D&D Dragon Delves

Written by Randy Kalista on 8/12/2025 for PC  

DRAGONS IN DUNGEONS—FINALLY

In 50 years, D&D never released a product solely devoted to dragons in dungeons. Until now. Dragon Delves is a collection of 10 one-shot adventures, each designed to run over one to four sessions, depending on your table’s pacing. Wizards of the Coast estimates a typical session lasts four to six hours.

Most of these adventures level you up at the end, though a few bump you mid-way. That’s how the book takes characters from level 1 to 12 across just 10 adventures. Each adventure is standalone. Play them in any order, or cherry-pick one to slot into your homebrew or official campaign. Being all-new adventures doesn’t set Dragon Delves apart: Candlekeep Mysteries, Radiant Citadel, and Keys From the Golden Vault were also original 5th Edition-era adventures.

What sets Dragon Delves apart is how effortlessly drag-and-drop it is. These adventures slot into any campaign. Not because they’re generic, but because there’s no central hub like Candlekeep or the Radiant Citadel anchoring them.

There’s no singular art style here either. This isn’t the era of Caldwell, Easley, or Elmore shaping D&D’s look—or Brom defining Dark Sun. Dragon Delves celebrates diversity, spotlighting 10 artists with 10 distinct brushes. Some hail from Magic: The Gathering; others seem new to drawing dragons entirely—and their fresh takes are enriching. Each adventure offers a new visual lens on D&D.

It’s tempting to think your only goal is dragon hunting. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, artistically and narratively.

SUBVERTING THE BOSS FIGHT FORMULA

D&D often plays against type, but Dragon Delves mostly sticks to what's typical: chromatic dragons (red, green, blue, white, black) are typically evil; metallic dragons (brass, bronze, copper, gold, silver) are typically good. That doesn’t mean they’re flat. Evil isn’t dumb, and good isn’t naive. Dragons are far beyond animal intelligence. Whether selfish or selfless, they’re always thinking.

While Dragon Delves leans into “dragons in dungeons,” the dungeons are anything but typical. These are lairs: sometimes on mountain peaks or in dark temples, yes, but also in hanging gardens or even a bakery. You never know.

Each adventure leaves ample room for all three of D&D’s core pillars: combat, exploration, and social interaction. As always, you get in what you put in. If your players feel roleplay-heavy, NPC interactions take up plenty of space before any dragon appears. Do they crave exploration? Every adventure comes with one or two maps, and some have big enough locations to warrant two or three more. As for battle, this is D&D. There’s never any shortage of combat when 20-sided dice are involved.

The adventures are all-new, but there are no new mechanics, monsters, or magic items. Dragon Delves is built for the 2024 Core Rulebooks—Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual—but remains compatible with 2014’s 5e rules. For the most part. Minor tweaks apply: such as the Orc that was blended into the Tough, and the Noble Prodigy being a magic-wielding variant of the Noble. 

Store-bought D&D adventures assume you've got four to six players at the table, plus a Dungeon Master. While it's never advisable to split up the party—and nobody really cares for the Lone Wolf archetype as a companion—Dragon Delves throws out those assumptions. At least for three of its ten adventures. You can run a few of them with just one player and one DM.

Any single-player setup means the "action economy" is suddenly against you—monsters are focus-firing on just one character. But this adventure anthology introduces something called the Blessing of the Lone Champion. Basically, that one character gets Heroic Inspiration a lot more often, letting them reroll dice when needed. Plus, they gain 10 temporary hit points per level. That gives the Lone Champion some much-needed toughness. Maybe only 10 points at 1st level, but that's 120 hit points by level 12.

Single-player D&D is still risky, though. That’s why three of the adventures have been tailored to handle it best: the ones at levels 3, 7, and 12. All suitable for a solo player—which is something I've never seen in a D&D 5e adventure before.

LAIRS AND LEGENDS

Though only mentioned once, Dragon Delves clearly wants you to have Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons on hand. That book fleshes out dragons far more deeply. There’s even bundle pricing on D&D Beyond. Wizards of the Coast wants you pairing them.

Each adventure opens with a full-page dragon spread and a textbook-style prep guide. It’s clear, direct, and designed for DMs of any experience level. Player level is listed up front. Key plot points are bolded. DM tips follow a familiar format: “Step 1. Read the Adventure Background. Step 2. Familiarize yourself with the Key NPCs,” etc. Each NPC is listed with their role (e.g., lost elf council member), stat block (e.g., Commoner), and map location, if applicable.

Each of the 10 adventures runs 12–20 pages, including art and maps. That’s tight. By contrast, chapters in full-length campaigns—like Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, which I’m currently running—span 20–30 pages. It’s taken us two years to reach the penultimate chapter, at a kinder, gentler pace than I steamrolled through Descent Into Avernus or Curse of Strahd.

Dragon Delves are self-described one-shots, meant to run in two to four sessions. That feels optimistic. But by their math, you could string them together and finish in 20 to 40 sessions. It’s a smart strategy for Wizards of the Coast. A group can chew through Dragon Delves in under a year. That’s far faster than a Dragonlance table milking a single purchase for over two years.

ADVENTURE HOOKS AND DRAGON DYNAMICS

Each adventure opens with a solid hook. Early ones are simple enough for low-level characters to latch onto—like an ancient elven grove afflicted by blight. Mid-level adventures grow more nuanced: Commoners, nature lovers, and merchants vie for exotic plants in a dragon’s grove, each with wildly different ideas on how to handle the dragon itself.

Ultimately, these are classic good-versus-evil dragons. If you’re facing a traditionally evil dragon—red, green, blue, white, or black—expect combat. If it’s a good-aligned dragon—brass, bronze, copper, gold, or silver—expect a complex social encounter. But you know players. They zig when you expect them to zag.

There’s a built-in cool factor when dragons are involved. Players and DMs alike know the stakes are high. But for all their grandeur, Dragon Delves keeps its setups generic. That’s intentional. Previous anthologies often handcuffed DMs with rigid settings: Radiant Citadel offered guidance for Eberron or Forgotten Realms, etc. Candlekeep Mysteries simply said, “These take place in Candlekeep. Deal with it.”

Dragon Delves is far more flexible. It’ll say, “This can take place in any canyon with a river,” or “anywhere with small islands.” That freedom is a gift. I dropped The Forbidden Vale into my Dragonlance campaign with ease. Its only requirement? “A remote mountain valley.” That’s brilliant. Compare that to, “Run this adventure on the road between Neverwinter and Waterdeep.” Good luck getting me to run those one-shots when you’ve glued it to a hyper-specific locale.

The artwork deserves endless praise—though it might startle you at first. Each adventure has a distinct visual style, intentionally removed from the others. Baker’s Doesn’t looks like a children’s book. The Forbidden Vale channels the Old School Renaissance. Before the Storm could grace a Pantera album. Even the alternate cover feels like someone took too many mushrooms at a Grateful Dead concert. It’s incredible.

Other artists push traditional D&D and Magic: The Gathering aesthetics. Together, they prove how vital art is to roleplaying games. Swapping one visual style for another can make even familiar landscapes feel fresh.

Minor spoiler for The Forbidden Vale, a level 9 adventure: it takes place in a forested valley set ablaze by a red dragon. I’ve always wanted to introduce forest fires into my Dragonlance campaign (it’s wartime, after all). And it gave the players a real push. “We need a rest!” they said. “You’ve got time for a short rest,” I replied. “Anything longer, and the wildfires will surround you, kill you from smoke inhalation, then burn your already ashy corpses.”

“Guess we should keep moving,” they realized.

A WORTHY ANNIVERSARY TRIBUTE

Dragon Delves is a unique entry in D&D’s history: ten one-shots, each laser-focused on delivering a dragon-centric experience. Before each adventure, there’s a visual history of the featured dragon color—four or five pages of curated art from D&D’s 50-year legacy. For example, the silver dragon section includes pieces from the 1977 Monster Manual, 2009’s Eberron Campaign Guide, and the redesigned dragons from the 2024 Monster Manual.

I’m thrilled these visuals are included. But the layout feels slapdash. If Wizards had its way, I'm sure each piece would get a full-page spread. Instead, page count constraints force a cut-and-paste collage. And while I’m split on this, the lack of context giving just an artist’s name, year, and book title, means there’s barely anything to call a “history.”

That said, this thin context is freeing. I can drop Chippy’s silver dragon from Eberron into my Dragonlance campaign without lore baggage. It looks dope, and Dragon Delves doesn’t care how I use it. Ironically, the “history” section’s vagueness makes it more usable.

I’m (jokingly) revolted by the inclusion of Magic: The Gathering card artwork in a D&D book. But I get it. Wizards has artists working both sides of the house.

Dragon Delves feels like a celebration of dragons and dungeons, not just some marketing hook. It’s a long-overdue anthology, timed for D&D’s 50th anniversary and the launch of the 2024 Core Rulebooks. The artwork is phenomenal. The adventures are all-new. And the layout—clean, charted, and textbook-like—makes running them easier.

It’s the first anthology of its kind, and I’d recommend it over any other 5e adventure collection. If nothing else, it breaks the ice for dragon-centric play and empowers DMs to run encounters, rather than be intimidated, by these, D&D's most iconic creatures.