Tales From The Yawning Portal - 7 Classic Dungeons Updated To 5E!

Coming in April is WotC's next official D&D product, Tales from the Yawning Portal. This hardcover book contains seven classic dungeons updated to 5th Edition, from adventures such as Against the Giants, Dead in Thay, Forge of Fury, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Sunless Citadel, Tomb of Horrors, and White Plume Mountain. This is, presumably, the product previously codenamed Labyrinth. It's set for an April 4th release, for $49.95.

When the shadows grow long in Waterdeep and the fireplace in the taproom of the Yawning Portal dims to a deep crimson glow, adventurers from across the Sword Coast spin tales and spread rumors of lost treasures.

Within this tome are seven of the deadliest dungeons from the history of Dungeons & Dragons. Some are classics that have hosted an untold number of adventurers, while others are newer creations, boldly staking a claim to their place in the pantheon of notable adventures.

The seeds of these stories now rest in your hands. D&D’s deadliest dungeons are now part of your arsenal of adventures. Enjoy, and remember to keep a few spare character sheets handy.

For use with the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide, this book provides fans with a treasure trove of adventures, all of which have been updated to the fifth edition rules. Explore seven deadly dungeons in this adventure supplement for the world’s greatest roleplaying game:

• Against the Giants
• Dead in Thay
• Forge of Fury
• Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
• Sunless Citadel
• Tomb of Horrors
• White Plume Mountain

Find it on WotC's site here. Forbes has an interview about it here. Mearls says "We're announcing a new D&D product, a book coming out this spring. It is called Tales from the Yawning Portal(out March 24th in local game stores and April 4th everywhere else) It's a collection of seven of the most famous dungeons from Dungeons & Dragons history. They're all collected in one hardcover book. The idea behind it is not only do you want to capture some of the most famous dungeons from the game's history, but we also wanted to give a selection of adventures that you could in theory start at Level 1 with the first dungeon and play all the way up to Level 15 by playing the adventures one after another."

Cover Image

Gibbering Mouther

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan



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[Sacrosanct]

I don't understand... is this just a collection of old adventures, updated to the 5e rules? That's... it?

I'm a huge fanboy, really, DnD can do no wrong for me... but this is just... lazy?

Maybe I got it wrong?

I don't think it's lazy, and I think it's a good idea. I mean, people have been complaining about wanting shorter adventures. Usually that's followed up with this exchange:

"That's what the DMs Guild is for."
"But those aren't AL legal!!!"

Now WotC has just addressed that. They just gave us a bunch of iconic shorter adventures that are now AL legal. Great move by them, IMO.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The proof will be in the pudding..

Pedantic alert!

It's actually, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

You may carry on now. Sorry, but pet peeve of mine lol. Along with "irregardless" and "I could care less".

 

[DEFCON 1]

So with this product, you can now play the Tomb of Horrors with every edition of the game.

The original S1 for 1E
Included in the Return to the Tomb of Horrors for 2E
The revision of the module for 3E
The revision of the module in Dungeon Magazine 213 for 4E and D&D Next
Included in Tales of the Yawning Portal for 5E

 

[Luchador]

So with this product, you can now play the Tomb of Horrors with every edition of the game.

The original S1 for 1E
Included in the Return to the Tomb of Horrors for 2E
The revision of the module for 3E
The revision of the module in Dungeon Magazine 213 for 4E and D&D Next
Included in Tales of the Yawning Portal for 5E

A thousand ways to die x 5 = five thousand ways to die!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I’m curious if they’ll adjust the difficulty of Tomb of Horrors for modern sensibilities or leave at set at its original level of murder-machine. I’ve been itching to actually run ToH for years, albeit not with my group’s existing PCs. I’m not that mean of a DM, I think.

How this all translates into the next AL season will be interesting to see. It might be cool if they had a more scattered season, with some adventures involving, say, seeds of the Gulthias Tree from Sunless Citadel, and others about some lost tome of Acerarak. Pretty much using the adventures to expand the lore of the classics.

This is awesome!

But the world was a harsher place back then. Are players today ready for the TPK and other deaths that will happen in Tomb of Horrors and Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan?

 

[JovialLichKing]

I think it's important to note that these classic modules will be updated and converted to 5e, which is a huge plus and super enticing in my mind.

I have many of these in their original form but the hassle of converting them has caused me to avoid running them for my players.

So yeah, I'm stoked about this.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

 

[Luchador]

I’m curious if they’ll adjust the difficulty of Tomb of Horrors for modern sensibilities or leave at set at its original level of murder-machine. I’ve been itching to actually run ToH for years, albeit not with my group’s existing PCs. I’m not that mean of a DM, I think.

How this all translates into the next AL season will be interesting to see. It might be cool if they had a more scattered season, with some adventures involving, say, seeds of the Gulthias Tree from Sunless Citadel, and others about some lost tome of Acerarak. Pretty much using the adventures to expand the lore of the classics.

All I'm saying is that if your Halfling thief sees a really, REALLY dark tunnel-- send in the damn wizard first

 

[jasper]

Hmm. I in.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Jester David]

Meh.
So much meh.

It takes almost no effort to update products from 1e to 5e. I've done White Plume Mountain and Castle Ravenloft pretty much on the fly during the playtest.
In his AMA on Reddit, in response to a question on converting old adventures to 5e, Mike Mearls responded with
"Yes, as long as they are part of the content covered by the Guild. I'd suggest extending the adventure with new content rather than just copying it, because updates to 5e are fairly easy. I think you'd need to add a personal spin to it to get attention."
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/413uu7/dd_ama_with_mike_mearls_and_chris_lindsay_115/cyzk3tv/
Adding a framing device isn't "a personal spin".

And they *just* reprinted three of these in the Dungeons of Dread S-Series compilation so it's not like they're hard to find. The rest will be on DMsGuild in Print on Demand shortly, if not PDF. That is if you're not able to find a used copy anywhere (which is unlikely given how often these were reprinted).

And we just got effective updates of the Giants adventures. I was pretty critical of Storm King's Thunder initially as I felt it was just a retread, but this is *exactly* what this sounds to be.


This just feels like a super, super lazy product.
There had better be a TONNE of extra monsters. And hopefully tweaks, surprises, and revisions to the adventures. I expect not just an update but a complete rewrite. We've learned a lot about adventure design since most were written.


I know a lot of people wanted smaller adventures. Despite being able to strip out dungeons in Princes of the Apocalypse and Storm King's Thunder effortlessly. And despite the numerous small Adventurer's League adventures now on the DMsGuild. And despite the myriad past adventures that are easily updated.

Now, I'm not against that per se. But I'd rather that be NEW small adventures that are linked together. Where people can have those small adventure and I can have my story. Seven giant dungeon crawls lack that story.