Tales from the Yawning Portal

Yaztromo · Jun 11, 2017

3 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

The adventures in this book are old time classics, but they also had some well known flaws in their design and this was the perfect opportunity to "fix" them.
They were "just" converted to 5th edition.
This way the "old" players already have the old editions adventures (and it's not too difficult to convert them, especially knowing them inside out by heart as is often the case) and the "new" players are disappointed by the (very well known...) design flaws that nowadays are even more glaring than at the time. A lose-lose situation, unfortunately.

GameOgre · Jul 21, 2017

3 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

The adventures are hit and miss and those they picked well,some of them are known to have issues. Issues that were ignored as the entire adventure was just converted over. Still,well worth the money and it has several top notch adventures alongside several ehh ones.

The book at least is very well made without any of the issues WOTC sometimes has.

Daramere · Aug 2, 2017

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

Tales from the Yawning Portal has a few truly good adventures (such as the early 3E adventures from Bruce Cordell and Keith Baker), a lot of nostalgia (such as Gary Gygax penned adventures from the late 70s), and one that might be both (Dead in Thay). Those classic "killer dungeons," however, are best only approached by those who want that specific experience, as they do not have a modern roleplaying sensibility.

Xaelvaen · Sep 4, 2017

5 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

Honesty - I had already purchased the hardback collection 'Dungeons of Dread (S1 - S4)' a while back and converted them all to 5E for my tabletop. With that in mind, the White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors being extracted, instead of paying for 7 classic 'adventures', I paid for 5 and I still found it very much worth the money. A fantastic, beautiful product.

SharnDM · Nov 5, 2017

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

[FONT=&quot]Tales from the Yawning Portal features seven iconic adventures and dungeons collected from the 40+ year history of Dungeons and Dragons. Updated for the fifth edition of the game we are treated with some of the most famous titles out there, not only from the early days but with many picked from the pages of years recently past as well. Another nice little touch is adding in details of the Yawning Portal itself in the introduction for GMs to use in their campaigns.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I love the idea of this book, it holds so much use for just about any Game Master out there. If you are a beginner, the wealth of resources provided to you by having all of these adventures close at hand is simply fantastic. It provides you something to run for your group if you find you aren’t up to crafting one on your own. If, rather, you feel like taking your first crack at adventure design, how could you do worse than some of the most famous quests ever built? Experienced GMs will likely use this book to run some of these iconic games for fun or pull ideas from the pages. Either way, this book has some serious use![/FONT]

guachi · Nov 17, 2017

1 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

I really wanted to like it. Enough that I bought it as soon as it came out. But it fails as a reprint/update of old modules for a few reasons. Several of the adventures were already reprinted in the S series reprint book making them available in their original form for use in your game.

The updates aren't very good. A bit of time on a DM's part and you can run the original adventures, which are available for $5 in PDF form.

The book just isn't worth your time or money.

pogre · Jan 5, 2018

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

I'm old. I'm nostalgic. I'm certainly the target for these great old adventures that I remember playing over the years. It's hard for me to be critical of this release as a result.

Enrico Poli1 · Apr 3, 2018

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

It's nice to have together these classic adventures with new, fantastic art.
I could say that they were made easier for the new edition, and that hurts, especially for Against the Giants and the Tomb!
Another flaw is the presence of Dead in Thay, absolutely out-of-place in this anthology of classics.
Otherwise a strong book, I hope WoTC will produce others of this kind.

Jerker Kenntoft · Dec 13, 2018

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

5 classic adventures in one go? Yes, that is what you get, and the adventures are very nice. Starless Citadel is in my mind a perfect adventure for new players.
But!
While there ARE alot of content here, alot of it is crammed in. The maps are tiny and kind of useless when you need em, so you'd have to print them out seperately. Playing without the m seperatly is just not gonna happen.

It would be nice if they could supply us with detachable, bigger version of the maps folded at the end, or something.

Jesse David · Feb 5, 2019

4 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal

Experience this as a player, and enjoyed the episodic nature of the adventures much much much more than the overlong, tedious 10+ level 5e campaigns I've played in