D&D 5E I Ran the Yawning Portal's Tomb of Horrors

[tglassy]

Ah, yep, he must have missed that.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World

 

[Jester David]

I got Tales... last night and the first thing I looked at was ToH. Meh, 5e just isn't for a module like this IMO. Sure you can have fun with it but I just don't think it fits the style of the game these days. 5e is a bit safe and "nerfed" compared to 1e and it just didn't seem very threatening. The Sphere of Annihilation is more tingly than annihilating these days. And the lack of the handouts that the original had blows.

The DMG sphere is, yeah, but the one in TftYP just auto-kills. As does the sliding pit into fire, the juggernaut, the raising chamber, and at least one or two others.
The only "nerf" I saw was the damage from falling rocks in one of the false entrances.

 

[Jester David]

Reading this makes me wish WotC had taken more poetic license with Tomb of Horrors. Made it something that grognards would recognize, but with better design.

I think that was a design choice to stay as close as possible instead of re-imagining. But yeah, all of them being reboots instead of updates would also have made compelling dungeons.

I have a conspiracy theory on this.
That this module was literal filler: that it was not planned but Chris Perkins was killed by work in 2016 with the live shows and Volo's Guide to Monsters and couldn't focus on the spring adventure. So Mearls, Crawford, Kim Mohan (with Chris Sims, Sean K Reynolds, and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes) just quickly threw this together. Which is why they recycled a few maps (plus the entire Doomvault) and didn't do more than an editing pass.

But, like every conspiracy theory, there's zero proof beyond my crazed tin foil hat speculations.

 

[Charles Rampant]

It certainly seems like a possibility. I think also that it struck them as the lowest-effort way to appease two separate camps:

1) Those who wanted old-school vibes
2) Those who wanted shorter adventures

There is probably a fair amount of overlap between these two groups as well. I also observe here on ENWorld that many who dislike the APs do so in part because of how involved they are - you cannot just pop open Out of the Abyss at the table and go, whereas you absolutely could do that with, say, The Sunless Citadel - you only need to skimread the dungeon and you're set.

Nevertheless, by putting the book out, they have produced a product that will fill a particular store shelf niche ("I want a book for tonight's game, easy to run") and which suits grognards and lovers of drop-in dungeon crawls. I am certain that they could have made something themselves to do all of this; but I suspect that the cost in man-hours would have been much higher. In fact, I suspect that Tales will be an exceptionally profitable book for them, all told; the cost of writing it is pretty minimal, sales appear strong, and it stands out from the rest of the books at the moment.

 

[Theodoxus]

Just to point out in fact, that Siren is the name of a fey creature. It's not a siren, as in a sea creature the beguiles sailors, per se. For one, she's chaotic good, and siren's are typically evil in previous incarnations, and two, every mention of her is "Siren"; "the fey being Siren", "Siren will converse", etc. Not "The siren"...

But since the MM doesn't have sirens, she makes a good template (other than alignment) and I'd use it as a decent substitute.