The Rise of Tiamat: Why it Failed in Comparison to Hoard of the Dragon Queen

 Flaws in The Rise of Tiamat Campaign

The book right after the Hoard of the Dragon Queen is The Rise of Tiamat, which ties up the loose ends of where the adventure left off and allows you to have an epic confrontation with the dragon goddess herself. But there is one problem, the story to get there seemed erratic and displaced, tons of events not making much sense, and that is what needs to be discussed.

To begin The Rise of Tiamat the party is asked to head to the city of Waterdeep, supposed to be the largest city in the land, where the most rich and powerful nobles live to rule over the surrounding lands. The leaders of the world have asked the adventurers for their aid against the draconic threat due to their past quarrels with the cult. The council has scout who provide information about key figures in the dragon cult called wyrmspeakers, the ultimate figureheads of the cult, the ones who can supposedly control dragons. The council asks the party to track down each and every wyrmspeaker to deliver a swift and decisive plow to the cult's plans, if one of these wyrmspeakers were to perish in combat. Here lies the problem, whenever the party defeats any of these wyrmspeakers, it doesn't change anything, the cult still moves forward with the original plan, because their sacred artifacts, which are supposed to held by the wyrmspeakers, are already gone by the time the adventurer's finish up at each location. First of all, it is not rewarding to the players to go to a place, and every single time, not get what you were supposed to, and second of all, it would be a way more fun adventure if maybe you had a chase a wyrmspeaker with one of these artifacts that the cult so desperately needs. Only one of the times do the adventurer's need to have this moment of "oh no, the artifact is gone, we are in trouble" all the other times, let the fate of the dice decide if they will win in combat and claim their prize. I think another change they could have made was the diplomacy aspect of this book. The different nations of the world don't work well together, and you have to band them together against the common threat or else they won't work together very well. I think this is very dumb and does not make sense, the dragon cult is purging the world every day, everyone needs to work together or else everyone is going to die if they don't. I think a better interaction in this moment is for the party to ask for assets, magical artifacts, or even warriors of a specific nation to help the party against any certain wyrmspeaker, in order to show how these leaders are helping elsewhere while also doing their best to help the heroes. I think this little quality of life change could really help out the module and would be really fun to run in my own games.