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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[Parmandur]

I like Perkin's story. It adds up.



It certainly can be assumed that those in bold above might be sharing stories from other places. It an adventuring inn, where else would you go to tell your tales?

A good story trumps blank spaces; I'm curious to see what the Season 6 AL modules do. My money is on Undermountain adventures.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm referring to the players handling demon NPCs in OotA and giants in SKT

Then I have good news for you.

The suggestion in OotA to give players demon lords to control is based on the assumption their regular characters are wimps than must be benched or they will break in half. The entire module is severely carebearian like that. The good news is that unless your players are very fresh, unless you play the game with all the options turned off, you can ignore that and ignore it very easily indeed.

Just let your level 15 characters have at it. They should easily be able to take down a Demon Lord or three, especially weaker ones. Big boys like Orcus is one thing, but Demon Lords like Juiblex are trivially easy to use abusive tactics like kiting on - they are defenseless against anything else than a head-on assault by the PCs; they have simply not been given any tools in their toolboxes (stat blocks) relevant for a high-level combat encounter.

There is a severe mismatch between what the module authors think the heroes are capable of and what a real level 15 party will actually be able to do, especially if you have used the cool and fun options provided by the rulebook such as feats, multiclassing and/or magic items.

So there is no need to throw the accusation of sidelining the PCs at OotA. Yes, the module authors believe this is necessary, but then again this is the same authors that pit goblins and minotaurs against double-digit levelled player characters as if that wasn't ridiculously easy encounters.

 

[robus]

Just let your level 15 characters have at it. They should easily be able to take down a Demon Lord or three, especially weaker ones. Big boys like Orcus is one thing, but Demon Lords like Juiblex are trivially easy to use abusive tactics like kiting on - they are defenseless against anything else than a head-on assault by the PCs; they have simply not been given any tools in their toolboxes (stat blocks) relevant for a high-level combat encounter.

Cool. As I might have mentioned I'm planning on reworking OotA as a high-level adventure 15-20 where the PCs get to clean out the Underdark of the demon infestation. I'll make sure the demons have lots of back up to keep it challenging

 

[CapnZapp]

If you add more foes, be careful though - the difficulty quickly ramps up with more enemy actions.

It is the "solo Demon Lord against a rabble of pesky heroes" scenario that doesn't work properly. If you can accept the BBEG having to rely on non-trivial henchmen things quickly balance out.

(the reason for this is action economy. If and when a player character directs its action for a turn towards a henchman, even to instakill him, that is one action fewer that is directed towards the BBEG. Add just a few not-very-threatening henchmen and a wise party will ignore them and still focus on taking down the BBEG asap: this doesn't work properly since it goes down too fast with default stats. Add more numbers or power to the henchmen; enough for the party to have to deal with them first, and the BBEG's staying power is enough for a decent showing

A designer of a CR 20ish BBEG needs to fully understand that a high level party unloading into a full supernova will deal 500 hp worth of damage in a single round and/or making multiple imprisoning/shutdown attempts; thus any Solo BBEG with only 300 hp and only 3 legendary saves isn't even remotely compatible with the game itself)

 

[Fildrigar]

This is the kind of stuff I can’t stand because there are some things in the Realms that do have a long standing story that should be adhered

I suspect that you have a fundamental misunderstanding about the Realms.

They are now and have always been mutable. The original source was an unreliable narrator. They've been designed to be changed. The only constant in the Realms is Elminster's beard length. ( And even that is up for dispute. )

 

[Darkness]

[MENTION=6776548]Corpsetaker[/MENTION], you were asked not to post in this thread any more. Since you failed to comply, you're hereby temporarily banned from the forums.

 

[neq.the.glockenspiel]

Welcome to the Boards!

And I'm betting you will see some Feywild love in the Fall AP.

That would heck danged awesome. AweXsome indeed.

As things stand I am pretty liking the Yawning vibe so far.

My home game just suffered a surprise reboot down to first level and we are now in the jail of Castle Naerytar...

...now reading up on the older versions of this place and comparing the Hot DRagon Queen update, I think the layers build up really well.

The 5e take on the Realms is a really slow burn but it burns nice and hot!


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[Nebulous]

I will be buying this product with my gold pieces. No doubt. Although 5th edition is ridiculously easy to adapt to earlier editions, it will still be cool to see how they set this thing up.

 

[Parmandur]

I will be buying this product with my gold pieces. No doubt. Although 5th edition is ridiculously easy to adapt to earlier editions, it will still be cool to see how they set this thing up.

Yeah, I'm in because I don't have the originals, and the new monsters and such will be handy.

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[shamurai7]

No one has commented on the page count yet.....really we have average of 35 pages per adventure. Seems pretty darn low. Given monster stats and other filler pages really it's probably 28-30 pages each. Really think 50 would make more fleshed out mini-dungeons but it's hard to say until I see the product.