Between 3D printed miniatures, dungeon tiles or battle maps, and various handouts, one can spend a lot of time and money in preparation of a D&D adventure. And as I like this sort of material, I tend to do a lot of that sort of prep work. Of course you can play nearly as well without anything of this, but I find that the material helps with visualization, and I have fun crafting the stuff. Now of course not everybody has that sort of time, 3D printing is still not a technology for everybody, and not everybody enjoys crafting. So what if you could buy a D&D adventure complete with miniatures, battle maps, and handouts?

I turns out that you soon can do so. Beadle & Grimm's, a new company with a license from WotC, is offering you the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist Platinum Edition for $499, coming November 2018. No, there is not a decimal point missing in that price tag somewhere, it's really five hundred bucks. "Coming next year" is a gold box and a silver box with less content for less money. Which I might actually be interested in buying, if the price is right. In their YouTube video they describe it as a "luxury item for geeks", and that is what it is.

Earlier this year I had 3 campaigns running in parallel for which I was the DM. It turned out that with all the prep work, that was too much for my available prep time. I cut down on it since, two campaigns still running, but at least one of them I'll switch from DM to player. So I can see the interest of having all the material prep work done for you, and just buying it. Not counting the cost of the 3D printer, I still have spent occasionally over a hundred dollars on a single adventure, e.g. by having battle maps printed as posters, or getting Hero Forge metal miniatures. While the platinum edition is a bit too rich for me, I could see myself paying for a less luxurious box with the maps and miniatures, but less artwork and handouts.

By the way, Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is an upcoming D&D 5th edition adventure for characters level 1 - 5, which is mostly a city adventure. That will be followed by Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage for levels 5 - 20, which explores the vast Undermountain dungeon of 23 dungeon levels. Looks interesting, but my previous experience with WotC 5E adventures is that the quality is mixed, sometimes very good, sometimes not so much. Fortunately the silver/gold/platinum boxes come out months after the regular edition, so there is time to see how good it actually is before investing too much money in it.