Today, I’m thrilled to present my Dungeon Master’s Guide to Neverwinter. Consider this a gift I humbly offer to all of you wonderfully hard-working D&D DMs. The goal of this guide is to give a Dungeon Master all the tools and resources they need to have their party visit Neverwinter in D&D Fifth Edition. I was particularly interested in helping all of the newer DMs that may have started with Lost Mine of Phandelver or Dragon of Icespire Peak. I hope that you all find the contents of this guide, and all of its associated resources, helpful in delighting your players as they enter Neverwinter.
Downloads
Guide
A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Neverwinter – PDF (29.8 MB)
A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Neverwinter – EncounterPlus Module (59.7 MB)
Resources
Neverwinter Maps (12.5 MB)
Battle Maps (28.5 MB)
Neverwinter Artwork (8.2 MB)
Point-of-Interest Cards (13.2 MB)
Point-of-Interest Cards – Affinity Publisher Files (414.3 MB)
Maps
For this guide, I knew that I needed a beautifully detailed map of Neverwinter as it exists in Fifth Edition. I felt the community deserved something a bit more detailed than what is available in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide. I fancy myself a bit of a D&D cartographer, but doing Neverwinter justice was simply beyond my skill level. Thus I commissioned a map from the amazing cartographer, Damijan Jeric. Damijan does fantastic hand-drawn maps of both real world and fantasy locations, and he did an absolutely amazing job on Neverwinter.
As an additional resource, I have provided a number of Battle/Encounter Maps in the guide. Some of these are just general utilitarian maps of the urban environment, and others belong so specific mini adventures in the guide. If you’re looking for a particular Battle Map in Neverwinter that the guide doesn’t have, please leave a comment and I’ll see what I can add to future iterations of this guide!
Artwork
I had a handful of locations, scenes, and people I knew I wanted to depict. I also knew that I wasn’t nearly skilled enough to create all of these myself, so I set out to commission a number of really excellent pieces from some very talented artists. It was fun to see how each of the individual artists interpreted the text of the scenes, and having such a great variety of styles fits right in with D&D tradition! I think these works all speak for themselves.
The Fallen Tower: One of the most elaborate scenes I had commissioned was the events of the Fallen Tower – a tavern that has magical phantom images of mages falling to their fiery deaths repeated night after night! It’s a truly creative and bizarre scene, and one of the most memorable in Neverwinter. The very talented Deryl Arrazaq illustrated this piece for me. Working with Deryl was a delight – it’s like he read my mind in what I wanted out of this piece.
The Beached Leviathan: Another very memorable locale in Neverwinter is the Beached Leviathan. It’s a beached pirate ship that has turned into an inn and tavern. It’s a truly fun location, and allows players to practice their pirate speak. Another very talented artist, that goes by skiho, did an absolutely amazing job on drawing the Beached Leviathan.
Castle Never: The majestic scene of Castle Never (that I used as my cover image) was done by the incredibly talented Valery Sazonov. Valery does amazing fantasy landscape and cityscape pieces, and has a masterful grasp on creating beautiful time-of-day colorings. I think the sunset hue with which she captured Castle Never was truly stunning.
The Moonstone Mask and The Shard of the Moon: Syeda Farwa was commissioned to do two of my favorite locales. Syeda is another very talented landscape artist and does big and bold imposing structures in her artwork. I had Syeda take on two of Neverwinter’s magically floating locations: The Moonstone Mask and The Shard of the Moon!
Dagult Neverember: Last, but certainly not least, was Esteban Santos, who was commissioned to create a rendition of the incredibly complex character Dagult Neverember. Esteban does absolutely fantastic monster artwork and tokens on a regular basis, and knows D&D properties and characters well. It was fun watching him work out a variety of initial sketches on Lord Neverember to capture his disposition correctly.
Shop & Point of Interest Cards
One of the most popular things I do is create Shop/Point-of-Interest cards for places I expect players to need to stop and “browse”. I find these cards are immensely helpful in freeing up me, the DM, to roleplay at these locations (rather than spending my time scrambling through binders of price lists). They also give the players some extra visuals when theater of the mind isn’t doing everything it needs to do. I have created these for a number of Neverwinter locations, and I’m open to doing more. Drop me a line if there are particular Neverwinter locales that you think are deserving of a card!
I have shop cards for both cannonnical and homebrew locations in Neverwinter. Be sure to check out the Downloads section above for download links to both the shop cards as well as their source Affinity Publisher files.
And Much More!
There’s a whole lot more to this guide. If there’s anything in this guide that isn’t available for download here, feel free to contact me or leave a comment on this post and I’ll see what I can do! Furthermore, if you have suggestions for additional content you’d like to see in this guide, or have any corrections that you think should be made, then don’t hesitate to reach out!
I’ve had a number of people reach out to me and ask how they can pay or donate money for my work. Simply knowing others are getting enjoyment out of these creations is absolutely reward enough for me. However, if you feel you absolutely must give me something – I have created a Ko-Fi link so that you may buy me a cup of coffee. Thank you so much!
Hey there, awesome work, I really appreciate you sharing all this experience with us 🙂
[…] out the Neverwinter sourcebook on Johnston’s blog, which also comes alongside separate battle maps, artworks, and points-of-interest reference cards. […]
Would you be willing to update this amazing work of yours with a back cover of any style? I’m considering getting this professionally printed for myself and would appreciate a back cover for that. 🙂
Absolutely great idea (and I’m honored you would want to print this)! I’ll have that in the next revision for sure (as well as ensuring the page count lines up!)
How can i use this on my Roll 20 this would be amazing for my family and myself.
I don’t currently have a Roll20 module for this, but all of the resources are available for download if anyone wanted to create one.
What a gift, thanks Jacob! Looking forward to replacing my quick sketch map of town with this beauty.
Second on the Roll20 package of this, would be a great way to monetize on their marketplace if your into that sort of thing.
Absolutely love your work! Truly amazing and really helpful for me! Thx a lot!
Lovely work – Tipped!
This came at the perfect time as my players are headed to Neverwinter, thanks so much! Are you going to include a token download here at some point? By the way Priscilla is misspelled on one page.
How do you make the shop cards?
@Ian – The shop cards are made using Affinity Publisher
That’s gold!
My pcs are going to Neverwinter since they adventure went wrong in Phandalin and this will help a lot.
Thank you for sharing and awesome work!
Any chance the NPC art could be a separate download? I’m running Neverwinter as it was in 4E and so much of this still works. Amazing!
And if you ever feel ambitious, a map of Castle Never is what the world needs. It’s so odd that nothing official has ever been put together given how much has been written about it!
This a *fantastic* resource for adventures in Neverwinter, thank you SO much for putting it together, and offering all of your hard work for free to all of us DMs!
Amazing resource. I love the “Read more” references with page numbers. You knocked it out of the park.
Thank you for this, you have saved me hours of prep by sharing this. Amazing job!
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but does The High Road come out of Neverwinter to the south of The Protector’s Enclave, or does it lead south from The Chasm District? I can’t seem to find any maps that have the roads that leave town labeled.
@Tim – I’m not sure there’s a definitive answer to that anywhere. In my imagination (and how I described it to my table), I pictured there being a fork in The High Road maybe a half mile south of Neverwinter – one path leads to Protector’s Enclave, the other path to The Chasm District. When my party first approached Neverwinter from the south, I actually had the elves in the party notice – far off – that one gate looked well-guarded (Protector’s Enclave), and the other gate looked broken and was surrounded by fell walls (Chasm District). I then let them pick which path they would take. But, again, that was just my interpretation – if you find an official source on this matter, let me know!
Thank you for all this awesome work, maybe a silly question but the A Dungeon Master’s Guide to Neverwinter – EncounterPlus Module, downloads as a guide-to-neverwinter.module file? What do I use to open the file? Thanks
@Sergio – that is for EncounterPlus, the VTT I use!
Amazing work on this! So helpful for DMs!
I did have one comment, though, which is that I’m not sure your take on the Cloak Tower matches up with 5e canon. Specifically, the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide says that “A short while ago, Neverwinter was beset by all manner of damage, danger, and gloom. Now, the orcs that once menaced the city have moved east….” In addition, Gallio Elibrio receives communications and directives from the Order of the Many-Starred Cloak. Taken together, these would seem to indicate that the Order is once again operating out of the Cloak Tower, not a gang of orcs.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention this since a DM running Beyond Icespire Peak might run into some plot holes/contradictions.
@Patrick
I’m not sure how I missed that in my reading of the source material! That’s a big deal! I’ll go ahead and address that information on the next revision.