The latest D&D adventure is the Dragon Delves anthology, and which is indeed full of dragons

Dragon Delves is the newest Dungeons & Dragons release and the first content to utilize the new 2024 rules and stat blocks. The three core rulebooks started releasing way back in September of last year, and while the 2024 rules are compatible with older content, this anthology of adventures is our first chance to see how the updated rules fit into an official module.
So if you’re interested in seeing new adventures using the new rules, hopefully you’re a fan of winged wyrms, because Dragon Delves packs nearly the maximum amount of draconic content into its 192 pages. The majority of the tome consists of ten adventures, with each featuring a dragon of a different type in one of its distinct lairs. There’s a short adventure for each of the five chromatic dragon types (green, blue, red, white, and black) as well as the five metallic types (brass, bronze, silver, gold, copper).
Each chapter is written with a particular level party in mind, with the first aimed at a level 1 band of fledgling heroes and the final quest meant to be taken on by a level 12 group of seasoned champions. Not every story involves raiding a dragon’s lair, slaying it, and heading back to town with as much treasure as you can carry — some of the dragons you’ll encounter are neutral or good, and some even require your help to deal with pesky inter-dimensional beings that pilfer from their hoard.
The adventures are short enough to complete in one or two sessions, which you probably already know will vary with your group’s experience level and attention span. There isn’t a chapter or section devoted to linking the escapades through a fleshed-out hub or overarching story line, but there is about a page and a half in the introduction with some suggestions on linking them together into more of a continuous campaign.
Something that piqued my interest in the lead-up to Dragon Delves was the promised ability to be able to run some of the adventures with a single player. My current life situation is not so amenable to a packed table of friends rolling dice until sunrise, so being able to slot these into stream sessions with my buddy on the opposite coast would be fantastic. Ultimately, the adventures are all still designed for a party of heroes, with an overarching buff for a single player that equates to more frequent Heroic Inspirations and a handful of temporary hit points. Three of the adventures have suggestions for a solo player’s skills or even class. Your enjoyment level when running these for a single friend will, as always, come down to how well you can adjust the encounter difficulty and frequency to match the challenge level you are both looking for.
Finally, at least half the reason I am ever interested in a new release is the artwork. The ten adventures themselves each have a vastly different feel to them, as they all feature art in strikingly different styles by a different artist. I’ve seen some negative feedback to this approach, but I think it’s fantastic. It was initially a bit jarring to turn the page to the bakery-based gold dragon chapter and see a series of bold, cartoonish drawings by Andrew Kolb. But by the time I got to the end of that adventure, the art style really helped give the story some additional flavor.
In addition to artwork within the adventures, each chapter starts with a look at how the look of the type of dragon featured in the story has progressed through 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons. There are four or five pages for each type with illustrations ranging from the initial black-and-white sketches in the 1977 Monster Manual to the updated 2025 Monster Manual art. You can really get a feel for how the appearance of each dragon type has changed in some ways but kept certain key features, like the white dragon’s signature crest.
Dragon Delves has an official release date of July 8th, but you can pick up a copy from your local bookseller right now. I’m giving this one a scaly-clawed thumbs up, and I’m looking forward to running a whole series of dragon-based adventures in the near future.
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