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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[Mouseferatu]

I hope this ends the complaining...

Hi, Mr. David. Nice to meet you. We're the Internet, and I'm afraid we have some bad news for you...

 

[Salamandyr]

please don't update the art. please don't update the art.

EDIT: didn't realize that was supposed to be the art. Oh well--the gibbering mouther looks nice.

 

[M.T. Black]

I'm really excited to see this. It includes some of my favourite dungeons from past editions, most of which I only own in PDF (these days). It will be fantastic to get a beautiful new hardback with these adventures. There are many, many great adventures that have been written over the 40 year history of the game, and it makes sense to update these for 5e so that all the new players who have joined the hobby can enjoy them.

I can see more anthologies like this being released in the future, and I reckon that is fantastic! I'd love to see "The Lost City" updated, for example, as I think it's a great level 1-3 dungeon. And "Keep on the Borderlands" as well.

Some folk were asking about how the Greyhawk adventures would tie in with the realms. On DragonTalk, they said that the premise was that stories of these "legendary" dungeons were spoken about in the Yawning Portal inn. There's also a suggestion that the inn might serve as some sort of inter-planar nexus.

WOTC have said a few times that all of their worlds are part of a shared world (a meta-multi-verse, so to speak) - so travel from the Realms to Greyhawk is not that big a deal.

 

[Kostchie]

yep

I've just run Sunless Citadel - in the 4th ed world - using 5th ed rules and had a similar experience- easy to convert. Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain (which I own 2 copies from different eras)- those I am interested in- what do they do for 5th ed? Just reference the monsters, fill in the blanks or actually change the modules to allow for the difference in systems/challenge?

Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury are not really set in Greyhawk in any meaningful sense. In fact, I'm trying to remember if they even use Greyhawk names for anything other than the mentions of deities (since those were the default deities from the 3e PHB). So it's more like 4 of the seven.

What's really funny is that I've already run Sunless Citadel as a 5e adventure and I did it all on the fly with no prep beyond marking pages in the Monster Manual for the various beasties in the dungeon. This product may be the first that actually gives me little to no utility since I own all of them except for "Dead in Thay" already. It'll be interesting to see how they connect them all together. And I suspect that at least Against the Giants will get a major revamp to make it a more modern adventure.

 

[Mercule]

As someone who's never played any of these, I freely admit that I find this idea tremendously exciting.

My first real AD&D game was Against the Giants, so I'll pick this up for that nostalgia. I ran Sunless Citadel to pilot 3E, and better than half my current group played it then (holy carp! my daughter, who is playing with us, wasn't even born), so probably won't get use out of it. Otherwise, I don't think I've run/played any of them. Should be fun and a nice change of pace.

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.

I've never heard of the Yawning Portal, so it also qualifies as being unobtrusive to me. After reading Mike's comments on why they chose the name, I'm actually fine with grabbing yet another name from the Realms. Actually, if they don't convert the Greyhawk adventures to be set in the Realms, I will public and fully recant my recent rants about the Realms-centricity in products.

I am one of those who wanted smaller adventures. But yeah, I was not hoping for a re-hash of old ideas. It makes reading the adventures more work than pleasure, and it's less likely that I will buy them.

At the top of my wish list is a full, AP-style, hardcover adventure that's tightly coupled with Eberron. I really doubt I'll get it in the next three years, if ever. The fact that WotC is doing something different means that, well, they're open to doing something different. I'm not going to slam that door on them because they didn't do the Eberron book first. My one requirement is that they kept the (potentially minimal) original setting for each adventure and didn't hack the all into the Realms.

Greyhawk was the second most popular published setting turned up in their research. I would put pretty good money that a plurality, if not an outright majority, of Greyhawk fans are grognards of some fashion, whether native born or conditioned. This could be seen as a very easy win for WotC: They get to cater to their second largest fan base. They can show evidence that they are supporting settings that aren't the Realms, which is encouraging to another significant bloc. The newest of these adventures is something like 15 years old, which is a whole generation of gamers that has never player most of them. Finally, as long as they don't jack with the fluff too much, most of the work is already done, making it less expensive to product; they still have some conversion, typesetting, and printing, but it's a lower-risk product if any of the above are wrong. Seems like it should be a relatively easy sell to whatever brass may not want the to experiment. Relative to what, I don't know.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I think the lens that WotC will judge this book by is simple: if it makes more $ than other AP's, they will make more AP's with collections of short adventures; if makes less $ than other AP's, they will stick to "one big adventure" per AP for the foreseeable future; if make about the same, they will work another book like into the schedule in a year or two.....

 

[timbannock]

I think the lens that WotC will judge this book by is simple: if it makes more $ than other AP's, they will make more AP's with collections of short adventures; if makes less $ than other AP's, they will stick to "one big adventure" per AP for the foreseeable future; if make about the same, they will work another book like into the schedule in a year or two.....

Makes sense. If anything different, it'd be simply adding a third or fourth metric, like "maybe a Dungeon Magazine/compilation of smaller adventures is more worthwhile" (assuming it does well) or something along those lines. But ultimately, yeah, it's completely different from what they've done in 5e so far yet not too risky, so that lens makes a lot of sense.

 

[Ghost2020]

I'm glad there is more product coming out, always a good thing.

I am, however disappointed that it's rehashed stuff, i was hoping for something new. I understand that quite a large number of people have never played or run these adventures. I've run/played all of them except Dead in Thay.

The choices weren't terribly inspired either.

Dead in Thay was not a classic, not in the slightest.

Why not I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City? A far superior adventure to Shrine.

Why not Ghost Tower of Inverness? Great dungeon, and plays quickly.

Against the Giants? Bleh. As people said, we just had giants.

Lost Cavern of Tsojcanth?

How about Tomb of the Lizard King?

How about a trek through Undermountain to round it out at the end?

Tomb of Horrors is just tired. It doesn't make for super adventuring. The follow up 2nd ed boxed set and the 4th ed set were good as it expanded on the base story.

Why not see some basic or expert adventures converted too, just for the fun of it?

I'm sure it'll be a very good product, I'm just feeling it's fairly lazy on their part.
The upside is that a new generation will get to experience these classics (aside from Dead in Thay- NOT a classic )
So there's that.

 

[Sammael]

What's the Yawning Portal?

A famous inn in the city of Waterdeep, run by a notable NPC (Durnan), famous for its passage to Undermountain.

 

[76512390ag12]

Great. I love 5e, it's the first D&D I have ever really liked much (I played and reffed BECMI, AD&D1e, 3e and 3.5e, Pathfinder *and* played 0D&D, and 4e).
I have loved the styling and modularity of 5e, plus the way different traditions can be accomodated at the same table.
So I want to experience some of these older adventures in the 5e rule set with it all done for me, rebooted and re-illustrated. Lovely..

But I also understand why those who are die hards might not grok this, after all I am a longtime Glorantha-RQ fan and the new reprints of RQ2 left me cold, but hey.. if it's 3 books a year, then one of the other 2 might be lovely new stuff for you..

Peace out!