastic production value.
• There's a really well-done romance subplot, which features some great writing and emotional stakes.

The Bad:

• The scaling in the "Adjusted the Adventure" section leaves a bit to be desired, and is mostly "add more monsters to make it tougher." This can lead to grindy encounters for characters above 1st level. I wound up cutting out a lot of the combat encounters, just to keep things moving quickly.
• During part of the investigation in Part 2: Trail of the Rat, there's a secret room with almost no reasonable way to access it. I needed to make adjustments on the fly to account for how certain NPCs could get in and out of the secret room.
• While the descriptions of areas provided by Watchmen Locks are great as read-alouds, it's very easy to miss certain key details which reveal clues for the players. The adventure really requires a careful read-through in order to make sure you catch all of the details so that the players can then pick up on things.
• The solutions to a few of the puzzle handouts appear not to work. While my players were able to find brute force solutions, it'd be nice to see updates to Security Hint #2 on Handout 5: Security Box Puzzles and Handout 3: Doc Ward's Papers.

The Best Moment:

• The eponymous "Rat Pox" which is afflicting the city may slowly begin turning your PCs into rats, one rodent-like feature at a time. There's nothing quite like seeing someone's face when you explain that they've suddenly developed a tail!

All in all, the Rats of Waterdeep is an exceptional adventure, which my PCs have thoroughly enjoyed and I cannot wait to run again.

I thoroughly enjoyed running this adventure. I ran it for a table that was half first-time players and half experienced players, and everyone had a great time.

There was plenty of roleplay, investigation and combat so that everyone got to try a bit of everything, and the group got drawn into the story quite easily.

With new players at the table, the adventure started running a little long, but it was super easy to customize on the fly, moving clues and encounters around, skipping some without missing anything crucial. This is, in large part, due to the organization of the adventure, and the modular nature of the encounters and locations.

I found the roleplay advice for the particular NPCs very helpful, and the noir-ish tone a refreshing break from the usual adventures.

Also, the artwork was beautiful and made for excellent printed handouts. I definitely plan to run this again.