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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[Jester David]

I'm torn with this announcement. At first I was excited. Some great adventures there! Then I realized I've been running a lot of classic adventures while converting on the fly. I'm running White Plume Mountain right now. I have the Classic Modules Today conversion guide for it, but have yet to reference it during play. So do I really need this product?

If it brings something new to the table, I think I'll get it. If it's just updated, cleaned up conversions? I'll pass.

I do hope it does well, though. I like the idea of them releasing a collection of standalone adventures.

That's my thoughts.
Enough people want small adventures that I do want them to release a book of stand-alone (yet connected) adventures. But I'd like them to be new and not reprints. So I want this to do well enough that more small adventures can come, but not so well the do a direct sequel with more easily converted adventures.

 

[darjr]

There was another in store event with multiple tables against a dracolich and her lair. The sidebar was about how to run it with a single table.

 

[pkt77242]

That's my thoughts.
Enough people want small adventures that I do want them to release a book of stand-alone (yet connected) adventures. But I'd like them to be new and not reprints. So I want this to do well enough that more small adventures can come, but not so well the do a direct sequel with more easily converted adventures.

What I want is a book of short adventures that are themed that includes classics and some new ones. Such as having a I3-I5 and X4 and X5 with 2 new desert adventures. I think the ideal mix would be 3-5 classics with 2-4 new adventures.

 

[Lupinus]

I was really hoping at least one of the adventures would be for levels 16-20.

 

[JeffB]

What I want is a book of short adventures that are themed that includes classics and some new ones. Such as having a I3-I5 and X4 and X5 with 2 new desert adventures. I think the ideal mix would be 3-5 classics with 2-4 new adventures.

I would buy products like that. A mix of old and new riffing off the same themes. Or like with the Slave Lords compilation where they added a new low level adventure to kick things off. If they took I3-5 and gave us some new locations/adventures preceding and afterward (not necc entrenched in the main adventures but lead ins/complementary to, maybe a sandboxy gazetteer for the region). Also would work great with X4/5.

Or somethinng like new intro adventures leading to X1 then some other new adventures in the region/islands (could resurrect "the treasure of the hideous one" too) and then maybe ending with Isle of the Ape.

 

[Prakriti]

I was really hoping at least one of the adventures would be for levels 16-20.

True, a missed opportunity there. Levels 16-20 still aren't supported by published adventures. The only trouble is, there aren't really any classic level 16-20 dungeons.

 

[araquael]

Interesting thread.

Does Dead in Thay's inclusion do anything weird to the order of the Sundering fiction (if it does anything at all)?

Furthermore, might this model of repackaging older adventures be a clever way to "rehabilitate" a lot of 4E content back into the current "canon"? Maybe do the Herkenwold stuff for 5E and put it in the Realms?

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

I wonder if you could stuff all these dungeons in a sandboxy game, starting out in a town with rumers about the 2 lowest level dungeons.
If they complete one of them start adding rumors of the higer level dungeons.
and fase ou the rumors of the dungeons they now are to high level for, but make up what happens if thse bad guys got away with what they whwew planning.

 

[Lanefan]

Against the Giants
This is an odd choice, as it was semi-updated for 5e already with Storm King's Thunder. I'm not sure what WotC was thinking with this. It doesn't even really have an "end" as the drow element likely won't be included.
The level range might have been a factor, but several of the I series would have been the same level range, as would The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

Thumbs down

Storm King, however, is intended as its own self-contained AP; here the G-series can be used together, as three stand-alones, as one-offs, or whatever; with much less effort required to strip out the story elements you don't want. And...Giants!

Forge of Fury
I imagine this and Sunless Citadel are the first, safe attempt at viewing 3e adventures and content as classical adventures or seeing how nostalgia there is for these books. This way they can see if they should look to other 3e adventures for inspiration or as the sources of storylines, or just focus on 1e.

The DMsGuild description says "It distinguishes itself less for truly innovative dungeon and encounter design than it does for providing a good, solid, old-school adventuring experience." Which is something of an ironic as most of the classic dungeon craws were old-school for the innovative and creative dungeons. This seems very much in line with my experiences with past Rich Baker adventures: so-so encounters and bland dungeons.
But the uneven encounters and challenging fights do make it sound nice and old school. Although this will be far less challenging in 5e if done straight: ropers are far lower in CR.

Thumbs up

Where I really hope they keep it challenging, even nasty in parts, as that's what makes it good. FoF is probably the best of all the 3e-era modules I've seen.

Tomb of Horrors
This mean we're unlikely to see a Return to the Tomb of Horrors storyline. Which is fine. I imagine this product exists because they needed to do something with classics like that or Hidden Shrine or White Plume Mountain, but couldn't turn them into full storylines of their own. So this is a way to just take those off the board all at once. This way they're not trying to do a Tomb of Horrors storyline where you run around from level 1 to 10 doing unrelated things before trying to attempt a demilich lair battle at level 13.

This adventure is a bit of a mess with it's illogical solutions to "puzzles". Where the solution to the "puzzle" isn't signalled anywhere. There are no clues and you either need to succeed through brute force (either definition). I'd actually pay good money to see this dungeon with better solutions that rewards creativity rather than just weird luck and having the exact right spell prepared. And a little more margin for error in the traps, where you have a round or two to consider a solution before death.
Let's face it, Tomb of Horrors is full of traps. Not traps for the characters, but traps for the players. All of the players, as there are plenty of DM traps here as well. This is a dick module that makes the person running it a dick.

Tumb dependant on execution

The solutions do reward not just creativity, but careful (to the point of boring, I must say) play and teamwork. I've been in a group that's played and beaten* it using only some of the pre-gen characters in the module.

* - we destroyed Acererak's phylactery/ies but didn't actually defeat the lich itself, instead we outmaneuvered it, took the treasure item we were there for, and left.

It's an interesting inclusion in this compilation because it's such a contrast in style - all the other modules (except Dead in Thay, never seen that one) are grand hack-fests while ToH is anything but.

White Plume Mountain
Like the Tomb of Horrors, this one depends on the execution. If it's presented as a straight update, or tweaked and revised to conform to modern adventure design.

I've run this and found it to actually be rather terrible. It was a writing sample and it shows. It's the apex of illogical dungeon design. There's no consistency, no reason for the dungeon to exist, and only the flimsiest pretense at a "plot", as if someone designed a dungeon via madlibs or a random dungeon generator. It's an example of how not to design a dungeon.
It's less a singular dungeon that you can just drop into play and more a series of chambers and rooms that you can pull out and use in your own dungeons.

Unlike Tomb of Horrors, I'm not sure this can be redeemed through better phrasing of the puzzle solutions. It's just too much of a mess.

Thumbs down

What do you mean by "conform to modern adventure design"? Designs both bad and good can be found throughout the whole history of D&D...and WPM is far from the worst. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the very illogic of the thing that makes it memorable for the right reasons.

Lan-"I'd run WPM again someday if my players didn't already know it so well"-efan

 

[ddaley]

The Doomvault looks pretty sweet. I had not seen that before.

This is the Doomvault. It is huge.

View attachment 79767


In the original store run version each group of players would each be told to explore a section of this place. As Tales from the Yawning Portal is going to present this as a normal dungeon. The focus will likely be shifted to instead of finding mcguffins with the other groups on a time table, to exploring this massive dungeon.