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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[ddaley]

This is awesome news. I hope they plan to release more of these!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Uller]

"Most"?
I think you're greatly overestimating how many new people have gotten into the game. Or how many players have family/friends who are experienced gamers.

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.

 

[Celebrim]

So it seems like my experience was a pretty normal way for it to be run as a home game.

Very likely. If I was running it as part of a campaign, I'd definitely run it differently. But, I wouldn't run C1 in the tournament style for real characters any more than I'd run S1 for real characters. Both are just too brutal.

I do know we didn't climb the pyramid.

We opened with the tournament intro. I didn't know about the pyramid at all until I bought the module.

No fair if the DM gives you undetectable poison gas!

We knew about it, we just didn't try to do anything about it until we started to take damage. We had a party of 5-6, 5th to 6th level characters. I don't remember who all showed up for that one. I also don't remember exactly what equipment we had, but I think we had all or most of the magic equipment from the pregen party redistributed among the six of us. I do remember that the fact that we were on a clock made it feel more like we had to deal with problems when they happened, rather than proactively trying to prevent problems by taking things slow, making plans, and being cautious - and created a feeling of panic (rather than the paranoid terror we had for S1). I think we had one cleric, and way too many people taking damage to deal with it. (I was almost certainly a thief, because I was always the party thief, but I honestly don't remember what I played now that I think about.) We got some PCs mauled pretty hard by the pointless vampire encounter before killing it, and I think someone drowned early on in a flood. I don't remember how everyone died, but I was buried in sand.

As for the time limit, we naturally pushed past it, TPKing somewhere around the 4 hour mark(?). Most of us were dead by that point, including me, so my memory of the whole thing isn't as clear as S1.

 

[Uller]

How does a 1st level party with no fore knowledge deal with...

[sblock]The first false entrance that collapses for 5d10 damage no save? (page 3)[/sblock]

Just looking to see your view on this and understand.

That was my thought. ToH was specifically designed to thwart a group of experienced players that approached the adventure like any other dungeon (i.e. lazily...like it is a bunch of bowling pins set up for them to knock down). You have a 2 in 3 chance of finding a false entrance with a very deadly trap. Very few players are going to say "Oh look...we finally found an entrance after digging in the dirt for hours and hours. Let's keep looking for another entrance!" They're going to bid their retainer good-bye, gather up their gear and head into yon dungeon in search of Fortune and Glory(tm) much to the amusement of the DM and to the horror of the retainers ("Good thing we made them pay us half up front! I wonder if they left anything we can sell in the camp?").

My players are very very confident right now. I am hoping to knock them down a bit with Strahd in a beefed up version of CoS. But their typical approach to any dungeon is to look in every nook and cranny hoping to find a secret door or some other weakness that allows them to tackle the dungeon through a backdoor. They take down much of the dungeon piecemeal until the general alarm goes up but by then they have weakened the defenders enough to fight at least to a stalemate, then they rest if they can and finish it off. I would love to run them through ToH and watch them try that approach. I would gather that after half the party was dead they'd rethink it.

I have no idea how ToH compares with SoT. I owned the latter but never played it and don't remember the specifics. I did run ToH and the results lived up to the reputation. Maybe my players were just dumb high school kids...oh wait...they were dumb high school kids. ;-)

 

[ddaley]

I want S4 - Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth! I have the original, but, having a reprint that is updated for 5e would be worth buying.

FINE! I would really like to see the Desert of Desolation series, and failing that, Hidden Shrine.

Happy now!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[ddaley]

I have the original of S3 as well. An updated compilation of S1 - S4 would have been great. Hopefully, they'll update S3 & S4 soon. I'll throw money at those in a heartbeat. They should do a kickstarter, so I can throw money at them before they are even created!

Including S1 and S2 without S3 and S4 is like giving us dinner, but then sending us to bed without dessert.

 

[Celebrim]

That was my thought. ToH was specifically designed to thwart a group of experienced players that approached the adventure like any other dungeon (i.e. lazily...like it is a bunch of bowling pins set up for them to knock down). You have a 2 in 3 chance of finding a false entrance with a very deadly trap. Very few players are going to say "Oh look...we finally found an entrance after digging in the dirt for hours and hours. Let's keep looking for another entrance!"

I generally agree, but the collapsing entrance for 5d10 damage (average 28) is not that deadly to 9th-10th level characters. Most will survive, and basically everyone will survive if you use the common 'death at -10' rule rather than death at 0. And that's assuming you do nothing and just trustingly walk in, which of all the entrances is probably the least likely. Oh, and unlike most of ToH's traps, it leaves a body, which at this level is something.

I did run ToH and the results lived up to the reputation. Maybe my players were just dumb high school kids...oh wait...they were dumb high school kids. ;-)

Ok, invoking the 'ToH' rule: no mentioning something like that without an accompanying story of how at least one PC died.

 

[Uller]

I generally agree, but the collapsing entrance for 5d10 damage (average 28) is not that deadly to 9th-10th level characters. Most will survive, and basically everyone will survive if you use the common 'death at -10' rule rather than death at 0. And that's assuming you do nothing and just trustingly walk in, which of all the entrances is probably the least likely. Oh, and unlike most of ToH's traps, it leaves a body, which at this level is something.

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.

Ok, invoking the 'ToH' rule: no mentioning something like that without an accompanying story of how at least one PC died.

Oh...it was so long ago, I can't recall. I do remember the look on my friend's face when he put a diamond in the gargoyle statue's hand, and it crushed it and dumped it on the floor. They shrugged and moved on without getting the gem of true seeing.