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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[Demetrios1453]

Yes. Most. Most current active players have not played most of the adventures in TftYP. It's an opinion. I'm not going to go looking up hard sales numbers. Mr Mearls sums it up nicely when he observed that he didn't own more than a handful of 2e products and WotC's market research indicated that's the norm. It certainly matches my experience. There were so many products available for 1e, 2e and 3e, only the most hardcore groups could have come close to playing them all. It is unlikely that any currently active individual DM owns more than a couple of these. You seem to be suggesting that the market of current active players who would consider buying WotC products is comprised mostly of old school grognards with vast libraries of old adventures. That seems unlikely to me.

I'm guessing that WotC/Hasbro believes the same thing.

CoS is anything by lazy. It took one of the best adventures ever written (and really the first actually well polished adventure module) and made it better. I see no reason not to expect more of the same from WotC with this product.

Sure, copies of all of these could be obtained and updated to 5e by anyone. But I have no interest in doing that. I updated G1 to D&D Next. It was fun...but I'm much more curious to see WotC's take on it. They did a far more thorough job with CoS than I ever would have and I can discuss CoS with folks in the community. I'm about to run my group through the Castle Ravenloft portion of it and the advice I have found within the community is invaluable.

A big part of the fun of published official adventures is the shared experience of the community. Now people in the community that never would have experienced any of these adventures will get to experience them and those of us who have experienced them before will get to experience them again but with a new take by new players and new writers and artists. WotC is betting that that is the case. I guess we'll see if it's true.

I get that it's not for everyone. If you happen to have played through all these before and many of the people in your group have played even a few of them they are probably useless to you. They aren't going to hit 100% of the market every time. Hopefully next time will be more to your liking. For me, this product is very interesting.

I've been playing D&D since 1988, and the only one of the adventures in this book that I've played is White Plume Mountain.

 

[Celebrim]

I was referring more to the notion that 1st level characters could "beat" it. It probably depends on your definition of winning. If it is "leave the dungeon alive after watching most of the party die" then I suppose it is true.

I define 'winning' or 'beating the module' with respect to ToH as getting out alive with Acererak's treasure. Defeating the Demilich is literally not possible with any of the PreGen parties, as none of them have the methods (and player's have no way of knowing the methods either). But 1e AD&D play awards XP primarily based on loot obtained, so I believe this is a reasonable measurement.

I have heard however of groups that managed to destroy Acererak in tournament play using a Gygax approved method (its sketchy, but since we have his seal on it, it works). However, it's not clear to me that they could have discovered that method without reading the text. If they did, and weaponized the trap based on exploration and creativity, then my hat is off to them. They are truly dungeon crawlers without peer.

 

[Queer Venger]

Woah .... that's dark, man! I was not expecting this thread to go all Bundy.

Anyway, I think some people miss the point re: nostalgia. Too much nostalgia can kill a product.* On the other hand, D&D has been around for a very long time (using 1976 as the date, that means 40 years). Which in turn means that the people who played it as kids/teens, especially during the so-called Golden Age when it was more of a pop-culture phenomenon, would be at the point where they can teach it to their children and/or extended families.

You want a mix of the old and the new. New generations of players will have their own stories to tell, and there is a benefit to keeping those crusty old players in the game as well to teach their young 'uns to play (and/or to yell that it isn't as good as it used to be).



*Fun fact- nostalgia used to be considered a mental illness; the pain from recalling the past.

Not so fun fact- Homosexuality was also considered to be a mental illness.

 

[wwanno]

If the 1st level party has a few low level potions or scrolls it is quite doable. How few they need is a matter of debate, but possibly as little as one potion of flying would be sufficient for a 1st level party to complete the module.



I have as hard of time believing you in this than you have believing me in the ease that Tomb of Horrors be defeated. You either didn't run it as written (ignored poison gas, or played the 'top down' non-competition manner), or you had parties that were vastly higher level than those suggested. How you could have ran it multiple times without at least one party trying to take a rest in the dungeon and start choking to death on the 'carbon monoxide' or wandering around until they were deep into the death clock without finding an exit I have no idea.



Seriously, if I could recite the clue poem, I could run Tomb of Horrors purely from memory. I know the adventure very well.

1) I'm not understating the exception. Acererak is not killable as written by parties of the suggested levels (or any of the pregen characters). The successful party just chooses not to fight him. So my assumption is that a party clever enough to reach him would simply choose not to fight (since he's helpless unless you choose to attack him) or would run away immediately once combat started, losing just 1 character.

2) The fact that I'm not misunderstanding the module is precisely why a 1st level party can beat the module. There are basically no required combat encounters in the module. Arguably if you need to get the ring to open the door in the chapel (because you don't have one of your own), you might run into the snakes in the chest, but they are IIRC just 1HD and even a low level party being cautious should be able to take them down (a single sleep spell does it, for example). All the traps are passive. They only kill you if you touch them. Almost all are gravity based, most can be bypassed just by probing with a 10' long pole or tossing a heavy sack of dirt out in front of you, and being able to fly bypasses almost every trap in the dungeon with ease. The one exception that might TPK the party is cured by having the thief that is probing ahead of the party be on a rope so you can reel him back. It's not that hard of a dungeon if you don't do things that are stupid. When I was in junior high, we got through but didn't get the treasure, and lots of people have beat it.

3) Again, the Will o' the Wisp is basically an unkillable nightmare beast when you run up against it at that level. It's an active nasty foe that can chase you down. It's almost impossible to hurt. It's AC is bonkers for a party of this level, with most of the party only hitting on a natural 20. Nothing in Tomb of Horrors chases the party down. And it's not even the only beasty that you've got to fight. And as far as traps go, the sand trap in 'Hidden Shrine' is worse than all but two traps in 'Tomb of Horrors' (the slime curtains, and the unsavable sleep gas + juggernaut), and is harder to avoid than both of those.

4) While the level of the party doesn't matter as much as playing cautiously in Tomb of Horrors (because many traps bypass saves and hit points), a party of 9th-10th level characters still has vastly more resources available to it than 5th-6th level characters. There is far more room for error in Tomb of Horrors. If you foolishly fall into a spiked poisoned pit in Tomb of Horrors, you'll still probably survive. And if you don't, that's what 'raise dead' is for. Clerics of this level have tons of experience using 'neutralize poison'. You have zero room for mistakes in 'Hidden Shrine', and if you are under-leveled you are dead. But as I pointed out, being under-leveled in Tomb of Horrors just gives you less margin for error. If you play perfectly, you never fight anything or take damage anyway.

'Hidden Shrine' is a nightmare. Having ran it a couple of times, I'm wholly unconvinced you ran it as written. Again, because of the time pressure and the lethality of monsters, it takes considerable planning to figure out how to beat the module even if you know the text. It's still a hideously dangerous module if you are overleveled for it. By comparison, if you are overleveled for Tomb of Horrors, you probably cast 'Find the Path' and found the module a joke.



You keep repeating all this stuff about 'intention' as if that was proof of anything. Both modules were tournament modules. The fact remains, that as written 'Hidden Shrine' is vastly harder than 'Tomb of Horrors'. Did you or did you not track every turn that they were in the Shrine, and how the heck did they get out before everyone died? It's hard to path out of the lower levels before the sand runs out on the timer even if you know which way to go! Average random walks are invariably lethal. The module is designed to kill 9 parties in 10 just by random bad luck before it even gets out of the first level. Even with parties of 6 or 8 characters (compared to the 3(!!) you are allowed in tournament play) it's a reliable TPK.

I totally agree with you about ToH, if you roll any dice in there, you are playing wrongly, because there is no need at all.

The module was not written to kill PCs, it was written to kill those PCs whose players rely only on stats and dice rolling, without actually think.

And it is successful in its intent!

Inviato dal mio ASUS_Z00AD utilizzando Tapatalk

 

[pemerton]

*shrug* Different people, different preferences.

I have a good deal of experience with Castle Amber. It is very old-school (in the best ways) and very creative. I have also run it in 5e (twice). It worked really well.

One of my all-time favorite modules.

Maybe some mis-communication: I've got nothing against X2, and hope to run it again some time. (If I do, it will probably be using AD&D as the system).

I still think the RPGnet thread is funny and interesting.

I'm not Iosue, but I have a lot of experience with Castle Amber.

<snip>

Given what you've written, you didn't get to the best parts of the adventure.

As I said, my memories from playing it are zero. Refeering it, I remember the barbarain boxing against the magen, and maybe the lion-headed guy, but it's all a bit shaky but for the killer tree.

The adventure is inspired by the works of Edgar Alan Poe, Clark Ashton-Smith and HP Lovecraft (with a heavy dose of CAS) and it's a horror/fantasy adventure for D&D written before Ravenloft - meaning that they didn't yet know how to convey horror in an adventure.

<snip>

The adventure suffers from a lack of explanation of what it's trying to be - it assumes that the DM has read Clark Ashton-Smith and HP Lovecraft and Edgar Alan Poe and that the DM will understand what's going on.

<snip>

It also has a "mystery" in it but never makes it clear to anyone - player or DM - that there's a mystery to be solved. And it has a lot of straight-up dungeon crawl elements to it that don't seem to make sense except when you remember the era it was written in.

Yeah, I've never had any trouble with any of this. Not to say that I'm necessarily good at GMing that, but I can recognise it.

When I was running it I was also playing up the absurd elements - I think you have to. (Absurd doesn't have to be light-hearted - eg Waiting for Godot.)

 

[SpiritOfFire]

I have not played these classics. I'm an excited noob right now. Will pick up to DM, but I wish I could experience some of these as a player instead

 

[Ath-kethin]

Will pick up to DM, but I wish I could experience some of these as a player instead

. . . and right there, you describe what it's like to be a DM at least 80℅ of the time.

 

[Staffan]

Just a random thought now that I've gotten through the comments, but are these adventures meant to played consecutively, or are they just smaller "bite sized" adventures to be thrown in your campaign at any time?

As I understand it, they're stand-alone adventures, but their levels match up so you can run them as a level 1 to whatever campaign if you're so inclined.

As for the "But everyone already has these and have played them" issue: I've been playing D&D since the early 90s (and other RPGs since about 1985). The only one of these adventures I've played is The Sunless Citadel (I also have The Forge of Fury lying around somewhere, but never played it). D&D is also currently experiencing a boom with lots of new players who never played anything before 5e (one of my two regular gaming groups is like this - I'm the only player who has played D&D before, though most of the others have some RPG experience).

 

[MonsterEnvy]

So they use the good old Yawning Portal in the title to suck in the Realms fans only to find that only one of them is a Realms adventure. *snip spam link* -Darkness

So they use the good old Yawning Portal in the title to suck in the Realms fans only to find that only one of them is a Realms adventure.

Go away Corpsetaker. This is literally the same line you used at the start of the thread not even a single word of difference. Also get rid of the *snip spammed site's name* -Darkness thing.

Also to be exact. One adventure is Realms, 3 are Greyhawk, 3 are generic d&d. All of them can be put into whatever world you would like.

 

[guachi]

I think that the reason C1 hooked a lot of us (and I view it as a somewhat forgotten gem) was the mesoamerican flavor, which at the time was a real eye-opener. Not to mention this was before even Indiana Jones and the like.

I think from the modern eye it suffers from being a little too trap-heavy and lacking a plot;* kinda like Tomb of Horrors. In addition, like many old school modules, it was railroady in the extreme.

*Typical plot- you need to kill stuff, avoid getting killed, and get loot.

Indiana Jones (1 & 2) really was a big influence, at least on me, in my love for D&D. Maybe there was something at the time that these kinds of explorations of exotic places would be fun for Americans to partake in, either in a theater or as a game. I don't really know as I was quite young.

However, your listing of the two of the adventures being railroady and plotless hits on why I'm not as excited as I otherwise might be about this book. I don't have much desire to play either Shrine or Tomb no matter the edition. Though I will say that "Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan" is one of the the greatest names for a module ever. My friend's parents owned it back in the day and I wanted to play it on the title and cover alone.