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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[Jer]

the setting has seen some substantial changes since even the 4e campaign setting, let alone the excellent 3e version, which is now 100 years and two cataclysms in the past. Meanwhile, I can, for example, easily use my 3e Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and Anna B Meyer's amazing Greyhawk map with no changes

This is why what Wizards needs to do the next time the revamp the Forgotten Realms campaign setting is:

* Make a single, system neutral "Atlas and Gazeteer to the Realms" (or whatever they want to call it) set in year XXXX.
* Stop advancing the timeline in the setting material and leave it up to individual tables to do what they will.

It's not the 90s anymore. "Metaplot" was a way to make books attractive to people who weren't actually playing the games that the metaplot was running through. RPGs don't sell that way anymore and that model has some severe detriments to it. Like the fact that people view perfectly good campaign material as "out of date" because it isn't "current with the timeline".

Plus it makes the campaign setting difficult to use. I only use the Realms with people who haven't read Realms fiction or don't have experience in the Realms. I refuse to run it for anyone who is a huge Realms fan. Because my version will diverge from the expectations set by the fiction and I don't want to disappoint them and I certainly am not going to work to make my game "canon" in any way.

On the other hand, my 3rd edition Eberron material remains perfectly good material for starting up a new campaign because they didn't advance the timeline - not in 3rd edition or in 4th edition. And the novels pretty clearly set up a version of Eberron that is "one path" that the setting "might take" from the initial material. That's an excellent way to handle the fiction - and the way the Realms should handle it in the future. I don't begrudge the way they handled it in the 90s - it's how you sold books in the 90s after all. But that model just doesn't work anymore at the level it needs to to support a company - and arguably given what happened to TSR in the end it didn't really work then either. They need a better approach to keep things viable in the future and I hope they figure it out before they set about publishing any updated Campaign Settings, but especially before they publish what is arguably the company's Most Important Campaign Setting.

 

[Wurm1234]

What's the Yawning Portal?

The Yawning Portal is the name of the Waterdhavian tavern that sits atop the most famous (but not the only) entrance to Undermountain. Undermountain is probably the most famous dungeon in the Forgotten Realms and served as the basis for many/most of the early adventures in FR. I sourced this from "Halls of Undermountain", a 4e sourcebook.

 

[Iosue]

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.

I, too, have been playing D&D since 1988, and I've never played any of the adventures in TftYP. The closest I've come is skim-reading Tomb of Horrors.

 

[Jester David]

This is why what Wizards needs to do the next time the revamp the Forgotten Realms campaign setting is:

* Make a single, system neutral "Atlas and Gazeteer to the Realms" (or whatever they want to call it) set in year XXXX.
* Stop advancing the timeline in the setting material and leave it up to individual tables to do what they will.

That exists. It's called the Forgotten Realms Wiki:
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

 

[Iosue]

That exists. It's called the Forgotten Realms Wiki:
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

I suspect that's one reason they are reluctant to do a campaign setting. What can they put out that can come close to the comprehensiveness and detail of the Wiki? And a campaign setting gets further out of date with each new release. The Wiki is only going to grow. And it's free!

 

[Morrus]

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 mailmarke thing.

That was just a spambot; it's been dealt with. They often post snippets of previous posts. But please don't tell other users to go away - simply report problem posts and let the mods handle things. Thanks!

 

[Jester David]

Just musing about my thoughts on the various adventures included.

Against the Giants
This is an odd choice, as it was semi-updated for 5e already with Storm King's Thunder. I'm not sure what WotC was thinking with this. It doesn't even really have an "end" as the drow element likely won't be included.
The level range might have been a factor, but several of the I series would have been the same level range, as would The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

Thumbs down

Dead in Thay
Another odd choice, as this one is was already published for 5e, albeit for the playtest. This doesn't so much need an "update" as a couple monsters. Did they need something appropriate at this level range?

I was disappointed by Dead in Thay as it was supposed to be the conclusion of the Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle plot, which was kinda/sorta continued in Scourge of the Sword Coast. But then that story just sorta went away and didn't really have a satisfying end, making Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle less interesting and more problematic.
If they were going to reprint Dead in Thay, they probably should have just done a big Dreams of the Red Wizards storyline that combined all thee of the above, fixes the story issues, fills in the level gaps, and has an actual frakking ending.

In defence of this inclusion, it was never physically printed before. Being originally available on the defunct D&D Classics site, and now on the DMsGuild and DriveThruRPG. And a Copper/Electrum seller, it's only really moved 300 or so copies on those two sites. So there are a lot of gamers who have never seen this adventure.

Thumbs down

Forge of Fury
I imagine this and Sunless Citadel are the first, safe attempt at viewing 3e adventures and content as classical adventures or seeing how nostalgia there is for these books. This way they can see if they should look to other 3e adventures for inspiration or as the sources of storylines, or just focus on 1e.

The DMsGuild description says "It distinguishes itself less for truly innovative dungeon and encounter design than it does for providing a good, solid, old-school adventuring experience." Which is something of an ironic as most of the classic dungeon craws were old-school for the innovative and creative dungeons. This seems very much in line with my experiences with past Rich Baker adventures: so-so encounters and bland dungeons.
But the uneven encounters and challenging fights do make it sound nice and old school. Although this will be far less challenging in 5e if done straight: ropers are far lower in CR.

Thumbs up

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
One of the few here I've actually played part of. Never made it out of the first level and I think I missed most of the little bonuses and extras. The inability to sit and rest in the lower levels made this tricky.
This is a solid choice for this product, being well known yet not as iconic, and having a different tone and aesthetic that would make it harder to include as a singular storyline. And there's less of a "villain" to build a story around.

Thumbs up

Sunless Citadel
A safe choice. Not the best first level adventure ever, but one of the few that's dungeon based (unlike Keep on the Borderlands). And as I said earlier, this is likely the first, safe attempt at viewing 3e adventures as "classics" or "nostalgic".
As the first adventure of 3e, a lot of people played this, so it has a strong appeal to play again or for experienced gamers to use as an introduction for new players. It might be be the most played adventure here, rather than most-heard-about or most-read.

With a Tiamat killing story in the can there's two adventures that end with "kill a big ass dragon". An Ashardalon storyline doesn't seem as strong a choice. While reimagining the first 3e "adventure path" into a much more consistent storyline and less episodic mess would be interesting (and even desirable) that would have to be many years in the future, so it's safe to just do these now. If they decide to return to Ashardalon later, they can start with The Speaker in Dreams. (Or just do the much more interesting Dragon Mountain.)

Thumbs up

Tomb of Horrors
This mean we're unlikely to see a Return to the Tomb of Horrors storyline. Which is fine. I imagine this product exists because they needed to do something with classics like that or Hidden Shrine or White Plume Mountain, but couldn't turn them into full storylines of their own. So this is a way to just take those off the board all at once. This way they're not trying to do a Tomb of Horrors storyline where you run around from level 1 to 10 doing unrelated things before trying to attempt a demilich lair battle at level 13.

This adventure is a bit of a mess with it's illogical solutions to "puzzles". Where the solution to the "puzzle" isn't signalled anywhere. There are no clues and you either need to succeed through brute force (either definition). I'd actually pay good money to see this dungeon with better solutions that rewards creativity rather than just weird luck and having the exact right spell prepared. And a little more margin for error in the traps, where you have a round or two to consider a solution before death.
Let's face it, Tomb of Horrors is full of traps. Not traps for the characters, but traps for the players. All of the players, as there are plenty of DM traps here as well. This is a dick module that makes the person running it a dick.

Tumb dependant on execution

White Plume Mountain
Like the Tomb of Horrors, this one depends on the execution. If it's presented as a straight update, or tweaked and revised to conform to modern adventure design.

I've run this and found it to actually be rather terrible. It was a writing sample and it shows. It's the apex of illogical dungeon design. There's no consistency, no reason for the dungeon to exist, and only the flimsiest pretense at a "plot", as if someone designed a dungeon via madlibs or a random dungeon generator. It's an example of how not to design a dungeon.
It's less a singular dungeon that you can just drop into play and more a series of chambers and rooms that you can pull out and use in your own dungeons.

Unlike Tomb of Horrors, I'm not sure this can be redeemed through better phrasing of the puzzle solutions. It's just too much of a mess.

Thumbs down


The big catch with this product is while there are few gamers who have played all these adventures, there are likely few who haven't played at least one. That makes it less desirable as a 1-14 storyline adventure.
And the fact of the matter is, people who haven't played Tomb of Horrors or Against the Giantshave NOT done so because it wasn't available. It was available for every prior edition - often in multiple formats - and updating adventures isn't hard. People chose to play other adventures. While these adventures have been updated before, and it does kinda make sense to update them again, I'm not a fan of this coming at the expense of a storyline adventure. But, with the seeming limit of three books per year and this being a poor fit for the fall accessory product, I don't suppose there was an alternative.
In theory this will introduce new players to these "classic" adventures. Allow a new generation to read these products. It will be interesting to see how this product does. I'll pick it up for review purposes for my blog, but I'm not sure it will ever leave my shelf after that...


I'm curious to see what the Adventurer's League is doing now for this season. Since there's not a lot of side stories or adventures that can be told about this. I imagine - like Curse of Strahd - the Neverwinter MMO isn't doing much with this adventure.

WotC has kinda settled into a "big story/small story" rotation in that respect. The Winter story gets less digital support and so far has generally been a retreat of a classic: Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Ravenloft, and now this. While the summer storyline is different and more "new" but also larger in scope, tying into stuff like Acquisitions Incorporated (and now Force Grey), convention play, Neverwinter, and the like.

 

[Echohawk]

Out of curiousity, I did a quick check of the page count of each of the original adventures, including maps, but not covers:

Tomb of Horrors: 34 pages
White Plume Mountain: 14 pages
Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan: 44 pages
Against the Giants: 38 pages
Forge of Fury: 34 pages
Sunless Citadel: 34 pages
Dead in Thay: 106 pages

Total: 304 pages

The last four WotC adventure releases have all been 256 pages, which gives us ±36 pages per adventure for Tales. That seems about right, and probably means White Plume will get the most substantial update, and Dead in Thay the heaviest cutting.

 

[darjr]

Wow, white plume mountain is only 14 pages?

It looms so much larger in my memory.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Does anybody know what the original level ranges of these adventures where ?