Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Delves Anthology Is Your Next Best Friend For Dragon One-Shots

Continuing the theme of putting more Dragons in Dungeons & Dragons after Dragonlance, Tyranny of Dragons, and even the Practically Complete Guide To Dragons, Wizards of the Coast’s latest anthology book is a collection of Dragon-themed one-shots for players level 1-12. Dragon Delves will let a table experience one or all of the chromatic and metallic Dragons.

Much like previous anthology books, Dragon Delves is set up to be a series of one to two session adventures. Perfect for those times between campaigns, when players need to reschedule and you want to quickly spin up a one-shot, or if you’re just a group that plays intermittently.

Setting Off On An Adventure

A brief summary of each of the adventures and the dragon they involve is below.

• Death At Sunset (Green Dragon) – Level 1 & 2 adventure where players are asked to investigate the cause of corruption in a sacred forest.
• Baker’s Doesn’t (Gold Dragon) – Level 3 adventure where players try to track down a confectionary arsonist by following literal breadcrumbs
• The Will of Orcus (Silver Dragon) – Level 4 adventure investigating the strange activities of a cult in a demonic temple
• For Whom the Void Calls (Brass Dragon) – Level 5 adventure where the party is called to the aid of a sentient Bag of Holding in a dragon’s horde
• The Dragon of Najkit (Bronze Dragon) – Level 7 adventure where the party investigates the source of shipwrecks heading to and from an island monastery
• The Forbidden Vale (Red Dragon) – Level 9 adventure that sees the party investigating the motives of a Red Dragon starting wildfires
• Before the Storm (Black Dragon) – Level 10 adventure set in a seaside town where pirates are attacking
• Shivering Death (White Dragon) – Level 11 adventure where the party needs to recover the only known record of a ritual from the corpse of a frost giant to break an oncoming heat wave
• A Copper for a Song (Copper Dragon) – Level 12 adventure where you’ll visit the lair of a dragon to recover a magical song to save the surrounding villages and farmland
• Dragons of the Sandstone City (Blue Dragon) – Level 12 adventure where you need to escort a good Dragon egg into the lair of an evil Blue Dragon that took over a region.

There is so much variety in these adventures that not only makes it more interesting and unique if you’re moving through the adventures in order, but it also allows for one of these adventures to appear nearly anywhere your current party might be if you plan to add these to the mix.

For the most part, the tone of the adventures is consistent, though the level 3 adventure is an interesting tonal shift. Sandwiched between a Green Dragon poisoning a sacred grove, and a Silver Dragon conflicting with a cult, there’s a small adventure about a confectioner whose home is set on fire by a Gold Dragon named Briochebane.

It’s a funny little Pixar adventure between high-fantasy that, as a one-shot, especially for younger players, could be a happy romp through adventure. For the party planning on going start to finish, it might be worth noting that one of these adventures has a tone a bit different from the rest. Even the artwork included is reminiscent of some of the concept art/2D assets you might have seen from Pixar titles.

Each Adventure Comes With A Resume

An incredible quality of life improvement for an anthology series like this is that each Adventure has one page at the start that summarizes pretty much everything a DM might want to know about if it’s the kind of adventure they want to run. It almost feels like reading a resume.

You have a clear indication of the level, how long it will take (normally just one to two sessions), where it could take place in your world, a very brief overview of the two-three key plot points, what monsters and other prep work should be gathered, and a list of key NPCs.

The Key NPCs don’t just list their name and species, but also what stat block is going to be used for them, and where you’ll encounter them. This information kept close will allow you to keep an eye out for when they’ll show up.

I love this idea, allowing a DM to cut down on certain prep work so that they can focus on the larger aspects of the game like familiarizing themselves with roleplay elements or the flow of the adventure.

For someone getting into playing D&D, I couldn’t recommend the Level 7 adventure, The Dragon of Najkit, more. The benefit of an adventure where you’re on an island creates an adventure that’s entirely contained. Navigating between the roleplay of monks and the dragon along with free exploration elements and a nice dungeon dive this is a fantastic all-rounder adventure.

The book describes ways that you can link each of the adventures together with the standard ‘mysterious patron’ option, but more enjoyable than that there’s a way that is described to allow for the Egg that you’d obtain in the final adventure to be gifted early on and a goal of the adventure is to power it up by bringing it to a horde of every type of dragon before reaching the Blue Dragon’s Lair.

A powerful MacGuffin that fuels the adventure and keeps the tone firmly rooted in dragons and magic.

Solo Adventuring

An interesting mechanic in Dragon Delves is that three of these adventures—Baker’s Doesn’t, The Dragon of Najkit, and A Copper for a Song—have also been provided with additional rules to allow it to be completed by a party of one. This format allows for one DM and one player.

Each of these adventures will recommend a set of stats that it’s recommended that the player should have proficiency with and also indicate that the character should have the Blessing of the Lone Champion.

Blessing of the Lone Champion
You gain the following benefits:
  Heroic Inspiration. You gain Heroic Inspiration when you finish a Short or Long Rest and whenever the DM has you roll Initiative.
  Temporary Hit Points. You gain a number of Temporary Hit Points equal to 10 times your level when you gain this blessing and when you gain a level.

How well this works is a different story. Depending on the abilities available to your character having additional HP might be of great use, but the usability of a Wizard with the same number of spell slots and 30 more HP is very different from the usability of a Barbarian with 30 more HP.

I imagine if you’re wanting to try this there might also be something valuable about bumping up the uses of ‘x per Short/Long Rest’ abilities too.

History Of Dragons Through The Ages

A fun intermission between each of these adventures is the History of Dragons section. Leading into each adventure, there are 3-5 pages worth of images showing the history of how these kinds of dragons were depicted in the 50-year history of Dungeons & Dragons.

These images include module artwork, resource book sketches, and also the relevant cards from when Magic The Gathering has crossed over with the world of Dungeons & Dragons for expansions like Battle for Baldur’s Gate or Adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

This mixture of art and reference material over the years does a lot to prompt with different ideas of what a dragon could look like. Not wholly unlike the kinds of options that were provided to players in The Practically Complete Guide To Dragons.

What Is Missing?

It also might just be me wondering what happened, but for a Dragon-centric anthology book, the absence of Gem Dragonborn seems a little bit odd. They were included in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons and while I’ve expected their lore to be expanded upon, we’ve now had a number of dragon-centric books that don’t mention them. I guess at this point I should just not expect them to show up?

It’s also important to note that while this book contains a large quantity of adventures it’s only going to be adventures found in this book. If you’re looking for Dragon-themed feats, magical items, spells, or sub-classes then you won’t find any of that in here.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Delves Review | Final Thoughts

As we step into the 51st year of Dungeons & Dragons, and the first full year since the release of the new Core Rulebooks it’s great to see that Wizards of the Coast is still doing a lot to add more Dragons into Dungeons & Dragons.

Like with all of the other anthology books, these are good for idea prompts, for quick sessions you can spin up, or for a somewhat patchwork campaign with a number of missions.

Normally, it can be a bit difficult to say whether an anthology book should be added to your bookshelf but as this book is just adventures, and no additional mechanical elements have been added, I’d say if you’re interested in running the adventures, then of course pick it up. If the adventures don’t sound like something for you and your table, then this will be an easy book to pass on.

Dungeons & Dragons: Dragon Delves was reviewed with a PDF copy provided by Wizards of the Coast. All images were provided by Wizards of the Coast