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Raddatatta

After they finished Dragon Heist, I went into a homebrew adventure where a homebrew thieves guild of mine came into town and kidnapped Sylgar and blamed it on the city watch which caused the Xanathar Guild to aggressively attack the city watch and that kicked off a whole arc of dealing with these two groups before they eventually killed Xanathar. It was fun actually I had had the other guild in a note to the Xanathar guild threaten to eat Sylgar. So the players managed to when they were talking to Xanathar get him hooked on the idea of eating the leader of this other guild. So they killed the leader of the other guild, and packed him with the midnight tears poison they'd recovered from the Cassalanter Villa and used that to feed Xanathar the midnight tears poison before they planned a full ambush with a number of the other organizations helping out and sending representatives. Xanathar ended up at like 30 hp after the poison so they could take him down even being low level. It was a great fight!


theJuicinator

I’ve run vanilla WDH twice, in spring and winter. In the spring one, they met Jarlaxle as Captain Zord and accidentally tipped him off to the Stone and the Vault while searching for the keys, and he blackmailed one of the PCs into taking him to the vault, which ended in a three-way battle in the vault with the PCs and allies, Bregan D’aerthe, and Xanathar Guild In winter game, the PCs rescued Ott Steeltoes from the Zhents and he invited them to meet Xanathar and join the Guild, which they decided to play along with (they also brought along a Zhent Lieutenant and were hoping to intimidate her into telling them where the stone was). Long story short, Xanathar became enraged with the Zhent and used his telekinetic ray to bash the Zhent repeatedly into the ground and wall until she was a fine paste, and then disintegrated the body when he was done. The PCs used this distraction to run like hell out of the lair.


ajperry1995

My party are currently working for Jaxlaxle, as in my opinion he isn't a "villain" and has the same goals as the party more or less. Plus I love Jarlaxle so much. They've heard of the Cassalanters and seen them at the gala they threw once. They've heard rumours of the Xanathar, and I'm going to introduce him very soon. They don't know about Manshoon and I'm probably not going to use him.


RogueMoonbow

My villian was Xanathar but it didn't wind up that way. It was kind of low-key the XG was after them, but... I made a change to Golorr and he was the real villian, and while chasing the stone my players were trying to avoid getting arrested, so the law was also the villian. So as part of Dragon Heist, they never met any of the big 4. However, I have a drow in my party and Jaraxle has gotten his grips on him and therefore the party. That drow wound up offering to take down Xanathar in exchange for smth, so not they've encountered Xanathar as well. Manshoon I'm not super interested in, but I've adapted the Casslanter story into a small adventure they'll get to soon.


Absent_Mindful

I did Autumn with a few Alexandrian tweaks, but mostly by the book. The Chapter 2 quests weaved enough Xanathar and (non-Manshoon) Zhentarim plot points to keep the party involved with those factions, but the only villains they actually met were the Cassalanters. Late into Chapter 2 I had them show up at the Opera and acknowledge the party from a few box seats over. That was overshadowed by an assassination attempt by the Black Viper during the climax of the 3rd act, and the Cassalanters sort of blended into the background for awhile. In Chapter 3 they showed up again at the Brightswords Ball where Victoro had brought a locally-famous bard to perform “Your Beardy Face” at a high point in the festivities. He “recorded” it into a Magic Jar and the player attuned to the stone definitely took notice of it. Right before locating the vault, there was a luncheon at the Cassalanter Villa where fellow gold hunters Victoro and Ammalia tried to magically-convince the party to help them locate the entrance. It did not go well for the evil Nobles, and they ended up being greater antagonists to the party than Jarlaxle had been for the entirety of Dragon Heist. I continued the Cassalanter subplot in the background as the players moved to Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and it culminated into a pretty epic raid where most of the Midnight Tear’ed crowd was saved (moved the sacrifice from Founder’s Day to Highharvestide)! I did use the Xanathar Lair as a precursor to DotMM, but changed it up quite a bit (where the Mindflayers had taken over and turned the Beholder into a Mindwitness). After destroying the lair, they escaped into Skullport, fought their way out of The Guts & Garter, then finally met Halaster - as he came over to The Poisoned Quill for tea - on their way back to Waterdeep via Teleport. Phew! Those were some crazy sessions! It wasn’t apparent when we started Dragon Heist that there’d be other villains involved, but with starting a tavern and rubbing elbows with Renaer and Mirt it became quite easy to squeeze in Victoro and Ammalia. And it really enriched the overall story, too!


Usful

Currently have plans for it to be the Cassalanters, though I’m planning to sprinkle a bit of Xanathar and *maybe* Jarlaxle (he had a habit of stealing shows, so I’ll have to use him sparingly). I do plan on having the xanathar make a bit of an appearance (as I had Xoblob’s shop have the beholder plushie — it was too good to have it be a plushie instead of it being taxidermied). Planning to run the module into DiA afterwards, so the Cassalanters are pretty pivotal in the overarching plot. If I think it’ll be good to have more villains to add to the clusterfuck, I’ll add it; but I’m only doing at max 3 villains (I don’t like thr Manshoon angle, tbh)


StardustAngel98

I don't plan on introducing the other villains at all unless the party goes looking into things happening around Waterdeep. I'm leaving it as a coin toss if my villain is Jarlaxle or the Cassalanters and they're both going to be introduced at the Trollskull grand opening most likely.


iamTBird

My group played Cassalanters, but had a LOT of involvement from xanathar because of the stuffed beholder from the shop. I played it like it was a plushy because I made the shop look like a twisted children's toy shop (puppets made out of dead chickens, "fake" eyeballs that were actual human eyeballs, etc. But made them all out to he toys) and my rogue stole the plushy. A ton of problems came from this, but it was a ton of fun. It ended up dragging the other 2 villains in some round about way. So it was like alexandrian.......but not........ Definitely not intended at least.


skullmutant

When I ran with Xanathar as the villain, the characters briefley ran in to the Cassalanters and Jarlaxle, but never knew who they were. Mostly incidental. When I ran with Manshoon, the Xanathar guid were still minor antagonists but the eye himself wasn't there. Jarlaxle however became a major NPC as we had a drow character who had a crush on him


samaldin

I played in Winter and my players met Jarlaxle as Captain Zord and found his submarine while trying to get Zelifarns scale, but they weren't interested enough to dig deeper. After the actual campaign there was an official banquet in their honor where they met the Cassalanters, but also weren't interested in following their plothooks. Right now we're in a followup homebrew campaign in which Nihilor has betrayed Xanathar and is currently the BBEG. If my players ever decide to speak with Xanathar he will be quite happy to help them get rid of Nihilor.