Read through it in whatever way you like. By the end, you’ll hopefully know a little bit more about one way to look at an adventure, size it up, and think about it in terms of how your group will fit into it. Good news: They all mean the same thing - the person running the game.), but it is a place to start. By no means is this complete advice or a deep lesson intended to teach you all the many ways of the Dungeon Master (and yes, I will randomly alternate between Dungeon Master and Gamemaster or DM and GM.
#TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL REDDIT HOW TO#
If, however, you are new to D&D - one of those brought in by all the cool YouTube or TV D&D game play you’ve seen in such popular shows as That One and That Other, Different One, or if you are totally new and stumbled in off the street not knowing what to do - then maybe you will find this useful in coming to grips with a pre-made adventure (when people were still allowed on my lawn, these were called Modules) and wrapping your head around how to start making the most of it for you and your group. If that’s you and you had those experiences and you built a lot of good memories around White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors or one of the other five adventures included in Yawning Portal, this might be a good time to look away. I recognize some of them as being classic names of course, but I don’t have the fond memory of being huddled around a dinner table on a Friday night with a big bowl of Cheetos and four of my friends from grade school or junior high when these first came out. I don’t have the nostalgia glasses on for an adventure I played twenty or thirty years ago. I’ve never played any of these adventures before.
Unless a room is particularly straightforward or just not very interesting, it gets looked at individually and as part of the whole. There are MANY SPOILERS because I have taken a room by room approach to the material. There is a lot to look at inside this book.) If you are a player, and not a GM and you do not want every room of every adventure in Tales from the Yawning Portal spoiled for you, DO NOT READ ANY OF THIS SERIES. Dire WarningsĪll of it is VERY SPOILER LADEN. Or at least some food for thought for prospective GMs preparing to gather their group and head off into the caverns and hallways of their first D&D dungeon crawls. Yet another part, and probably the largest part overall, is actual GM advice for running the adventures and making the most of them. Another part of it is critique wondering about some of the decisions made or not made and suggesting improvements. Combine those two things and add in the fact I do a lot of stuff in the gaming community and have occasionally been known to express a strong opinion on Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast, RPGs, and so forth and several people decided they wanted to hear what I had to say about Yawning Portal and the adventures contained therein. I’m sure my STR and DEX stats have started taking hits due to age and that’s an RPG joke to show you just how old school and old I really am if you get it. Also, I’m a roleplaying game GM (Gamemaster for those of you unfamiliar with the term) and have been for so many years that I’m almost certainly older than you. This project - and make no mistake, this is a project - came about because at some point I got a reputation for being nit-picky and a bit of a rant artist on Twitter. I’ll certainly tell you what I think and whether I think this is a product worth having and I’ll explain why or why not when the time comes. Maybe go look some of those up and enjoy them for what they are. However, those reviews are out there and I’m sure at least a few of them are done by people who have taken the time to do them properly. I’m never sure the reviewer has read and read thoroughly, or taken time to think about what they are reading. Reviews can, I suppose, be done to time with the release - or hit just after - if one can get things early but I’m suspicious automatically of anyone who can churn one out in the first week. Unboxings of a book are great if you like being read to from the front and back cover and maybe some bits of the interior. Flip-throughs are great for looking at the pretty art. Unfortunately, I have to sit down and read the thing before I can form a good, solid opinion. Get in early, get the views and clicks, and be done with it.
#TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL REDDIT CRACKED#
Well-respected RPG and D&D sites, YouTubers, and podcasters have cracked the book open as quickly as possible and shared their thoughts with anyone who might be convinced to read or tune in. It’s now nearly May ’17 and there is no shortage of ‘unboxings’, flip-throughs, reviews, and more available across the internet. Wizards of the Coast released Tales from the Yawning Portal for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to the general public on April 4th, 2017.