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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[Echohawk]

Curse of Strahd was the first "rehash"; It was a remake of the original module, with a ton of new content added into the landscape around the castle.

Just to emphasize this point, the original I6: Ravenloft was 32 pages. Curse of Strahd is 256 pages. So even if every word of the original was recycled (which isn't the case), Curse of Strahd would still be 87.5% new content.

 

[Vampyr3]

I'm excited to finally hear what Labyrinth is, and especially excited about what it is. Looking forward to this with great interest!

I don't get why people keep bringing up "Labyrinth" it never existed, it was never a product.. yet people think this is it... WOTC said it themselves, it was never a thing.. never was/never will be..

 

[Morrus]

I don't get why people keep bringing up "Labyrinth" it never existed, it was never a product.. yet people think this is it... WOTC said it themselves, it was never a thing.. never was/never will be..

WotC said no such thing. Labyrinth was the code name for Tales from the Yawning Portal, just like Cloak was Curse of Strahd and Dagger was Storm King's Thunder.

 

[pemerton]

Castle Amber

Do you have much experience with this?

I played it nearly 35 years ago - I don't remember much about what that was like.

I GMed it, adapting on the fly to 3E, when 3E had just come out, so 16-ish years ago, as a one-shot (maybe two-shot?). We only got through the West (? I think) wing, and then into the garden. I remeber using a tendriculos for a killer tree or vine or something.

Have you ever read the actual play thread on rpg.net? It's a little on the snide side, but also quite funny.

 

[Jer]

I don't get why people keep bringing up "Labyrinth" it never existed, it was never a product.. yet people think this is it... WOTC said it themselves, it was never a thing.. never was/never will be..

Because "Labyrinth" was the codename for the release coming out in the Spring - i.e. the Tales from the Yawning Portal. People were jumping up and down wondering what the next release would be and now they know. Now people can chew on this for a few days and speculation can turn to what the AP coming for fall might be. I'm actually somewhat surprised that someone hasn't started a thread yet with speculation on what the fall release will be this year...

 

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Vampyr3]

WotC said no such thing. Labyrinth was the code name for Tales from the Yawning Portal, just like Cloak was Curse of Strahd and Dagger was Storm King's Thunder.

Oh sorry, I forgot to drink the Kool Aid this morning before I came on.... my mistake

 

[Jer]

Do you have much experience with this?

I played it nearly 35 years ago - I don't remember much about what that was like.

I'm not Iosue, but I have a lot of experience with Castle Amber. It was one of the handful of adventures I participated in as a player back in the day when I first started playing D&D (along with The Keep on the Borderlands and the Lost City) and is one that I've run multiple times for various groups of players.

Given what you've written, you didn't get to the best parts of the adventure. 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. There are some scenes in the adventure that are truly horrific when you know the atmosphere you're supposed to be evoking as a DM (like the ghostly banquet that is early in the adventure, or the scene inspired by Poe's Fall of the House of Usher - or really any of the scenes with the mad d'Ambreville family members, or the tentacled Brain Eater in the crypt that can come off as comical if you don't know the Lovecraftian inspiration for the beast but played as Lovecraftian horror you can really get a level of creepiness out of it). And then there's the back half of the adventure where the PCs explore a number of dark fantasy locations in a parallel world looking for the keys to open the portal and return home. (I suspect that we won't be getting Castle Amber in these revamps mostly because of that last bit. Averogine is not an old TSR property and I'd bet they would have to negotiate the license with the Ashton-Smith estate to do anything new with it).

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. That was a poor assumption when it was published, and while more people have probably read Lovecraft now than then the same can't be said for Smith. 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. Played as a straight-up dungeon crawl the adventure is not very good. Played as a mystery/horror game along the lines of Ravenloft the adventure can really shine. Definitely something I'm willing to run over and over again for the right groups.

(Moldvay's "The Lost City" suffers from similar problems in my eyes. It's also a fantasy/horror setting that is better thought of in the mold of a Robert E Howard or Clark Ashton-Smith model for fantasy and played that way it's a great adventure. As a straight-up dungeon crawl the Lost City works better than Castle Amber does, and can probably still be considered a classic, but I definitely feel that it is not as good without the creep factor.)

 

[lowkey13]

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