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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[jagerfury]

I don't know if it has been mentioned yet in this thread, but Classic Modules Today is a project that got started in February by Stan Shinn. He has got a bunch of enthusiastic 1e fans (me included) to create 5e conversion guides for original modules. They are all available at the DM's Guild and as you can see by the list 38 guides are currently available with another 37 in the works. Most of the greatest hits can be found in the finished 38. Better yet, WotC is releasing these classics in POD format on a semi-regularly basis. Of course they are all available as PDF too so most any popular 1e module is currently available with a handy 5e conversion guide to save you all the hassle of converting.

 

[Shasarak]

I wonder what the Venn diagram is between people who think publishing Yawning Portal is lazy, and those people who desperately want a 5E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book?

Cause seeing as how a FRCS book would be pretty much a cut and paste from the information they've already written in SKT, SCAG, the 4E setting book, and part of the 3E book for those far-flung sections of Faerun that barely anyone knows about let alone actually run campaigns in so it doesn't matter WHAT information you included there... you could consider doing both books just as lazy. So I wonder how many people are talking out of both sides of their mouth when they say they need one but are pissed about the other?

If you can have a Spell Plague then a 100 year time jump and then a Sundering, a Tiamat summoning, a Rage of Demons, a Ravenloft incursion, a Giant farting contest and you can still cut and paste info from a 3e book for 5e then yeah that is pretty lazy.

Score extra lazy points for rehashing all the old art work as well.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Score extra lazy points for rehashing all the old art work as well.

But they are not doing that. They are making new artwork.

 

[Shasarak]

But they are not doing that. They are making new artwork.

So we are getting the fabled FRCG and you have seen the new art?

Or are you talking about the Yawning Portal?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

So we are getting the fabled FRCG and you have seen the new art?

Or are you talking about the Yawning Portal?

I misread your post. I was talking about Yawning Portal.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

I'll admit I'm cautiously excited. If these are updated right, I can see a lot of people being happy. Wrong, and I don't want to be anywhere near that firestorm.

 

[Demetrios1453]

If you can have a Spell Plague then a 100 year time jump and then a Sundering, a Tiamat summoning, a Rage of Demons, a Ravenloft incursion, a Giant farting contest and you can still cut and paste info from a 3e book for 5e then yeah that is pretty lazy.

Score extra lazy points for rehashing all the old art work as well.

This is a point that some who are asking why some want to have a new FRCS seem to miss - 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 whatsoever for either should I want to do something in that setting, and still be fully up to date with the setting. For good or ill, the Realms, unlike other settings, has moved onward from the last campaign setting book, with changes that it would be nice to see detailed (even if in general terms).

 

[halfling rogue]

This is pretty much exactly what I wanted. Short adventures and old school updates. I've never played/DM'd any of these so it's all new to me. I've heard about almost all of these adventures and have been wanting to run them in 5e. I know that many are already in the DMs Guild but I don't do pdfs so having them all in one book will be great.

This product may have some old schoolers rolling their eyes or might have people think wotc is lazy, but I'm here to tell you I spoke and they listened! Hope those guys eventually get what they want but I'll be getting mine in April!

Also I was excited to hear Mearls say in the Forbes video that they thought about calling this something generic like Greatest Dungeons Compendium 1 (or something) which indicated to me that there will hopefully be a "Compendium 2", etc down the line.

 

[werecorpse]

My first hope is that this is a big success and drives further productions of compiled updated old adventures. As has been pointed out if they are doing the whole G series this is really 9 adventures so less than $6 per adventure. Brilliant.

I always played "standard d&d" in the past 35+ years it never bothered me whether it was greyhawk, forgotten realms or generic as that reflavoring is ridiculously easy, so my second hope is that driven by success of this and d&d classics they produce a similar single best of book of each of the best adventures for a string of loosely connectable Dark Sun, Planescape & Spelljammer adventures (I've never really played in those campaigns but there must be at least 256 pages of decent well flavoured adventures in each campaign)

My third hope is that we get other compilations. Like a greyhawk one: U1-3 + A1-4 + C2 + WG4 finishing with S4. An Al Qadim one including the desert of desolation series,a DragonLance, maybe night below etc.

My reasoning is that they could produce the adventures pretty easily with just a small crew working on them, they scratch the nostalgia, seperate adventures and adventure path itch all at the same time and if they just produce one of these compilations a year they can tie in "guides" that fit the theme. (Psionic when they release Dark Sun, Planar when they do Planescape etc).

A dream I know...

P.s. An even more forlorn hope is that they work something out with Paizo and produce an updated Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide.

P.p.s yes I know I can do all the conversions myself and I probably will if need be but I'm sure there are people out there like me who were vaguely interested in say Dark Sun or Planescape but never got into it but would jump at a relatively straight "best of" conversion.

 

[JeffB]

I don't know if it has been mentioned yet in this thread, but Classic Modules Today is a project that got started in February by Stan Shinn. He has got a bunch of enthusiastic 1e fans (me included) to create 5e conversion guides for original modules. They are all available at the DM's Guild and as you can see by the list 38 guides are currently available with another 37 in the works. Most of the greatest hits can be found in the finished 38. Better yet, WotC is releasing these classics in POD format on a semi-regularly basis. Of course they are all available as PDF too so most any popular 1e module is currently available with a handy 5e conversion guide to save you all the hassle of converting.

Thanks. I have picked a couple of these up and appreciate the work you folks are doing. I own most of the original modules in either print or pdf (after a massive purge of my collection), and for my part, I would much rather use my old stuff than see WOTC reimagining the art, changing up the setting details and rewriting them in whole or part. I started playing when G1 had just hit the shelves and the thought of re-writes by WOTC* for a new audience are like the thought of Lucas' Special Editions - barf.


*Having seen Perkins' and SKR's rewrites/riffs off the Giant series in Dungeon Mag and ATG:TLoG for example.