New artwork graces these old adventures, all for the better. There are a lot of things to like about this book. Or maybe you want to play Dead in Thay for the first time, it’s a 5e-playtest megadungeon inspired by some of the very same dungeons in this book… The $25,000 question is… do players who came in with 5e want death traps and gotchas? I guess they won’t know until they get a taste of that… But I digress… TftYP is a book filled with nostalgia for old-time D&D players, while giving new players a chance to experience what made those old stories so memorable–want to run a modern retelling of Tomb of Horrors? Check. Was there nothing worth reprinting from those editions? That’s a post for another day. By the way, the adventures are not linked in any way, and the titular Yawning Portal has nothing to do with any of them…Īlso, you’ll notice no 2e or 4e adventures on that list. All of these adventures, (except for Dead in Thay which is set in the Forgotten Realms) were originally set in Greyhawk, the original D&D campaign setting, but it’s worth noting that for this update, each adventure gets a sidebar with suggestions on where to place it on each of the major D&D worlds… a nice touch for those DMs looking to add this to their campaigns. These adventures all have one thing in common: they are dungeon crawls. TftYP is a gorgeously produced, 248 page hardback updating seven “classic” D&D adventures from a few editions of the game to 5th edition. An interesting book to say the least, but one that I’m not quite sure who it’s aimed at. On top of that, the adventures they do physically publish are large hardbound books, and not the short romps we’d get from a module or a Dungeon adventure.Īnd then they drop “Tales from the Yawning Portal” on us. I don’t want organized play adventures for my home game. Sure, they’ll tell us that the DMs Guild is doing the heavy lifting there, and that those adventure ARE the official D&D adventures, but I want a shiny book in my hand that I can hold, leaf through, write margin notes on, and use at the table. One one hand, I love the fact that 5e is a healthy, vibrant game for WOTC due in large part to their measured releases, but by the same token, I hate the fact that I don’t have a Dragon/Dungeon magazine, or a large amounts of adventures to pick from.

One of the biggest love/hate relationships I have with 5e D&D is their release schedule for adventures.

Dnd 5e tales from the yawning portal