- #TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL HOW TO#
- #TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL MANUAL#
- #TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL FULL#
Those who like money have the fruits to pursue. Those who love mysteries will grab the mystery. The players are perfectly capable of deciding which things are of interest to their characters without having to point them right at it. It is enough to set the mystery in front of the characters without also telling them which bits of it they should be interested in. Unfortunately, it gets something wrong right at the last.
Solving a Mystery clearly offers the most potential hooks for engaging a variety of players and their characters. Just be aware that part of the ‘fun’ of dungeons crawls like this used to be letting the PCs make their own maps and then letting them rely on them, mistakes and all, to navigate the dungeon. There are certainly methods of mapping that don’t require as much precision, and you could just make the map for them as things go along.
Add in details about furnishings or traps discovered and this can really begin to slow gameplay down as players make the map. As the GM, you’ll be required to provide, at a minimum, room measurements and door placement if your PCs have any hope of accurately mapping things. Double especially important since neither the 5e Player’s Handbook, nor the Dungeon Masters Guide, make any mention of how players are supposed to begin mapping things if they have never done it before. Especially since this is intended as an intro / teaching / learning adventure for all involved and has been heralded as such.
#TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL HOW TO#
However, it might not hurt to also explain not just the need to carefully listen to description, but also some basics on how to actually map. – MappingĪs a new player, or even a new GM, it is all well and good to explain the need for detailed descriptions in order for someone to properly map the Sunless Citadel. The goblins, too, if they are particularly lucky or particularly bright. If you have PCs who might prefer to avoid as much combat as possible, or who simply enjoy being clever, remember the kobolds can be negotiated with. Thanks to TheAngryGM for helping me track down some of this information. Fortunately, he still retains a fondness for these memories and the valor and camaraderie once experienced there as hinted at by the reviving wind and a later line about offering up a salute of sorts, both to things remembered and things lost.
#TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL FULL#
The full text of the original poem however, has more to do, seemingly, with an old soldier returning to a former battlefield from his past and remembering the battle fought there with some measure of regret.
#TALES FROM THE YAWNING PORTAL SUNLESS CITADEL MANUAL#
It is along these banks that you can hearĮssentially, it is a nice bit of evocative scene setting only slightly spoiled by the fact that this exact quote as presented in Yawning Portal seems to have first appeared in a gaming context in the manual for Blizzard’s Diablo. Of strongholds visited, of large estates: While yet another translation provides this:Įverything flows with horrible mysteries of ancient landscapes It is one translation from the original French.Įverything rolls with the sickening mysteries Cordell used a translation titled The River of Cordial. The poem that opens Sunless Citadel is an excerpt from a larger work titled Blackcurrant River by Arthur Rimbaud, although Bruce R. You should read that, before starting this. In the introductory article to this series, I laid down some ground rules and a bit of explanation of the project. I’m treating this version of Sunless Citadel as its own unique thing. Except in very limited spots, I have not referred to the original adventure itself. This article covers the Sunless Citadel itself, forty-one rooms of semi-perilous dungeon crawl right up to the descent into The Grove. As always in this series, keep the book by your side to follow along and BEWARE SPOILERS (I’m not going to warn you again). At last we begin the first adventure in Wizards of the Coast’s Tales from the Yawning Portal.