I didn’t think you were talking about old school being bad, just not for your table. I like story focused games, so a meat grinder is not something I am interested in. If I was, I’d be playing Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC).

Yawning Portal is great as it has a variety of tough dunegons, but it still might not work for lots of groups.

Just to make a clarification, I’m not against old school gaming, far from it, it is just something that I do not do.

And I’m sure that there is considerable market for a modernized version of older modules. This is not only verified by the acceptance the new book had in the community but also from the fact that WotC is planning to re-launch (with the help of Goodman Games) old modules complete with a converting guide for 5e.

Also, I forgot completely that Undermountain is mega-giga-dungeon. So yes, apparently WotC did well not to include it in the book. What people wanted are small adventures of three to five levels, not another big adventure that spans 10-15 levels.

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.

The old school style has flaws, but there are a ton of players who started playing way back and will love being able to play these dungeons as they remember (and forget). If I was going to DM a deadly dungeon campaign I’d skip the background part of character creation and replace inspiration with something else.

This book is not a must purchase for most groups, but for me I’m happy to have it as I am always looking at old modules, especially some of the dungeons in this book for ideas.

I got my copy from my FLGS on Friday the 24th as by coincidence I was there for a planned one-shot. I did not even knew that this was the planned release date for FLGSs. I was also not planning to get it, at least not until I read some reviews. But I couldn’t resist.

Anyhow, I flipped through it and started reading the “Hidden Shrine…” as it is of a proper level for my PCs to pick up when they finish our current adventure. Imaginative adventure to say the least. But, there are places that if the PCs fail a check or fall in a trap (like in the first corridor), they are obviously trapped there with no apparent means of escape. This is not so cool.

What I’m hinting is that many of the old-school adventures are of a playstyle that is very different of how D&D is played today. Sure, playing a D&D classic is great, but I find it more interesting in the context of seeing how much the game has evolved throughout the years.

Good thing that the assortment of dungeons is from all the history of the game (I believe all editions are represented, expect 4th).

I also got the impression that the book is written in a way to help new DMs to run the first of the dungeons (the Sunless Citadel) and it evolves afterwards. For instance, I do not remember seeing Adventure Synopsis on the latter dungeons.

My biggest complaint is the size of the maps. Sure, Micheal Shley has done awesome work once again, but you need to go buy his map bundle from his online store (fyi, it is $15,00 and he has a coupon for a 10% discount) in order to effectively prepare for most of the dungeons. These in the book are too small. I’d appreciate if they had some fold-out maps included.

One other issue with the book is that it mentions Undermountain, so one could easily expect to find the said dungeon presented in the book. It isn’t. OK, obviously you could fit most of the dungeons presented under the Yawning Portal, or you could convert the famous module to 5e, but why not include it in the first place? Well, my solution will be to skip the Yawning Portal place altogether. I’ll just keep it for future reference, should I start converting the Undermountain module to 5e, using the TftYP as reference.

So, the TftYP is a nice supplement, interesting assortment of classic dungeons, a nice lead to convert other older modules to 5e. It’s not a must have, especially if your party is not into old school gaming and dungeon crawling.