If you’re not a fan of the originals, there’s nothing here that will change your mind or make you reconsider giving these adventures a second look the originals have been around for years: if you and your group haven’t played them by now, it wasn’t likely because of a lack of availability. How dungeons are designed and presented has evolved greatly over the years. The weak points (like random monsters, unclear descriptions, nonsensical dungeon layouts) remain. But it doesn’t tweak or “fix” old school modules. That and the revised formatting often makes just finding important details in the rooms easier. However, not everyone feels as comfortable spontaneously updating modules, and would prefer a more professionally updated product. It’s not a product I wanted nor found particularly necessary. Tales from the Yawning Portal was always going to have had a hard time winning over my affections. But care was really made to keep monster substitutions appropriate.
Most encounters have been rebalanced to provide an appropriate challenge. Fans of the originals should be happy that classical elements – and even text – are retained. For example, read aloud text (aka grey boxed text) has been added to at least two adventures, which previously predates that innovation in adventure module design. The adventures have been edited (or rather re-edited) to conform with modern standards of presentation and to be *slightly* more similar in tone, but are otherwise largely identical to their original publication.
Tales from the yawning portal adventure levels full#
Tales From the Yawning Portal is a 248-page full colour hardcover book featuring four adventures from 1st Edition and two from 3rd Edition that have been updated to 5th Edition, along with one adventure from the D&D Next playtest. 3 out of 5 rating for Tales from the Yawning Portal