The Rise of Tiamat

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

by Wizards of the Coast, Alexander Winter (Lead Designer), Steve Winter (Lead Designer)

Avert the Cataclysmic Return of Tiamat in this Adventure for the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game
 
The Cult of the Dragon leads the charge in an unholy crusade to bring Tiamat back to the Realms, and the situation grows more perilous for good people with each passing moment. The battle becomes increasingly political as opportunities to gather allies and gain advantage present themselves. From Waterdeep to the Sea of Moving Ice to Thay, it is a race against Evil. Succeed or succumb to the oppression of draconic tyranny. Win or lose, things will never be the same again.
 


• The second of two adventures in the Tyranny of Dragons™ story arc, The Rise of Tiamat provides everything a Dungeon Master needs to create an exciting and memorable adventure experience. 
• Fans of the Dungeons & Dragons® Roleplaying Game can get a sample of what this product has in store for them through the D&D Encounters™ in-store play program.
• Adventure design and development by Kobold Press.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Gaming, Forgotten Realms, Fiction, Reference

96 pages, Hardcover

First published November 4, 2014

About the author

Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]

Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.

Reviews

[Nadienne Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a much better continuation of the adventure previously detailed in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The writing is better, the story seems to flow better, and overall, it seems far more like an actual adventure rather than a "book of kind of interesting ideas."

If I have a criticism, it's that the chapters aren't really organized in a linear progression, but more by "topic." You will need to flip back and forth between them frequently as you run this adventure.

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second part (and conclusion) of the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, which was the first official campaign released for Dungeons & Dragons 5th ed. Like the majority of pre-made RPG adventures/campaigns it has a lot of good ideas but doesn’t really go that extra mile to make them great. Below are some of the things I liked and some of the things I didn’t. If I ever run this campaign, I’d have to do a lot of modifications to make it what I would consider a better experience. Warning, some spoilers follow!

The Good:
• An epic campaign idea with a suitably epic villain. A cult that’s trying to bring Tiamat into the world- great idea! We’re talking Lords of Rings villain-level danger to the world here.
• An evil so great and powerful that the Player Characters (PCs) will have to get various factions of Faerun to band together to stop it. These factions might not all get along and have different or opposing goals, which makes this a great opportunity for intrigue and social/political interaction. The campaign tries to address this by including rules where the PCs will have to negotiate, pledge favors, take actions for or to motivate various factions to join the cause. These actions are tracked on a chart where the PCs will earn points from factions toward gaining their support but can also lose points from factions for helping out, or going against the wishes of a faction.
• The adventure acknowledges that the Cult of the Dragon will try to stop the PCs when they become aware of the efforts made to stop/interfere in ritual to bring Tiamat into the world and PC death could (and likely will happen), though it downplays this traumatic potential by saying the PCs could just be brought back by Raise Dead magic, which while I agree with this possibility, I also think that not making the Cult escalate their efforts to deal with this contingency is a disservice to the campaign’s description of a the cult being a powerful organization that can strike the PCs anywhere and deal with them, but doesn’t deal with the known use of Raise Dead magic. I’m not suggesting TPKing the party every encounter, but only that encounters are played accordingly, if an encounter is supposed to be hard with potentially dire consequences, then that’s how it should be played and the PCs will (hopefully) adjust accordingly.
• The epic battle at the end where the attack on the Well of Dragons to stop the ritual is a grand opportunity for that big battle where the PCs can direct the forces they allied together. Tiamat’s stats are no joke and taking her on with just the party should prove to be a TPK. I like how the campaign stresses that Tiamat is a god and the importance is in weakening her power by accomplishing goals that disrupt her presence/power on in the world and not just treating her as just a high CR monster for the characters to fight.

The Bad:
• The council and the PCs’ efforts to get the factions to ally to the cause. Great idea, but the mechanism as presented in the campaign is not good, and a bit lazy in my opinion. I would go deeper with this section and have a limit on how many actions the PCs can attempt between every council meeting to gain allies to the cause. I would also go further and come up with the option for factions (other than the PCs) to take on quests to gain allies to the cause and have the PCs influence which faction takes on the endeavor, and then (prior to knowing who ends up going) coming up with which factions will succeed or fail if sent on these quests. To me this gives a better impression of a massive effort to deal with this threat, where the PCs are only one group amongst many trying to stop the plot. The campaign as written seems like everyone is sitting around while the PCs are running around doing everything. Make it a collaborative effort where the PCs are a faction of their own.
• The Giants are a potential faction to be recruited, but only given a couple short paragraphs on making this happen. It has been presented as a big deal regarding the Giants and Dragons having a huge ancient rivalry, but manifestation of a Dragon god in the world doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal to them. I would think the Giants would be very interested and involved and the campaign should have built up a decent encounter to reflect this.
• The lack of maps. The PCs travel to these different places, but we don’t get any maps to show where these places are in relation to other places. This could be valuable for visualization, setting up side encounters, rest stops etc.
• Why are there no rules for using the divination pool in the Tomb of Diderius? I know the campaign states that using the pool will probably require some bad stuff to activate its power, but depending on the PC’s motivations, alignments, etc., this might be an option they would want to explore for this campaign or for other campaign/personal quests going on.
• I didn’t care for the adventures dedicated to finding and confronting the two Wyrmspeakers, as they had no bearing on the ritual regardless of success or failure. I felt they were just filler and would have been better if modified as adventures to gain faction support or some other goal that would have hinder the Cult of the Dragon’s goals or weakened Tiamat when summoned.
• I wish there was some more guidance on final battle in regard to how the enemy forces would react to an attack on the Well of Dragons and a simple timeline of events that would occur for the ritual and an attack.

[Rúnar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a half-baked adventure at best. Picking up where Hoard of the Dragon Queen left off (another terrible adventure), this one takes you through a series of encounters with dragons and cultists, punctuated by political manoeuvring.

The last dungeon of the previous adventure was an ice cave featuring a white dragon. The first dungeon of this adventure is an ice cave featuring a white dragon. Two white dragons in a row is too many.

The MacGuffin in that dungeon is "the Draakhorn", but it is no longer there. This leaves the players feeling a bit cheated. But then the next two MacGuffins are also wild goose chases. The PCs are supposed to find some "dragon masks", but one of them is missing and the other one is a fake.

This module is full of setups without payoffs and payoffs without setups. As an example of the latter, one of the leaders of the cult of the dragon turns out to be the son of one of the minor NPCs. This is supposed to be a huge reveal. But it's an NPC the players don't care about at all, so it falls totally flat.

The overall adventure is structured in such a way that every chapter begins and ends with a Council Session, where the players try to gain the favour of an overwhelming number of NPCs. The idea is that for each NPC they get on the good side of, they get that NPC's faction to help in the final battle against Tiamat. But the last chapter is only something like 4 pages long, and there's no discussion of the exact in-game effects of having a faction on your side. Like if you get the good giants to join the fight, they engage the evil giants at the end. But if they don't, what happens? The final battle is incredibly scant on detail like this.

Several of the chapters are also just totally uninspired. There's a mission to Thay to gain an alliance with that country, but that chapter is very short and has almost no detail. Players will have no fun at all playing through that chapter. It's paper thin.

The character artwork in this book is also ugly. I can't show this stuff to my players and expect them to take this seriously.

All in all, this feels like reading somebody's half-baked campaign notes that they wrote while fully baked and high AF.

[Kiel Chenier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's my illustrated review of The Rise of Tiamat.

http://dungeonsdonuts.tumblr.com/post...

[Jorge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buena campaña de Dungeons and Dragons 5e, centrada en dragones. Desde que empecé a jugar tenia ganas de probar enemigos dragones(no por nada son una de las dos palabras que forman el nombre del juego) y aunque está muy bien si ese es tu proposito, como master he comprobado que los jugadores, siguiendo al pie de la letra la aventura y viendo que el enemigo va a ser un dragon practicamente alla a donde vayan, se blindan muy facilmente, asi que lo que tendria que ser un encuentro ominoso se vuelve algo rutinario. En cuanto a la trama, sin entrar en detalles, es bastante aburrida y he tenido que añadir cosecha propia para que no se vuelva monotona. Aun asi, como siempre, los mapas y puzzles están muy logrados, siendo desafiantes pero no imposibles. Le pongo 4 estrellas pero la nota que se merece son 3'5/5.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was alright. I honestly think these two books were a little too open-ended and vague at times, which might not have been the best for a group very new to the game (and a first-time DM).

I really just read it because I was curious if it was the DM making choices that made some things feel...off. Turns out no, it's just written awkwardly and the balance is deliberately brutal.

I also wanted to see what we could have done differently. In short: A lot. I think because of the brutality of it, it actually DIScouraged the party from being thorough. Particularly at the end, wanting to conserve our dwindling resources, we skipped at least 90% of the catacombs and just cut as quickly as we could to the caldera and Temple of Tiamat. In doing so, we missed the Draakhorn entirely.

Similarly, we killed the dude with the Mask, but in such a hectic battle in such an enormous arena where time is a factor and it takes several rounds to travel across it, we didn't spend any time at all once he was dead. As a result, Tiamat was not weakened by removing the mask from his corpse.

I do like the campaign concept and the idea of the episodes filling in a scoresheet tracking our relationships with various factions. I don't feel like that made any sort of difference in the end, unless I'm misreading the text, but it was a cool concept I plan to steal for future homebrew campaigns (although with much more explicit consequences and impacts, like being able to have the factions supporting you actually provide NPC allies or something rather than just giving you a pat on the back as you march to your inevitable demise).

I just think it could use a revision to tighten things up a bit. Leave an open decision tree, but perhaps provide a few more explicit cues along the way for the DM so the party can at least be nudged in the right direction (I guess the DM could do that themselves, but especially an inexperienced DM isn't going to deviate from the text). The perfect example is the Draakhorn at the end. There was no indication that there was anything to seek out in the catacombs other than a quick, covert entry to the caldera. Maybe if there was an explicit narration about how the party could hear the horn and it sounded like it was BEING BLOWN INSIDE THE COMPLEX that would be a clue to maybe take that out on the way in, given that it was such a big deal in the first episode but then never mentioned again when we didn't actually find it on the icebergs.

I feel like I want to run this (heavily modified) myself one day for another party, with those changes being aimed at better clarity and actually wanting to see the party have a fair chance at knowing how to set themselves up for success in the final battle.

I actually like that it presents failure as a likely outcome. That's ok! What's not ok is that, as a player, I don't feel like we knew how important preparation was beyond the usual training (leveling choices) and making sure we stocked up on potions and ammo. We had no idea we were potentially blowing past things we only had one chance at, like retrieving the Blue Dragon Mask at the tower (we did that, thankfully), or getting a nice arsenal of spell scrolls at the iceberg place.

There was no real hint that damaging the temple would disrupt the ritual; I even came within seconds of casting Earthquake to try to collapse a lava tube and cut off the reinforcements that were decimating us, which would have accidentally weakened Tiamat...nothing in the game, during or after the ritual, indicated that, it would have been pure happenstance.

Maybe you have some rogue bolt from the energies of the ritual ping a pillar and knock off a chunk of stone. The head cultist dude shouts angrily to watch it, they need to not damage the temple, and directs some underlings to scramble to quickly repair it with magic. Do something to actually give a hint to the players what will actually affect the ritual. Instead, we were left to guess, and our energies were entirely focused on just attacking wizards.

Fun fact: The arena at the end is just too damn big. Given the distances involved, unless your party has access to lots of spells like Dimension Door, or can deal massive damage at extreme range (even crossbows or longbows you basically need to position yourself directly below them to not be at disadvantage), it's simply too large. We spent most of the 10 rounds of the ritual traveling from one node to the next. We only ever came within one wizard kill of disrupting things as a result, and that was even making liberal use of our teleportation diamonds we found in Xonthal's Tower.

I think you do two or three things and this is an amazing campaign:

1) Shrink the final arena by about 1/3. Make it feasible to support one another and concentrate fire rather than having to split the party. This was the biggest issue, as our two healers (me (the cleric), and our paladin) ended up isolated and were focused down hard, utterly exhausting our healing before Tiamat even arrived.

2) Leave clearer guideposts. I'm not saying put the entire campaign on rails and remove the open-ended choices. Just make it more obvious which decisions matter and what will actually prevent the summoning in the end. Maybe have a captured cultist disclose details of the ritual, or one of the metallic dragons knows. Do SOMETHING so a party will know by better than trying things at random what will be most effective (e.g. the temple damaging example suggestion earlier).

3) Provide NPC guidance more than just the councils. Those were a bit vague and similar to #2 just didn't give a lot of guidance other than choosing what mission to go off on next. Have a knowledgeable scholar studying the cult in parallel who can update the party at each council even if they don't come along to offer suggestions. Decide in advance that one character's backstory includes intimate knowledge of the cult, or a history studying it academically. Don't just give the answers, but maybe use that as a fair avenue to feed hints as to what the party should be prioritizing to achieve the most good.

Overall I like the sense of urgency and doom here, I just don't think it's balanced correctly to achieve that while still offering better than maybe 5-10% odds of success. I think if you incorporate my suggestions, you don't diminish the brutality of the conflict. They just feel less helpless and can concentrate in the most effective direction available. This doesn't make it easier, it just keeps them from feeling ineffective.

I'd have felt so much better about dying to Tiamat had I at least known that I was fighting the good fight and doing the right thing, just coming up short, rather than finding out the hunch that was all I had to go on was wrong and a lot of our effort was useless. "I died because I just didn't fight perfectly" is a lot better than "I died because I was just flailing around and would never have guessed that damaging the temple or taking the mask off of the corpse's face would have significantly helped".

[Eskil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeg har et litt komplisert forhold til "Tyranny of Dragons", og særlig til "Rise". Den lover så mye, men den leverer så lite. Likevel har den noen ordentlige gode og inspirerte deler. "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" var strukturert rundt å følge sporet til dragekulten for å finne ut hva de har planlagt og å hindre dem i å samle en stor skattesamling de trenger for å påkalle den onde drageguden Tiamat. Den er 100% på skinner, og blir litt lite variert, men den har også mange gode kapittel som første og siste kapittel.

"Rise", derimot, har en struktur som ligner mer på en vestlig RPG som f.eks. Mass Effect. På starten av boka blir karakterene introdusert til et råd satt sammen av de mektigste gruppene på Sverdkysten. Denne gruppa har fire møter i Waterdeep, og mellom disse møtene må karakterene gjøre oppdrag for å finne ut informasjon om hva kulten driver på med, samt overbevise andre grupper om å bli med på kampen mot Tiamat. I tillegg blir hver av de store maktgruppene -som forøvrig er alt for komplisert lagt fram- enten mer eller mindre tilbøyelige til å støtte heltene i kampen avhengig av hvilke valg du tar. Hvis du får de tvilsomme trollmennene fra Thay med på laget blir de fleste gruppene sure på deg. Problemet er at det ikke spiller noen rolle.

For når du kommer til slutten av boka og det er på tide å sette hardt mot hardt og stoppe dragekulten en gang for alle gjør det for spillerne ingen forskjell om de har med seg én alliert eller hundre. Boka sier at jo jevnere forholdet mellom venner og fiender er jo bedre for spillerne. Den gir forslag til hvordan du kan bruke de allierte på best mulig måte, men det påvirker ikke spillet på noen måte! Det eneste det gjør er å gi Dungeon Masteren mer å finne på for å gjøre scenen spennende! Hvis det ikke gjør det lettere for spillerne eller mer spennende for dem å få med grupper på laget har hele andre halvdel av eventyret vært fånyttes! For ikke å snakke om alle bait-and-switchene som skjer! I minst to oppdrag drar heltene på tur for å finne noen skumle artefakter, men begge er falske, så hva i Guds herlighet er poenget da? Hvis spillerne ikke kan gjøre noe for å påvirke historien kunne de like godt sett en film eller lest en bok!

Det er så klart på sin plass å påpeke at Wizards of the Coast ga ut "Tyranny" før spillet var ordentlig "i gang", og det er ofte sånn at de første eventyrene ikke er kjempebra. Men dette er rett og slett dårlig. "Hoard" var ganske spennende å lese gjennom (til tider), men Rise var både rotete, meningsløst, og frustrerende. Dette hadde vært kjempespennende som en tv-serie, men hvis det er en del av et spill som er 99% basert på spillerdeltagelse mislykkes den 100%.

[Haz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good starter game for new players, but you need to add your own flavour to this campaign as a whole or you are just going here and there and that's it.

[Bret · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the risk of sounding like a troll and/or extremely negative, which is not my intent, I have to say that this is an excellent follow-up to Hoard of the Dragon Queen for a good RP DM. It takes a bit of "on-the-fly" choices and it leaves HUGE openings for DM's to fill in massive areas for RP. If your party is hack and slash, maybe try another book. The setup for RP at the council sessions is brilliant! The loose info about towns and villages is great to mix in player backgrounds. I'm going to be able to work in backstories and side quests and everything my party loves about D&D with very little effort. I do NOT understand any of the bad ratings on here, and in fact feel that a lack of imagination is the only reason for them (again, not meant as an insult even though I am aware it sounds like one). For someone like me that doesn't have a lot of free time, I need these campaign guides or no game would exist. But I can still spend a few hours a week to weave a bigger tapestry of story. I think this is the best 5e module I have read so far second only to Curse of Strahd.

[Nick. Hashbrowns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This adventure story line is useful for any Dungeon Master who does not have time to come up with their own story. However there will still be some preparation pregame. I still think it is best to come up with your own campaign,simply because you can tailor you story to your own characters. And that is one of the most flawed thing about premade adventures, they aren't necessarily the best for you players. But this game is made without encounters pre-made, and the book recommends that you tweak the story line slightly, it is also not linear. there are many unscripted things for the DM to fill in for his players. The book could be recommended to anyone who enjoyed the previous story in the series "Hoard of The Dragon Queen" or people who are looking to run a game without much prep.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An improvement on Hoard of the Dragon Queen, though the result is only good rather than great. The chapters are better integrated with the overall storyline, and they try harder to make the players' actions important to the plot - however, there are still issues with railroading. The details on factions and the chapters on winning their favor make for an interesting angle, although I would have preferred a more chronological placement of those chapters. The "dungeons" are interesting and well-thought-out, with the ice one being my favorite - although the wizard's tower is notable for how old-school it feels. The final battle is a bit disappointing, as it seems kind of bare-bones, leaving it up to the DM to make it truly epic. (B)

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though an improvement on the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, the whole treatment of the Cult of the Dragon, Dragons in general, as well as the Forgotten Realms is still too dumbed down for my taste. The campaign is more a of a glorified series of dungeon crawls, with planned achievements and goals which affect the Big Boss Fight (TM). It is good that after getting the structured Dragonklnd theme out of their system, the developers started leaning (a bit) heavier on the world building and (at least tried to) follow in the footsteps of what made good stories in D&D games.

[Bert Janssens · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great mix of roleplaying opportunities, enormous battles and exploration but only for experienced DM's.

The Rise of Tiamat constitutes enormous work for the DM as a lot of preparation will go into the different sessions of the council of Waterdeep, the different motivations of the factions, how the actions of the heroes are perceived by the different factions etc...

I've only read the adventure. I think it will be great fun and keep your players busy for months

[Kurt Vosper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good new adventure for the new rules of D&D.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sequel to the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Higher level with larger plots that cover the history of Faerun.

[Heider Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good adventure, everyone love dragons, but I think it lacks motivation in the first half.

[Coriander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read through to do initial set up before playing with my characters. Mostly, great stuff I'm excited to play -- I especially like the council scorecard and the ability to set up some mechanics for both tracking and rewarding my player's ability to win over different factions. There's one 'episode' I will not be using, because it's heavily puzzle focused (...with, per the book, some answers to puzzles that 'are not even fair') and I'm positive that would cause my table to break out in an actual chaos riot of frustration. Since I don't want to end friendships, I'll leave that one out of my game, but for a different table w/ a different play style there's a lot of detail there -- I might steal portions of the puzzles for something else that doesn't line them all up back to back. Since that's just a play style issue I'm not holding it against the book when it comes to my rating.

I am, however, holding against them the portrayal of clearly-Inuit inspired people in the Ice Hunters. Mostly, the names of the Ice Hunter NPCs (Barking Seal?!?! Seriously?!?!) and the description of their religion, which seems like a pretty simplistic reduction down to 'worships animals'. It's really easy to not do these things, though of course there's quite possibly other missteps made here that, not being indigenous, I've missed. The good news is that as far as my game is concerned, it's really easy to switch out the names and change the descriptive focus if my players encounter religion within the context of their adventure. But like, why put this shit in to start with?

The other thing that bugs me about this one is that I want the episodes to tie more to the setup of the final showdown. A number of them.....are kind of set up such that even if the players fully succeed, the only impact on the antagonists' plots is in the reactions of the factions to the players actions. This bothers me most on the subject of the masks There are three episodes (death to the wrymspeakers pt 1 and 2 and then the Xonthal's Tower) where the premise is in part that maybe a dragon mask could be seized from the cult's control. But the book doesn't write in an actual way for the characters to get and control the mask -- the first one just leaves out where the white mask is instead of leading into an adventure to retrieve it, for the second the mask is already at the caldera, and for the third a dummy mask has been sent and is being used to deceive the cult faction. To me it feels like a letdown and a bit like I'm cheating my players to have NONE of the leads to masks result in attainable masks, especially given the impact at the end of 'number of masks controlled by cult' on Tiamat's ultimate power. I wouldn't necessarily want all three to actually be attainable, but I do want my players to have at least a chance to obtain one or two. The final chapter gives a really good outline of the fundamental goals of our cult leader trying to raise Tiamat (essentially: get hoard, get prisoners for sacrifice, unite masks, bring over the temple, summon the Mother of Dragons) but the episodes leading up to the final battle do not seem to allow the PCs significant opportunity to tangibly disrupt that plan. Instead, the players consistently follow behind the plan, which isn't entirely a bad set up, but does make the lead-up seem lower stakes than it could be (...though of course, in order for the end boss fight to be epic, u do have to keep some of the villain's plans from being entirely foiled).

I'm going to run the adventure and I'm excited to run the adventure, don't get me wrong. And as I suspected, this one is a lot better designed than the self-published first adventure I ran (...not that all self-published stuff is lower quality than the official materials, just that the one I happened to use had some major plot design flaws I was hoping to avoid this time around). I am still going to want to modify it pretty significantly, but that's part of the fun of D&D. I do wish, though, that that big block of spoiler-ed out text had been designed a bit differently bc it seems like a pretty major flaw (I mean, we'll see how it plays out I suppose) and as always, please let's move onwards and upwards in terms of anti-racism in our RPGs.

[Geordie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sequel to 'Hoard of the Dragon Queen', I'd been optimistic it'd be a better book, since it has high stakes and an interesting objective of uniting allies to fight against the Dragon Cult; however, the quality never rose above mediocre, and the poor editing and poor planning sabotaged a passable (if unexceptional) adventure.

There are a lot of spelling errors in this book, things that should have been caught by a generic spell-check; These are really distracting, and make me wonder if Wizards of the Coast was not interested in investing serious effort or money into it.

The editing is a hash elsewhere as well. In one place the DM is told to carefully keep track of the characters' dice rolls because they will be important later. And THOSE rolls are never mentioned again.

Though the intro to the book makes a big deal about the PCs needing to find their own direction, and the DM needing to run the game without any hand-holding, parts of the game are just railroading. At one point the party is tortured in their dreams, no saving throw allowed, no possibility to escape. There's very little chance to roleplay either, it's a torture session with villains the PCs don't even know. Speaking as a player, this sounds like the opposite of fun to me.

One of the things that annoyed me most was, in three different places the party has a single combat encounter with the Dragon cult, and afterwards goes up a level. THREE TIMES. Going by traditional x.p., a party should have about SIX encounters like these before leveling up. Or, if you're playing by milestone, what the heck is so character building about these three discrete encounters that anyone should go up a level? The motivation is obvious, the adventure needs the PCs to be much higher levels to have the epic final battle against Tiamat that the book is aiming for. It would make more sense to write more chapters where actually significant things happened, but that would take work.

And finally, the big plan to assemble allies comes to nothing in the end. It feels dramatic and critical, but there is literally no game-play difference if the PCs succeed in their ally gathering or fail.

This was a real let-down that could have been a lot better with some effort, and maybe a second read through by editors. As is, it doesn't feel like fun for a DM or players, and I would have no interest in using it.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll use this as a review for both books in this series. I received both as a gift from my best friend a few years before but I didn't use them until 2020. My best friend had been running for my group through part of that year but after covid settled in his job was one of the few that didn't completely collapse. He simply ran out of time and energy to prepare to for our group and so had to bow out, putting me back in the driver's seat. I didn't feel like writing any more as I'd spent the last year doing so, so I pulled the first book, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, off the shelf and spent the next three years running my players through this duo of books.

These books see the players becoming entangled with the Cult of the Dragon, a sect that worships the evil, multi-headed dragon goddess Tiamat. They're attempting to release her from her prison in the Nine Hells, consequences be damned, and it's up to players to try and prevent this catastrophic scenario.

This campaign is a lot of fun, but as I understand it, it's somewhat polarizing among the player base of 5E. I can understand some of that as the balancing is very poor in the first book, but the second book is excellent. The encounters are almost all well designed and the underlying mechanic - a hidden score board that determines what kind of help the players will get in the big end sequence - is really cool.

[Louis Norton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This adventure has a pretty cool overall concept and sets up a number of interesting locations and roleplaying opportunities. I think the production value was pretty good, generally higher than the preceding "Hoard of the Dragon Queen". I enjoyed reading through it and therefore rated it 4 stars, however there are a number of issues which should be noted before attempting to actually play this module. First of all, it really seems like the writers were on a strict page limit; they tried to cram in too many ideas for 96 pages and the later chapters in particular are extremely rushed. There should have been a bit more text for the metallic dragons, as well as the final encounter area which was truncated to the point where areas didn't even get full descriptions. The climactic battle is largely left up to the DM to define and control; details on encounters and the effects of allied forces are sparse. Many online sources also indicate that the dragon battles early in the adventure are unbalanced. If you are planning to use "The Rise of Tiamat", be prepared for a lot of work as a DM to flesh out the campaign and make it usable in your game.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of opportunities for the DM to expand certain chapters. Althought it requires a heavy investment and knowledge to be able to do them properly because the many locations the adventure spans. This can't be said for some episodes that are too short and do require improvisation and building by the DM.

The foes sometimes they do get repetitive (always fighting dragonsoul, dragonclaws, etc). The main foe doesn't appear at all until the end and there's no much time for presentations, talking explaining why does sort of move-like thing.

Episode 7 I thought it was really great as well as Episode 9. There are other really good episodes as well. The way Episode 6 in participlar plays seems to be repetitve with Episode 1 but it's ok. Episode 5 I would have add it fighting against another wyrmspeaker in addition to the strike back. Overall they are great and it's nice to have the players choose the order of the main episodes.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second part of the Tyranny of Dragons adventure module for Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition, this is a pretty great conclusion to the story. In fact it's a vast improvement over the first half which is contained in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. This volume is more varied in terms of events and with the introduction of council meetings and diplomatic stakes for the players becomes much more interesting in terms of how high the stakes really are.

There are great opportunities for roleplaying as well as some truly challenging battles in this part of the story and unlike in the first half you don't spend most of the time stuck in a caravan. Of course the story works better as an integral part of the full Tyranny of Dragons campaign but there is really no reason why your players can't jump directly into this without going through the first half and that might be something to consider if you'd like to DM this.

[Ay Oh Be · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several times while reading this I laughed at the brutality of this campaign. I have read several campaign books but I think this one goes to the top of the list for mentioning player character deaths.

My players are nowhere near this portion of the campaign yet but I wanted to read it so that I could understand the full scope of what is happening.
I am both excited and overwhelmed at the thought of running this portion of the overall story.

Rise of Tiamat presents a nice balance of RP and adventure/combat. As a DM there is a lot of keep track of and I feel like a lot of organization will be required to keep this campaign running the way that it should. Thankfully the campaign book does provide you with all the needed information as well as a chart to help track various things.
I've never run a full scale battle (with armies in the hundreds boarding on thousands) before and I find that intimidating. But the pictures that were built in my head have me excited to try.

[Pádraic]

Features many suitably epic-sized dragon-related encounters, but as opposed to the linearity of its predecessor, this instead feels like a disconnected series of sidequests. More than one chapter here basically just has a paragraph right at the end that goes "oh right, here's how this relates to the actual plot." You know, the end of the world that's going on? Hardly seems the time to dither around on icebergs and teleport to the other side of the planet. The encounters themselves are fine, mostly too dungeon-crawly for me, but the lack of structure here is confusing.

[Jerrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Tyranny of Dragons leaves a lot wanting. I hope to run something so epic one day, but to be honest I wonder if you could even call it Tyranny of Dragons after all of the modifications. Staying even remotely on the plan in Horde of the Dragon Queen is a huge mistake. There is less need to run from Rise of Tiamat, but that doesn't mean it isn't flawed. And honestly, by this point in the characters... if you are still on a prewritten... how? Sometimes your characters have to write the story. And it won't be what Tyranny of Dragons has in mind.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Went through this once as a player, then bought and read it just for fun (having never read a D&D questbook before). It wasn't as detailed as I'd expected, which makes me think it'd take quite a bit of prep to DM.... which makes the job our DM did more impressive.
On the whole, more fun to play than to read, but still pretty entertaining.

[Toevolution · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rise of Tiamat, designed by the Kobold Press and the Wizards RPG team, is an adventure module set in Forgotten Realms using the ruleset from the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

The Rise of Tiamat Book (PDF-Online Reading-Download-Summary-Review): https://www.toevolution.com/blog/view...

[Tyler T · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a whole, this book needs a bit of work. There is a LOT of travel time to go over, and the second half feels more like a gut punch than an epic part 2.

Personally, I'd rewrite a couple of things starting with the bbeg being an optional encounter. Next up, adding scripted encounters over travel encounters to dump lore/Foreshadowing into what would normally be a travel slog.

[Christine Rains · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm running this for my gaming group. It's better than the Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but not by too much. It has a couple of great dungeons, but otherwise, it railroads the players and denies them of actually being able to stop the rise of Tiamat.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much like Hoard of the Dragon Queen, this is an awesome concept, bogged down by being written in such a way that it'd be impossible to actually run easily. Which is a great shame, because that final sequence is awesome.