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1. Tales from the yawning portal list of treasures full#
2. Tales from the yawning portal list of treasures plus#

At higher levels the highlight is The Canopic Being (for level 13 characters, written by Jennifer Kretchmer).

Tales from the yawning portal list of treasures plus#

That includes both level 4 adventures – A Deep and Creeping Darkness (a search for a missing mining town by Sarah Madsen) and Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme (a creepy, close-quarters horror thriller by Ari Levitch) – plus the 7th-level Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor (a literal murder mystery by Derek Ruiz). That’s part of a solid string of mid-level adventures. If you’re making requests of your DM, my favorite adventure was The Price of Beauty (for level 5 characters, written by Mark Hulmes), where a search for a missing acolyte takes the characters to a secluded health spa. For these adventures, a DM who can amp up the creepy ambiance will produce a great experience for their players. Some of them also have a darker edge, with more elements of psychological and personal horror than is typical for D&D (for example, people being forced to keep their children alive so that they can be forced to watch them being eaten). Different adventures have different flavors and different degrees of success, but they all share an effort to spark an extra sense of wonder into the game. There is, broadly speaking, a deviation from ‘traditional’ plotlines and mechanical emphasis. What Candlekeep Mysteries lacks in nostalgia it more than makes up for in creativity. There’s also a write-up about Candlekeep itself, but it’s very brief – essentially enough to let the DM provide some backgrounding for the frame part of the story. It’s easy to just let that become part of the background – you can’t call out every queer-friendly presentation in a book when there are dozens of them – but it’s still important that D&D has done this consistently enough that it kind of just is background these days.īeyond the adventures, there is no mechanical content for players, although the DM gets a few more monsters to play with and a few more magic items to hand out (and the adventures seem relatively generous with treasure and supernatural charms). In particular I know I always used to really perk up whenever a singular ‘they’ pronoun appeared, and we’ve now gotten to a point where I’m almost tripping over them in Candlekeep Mysteries but I barely even notice. It’s become so commonplace in D&D books that it hardly feels noteworthy anymore, but I wanted to acknowledge how replete Candlekeep Mysteries is with LGBTQ+ characters. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t any deathtraps to be found. This is most the case at early levels the highest-level adventures do become more focused on epic combat encounters. Sometimes these are more clearly mysteries sometimes the ‘mystery’ is more a typical ‘something bad is happening, go see what it is and stop it’ variety (but with less of a combat focus).

Tales from the yawning portal list of treasures full#

While Tales from the Yawning Portal is a treasure trove of classic adventures, including some very old school deathtrap dungeons, Candlekeep Mysteries is full of fresh adventures by up-and-coming designers (and a few veterans), and leans towards mystery and ‘let’s see what’s happening in this interesting place’ exploration – or, as the back labels them, mystery adventures.

There are big thematic differences, however. In that way, Candlekeep Mysteries mostly closely reminds me of Tales from the Yawning Portal. Each book is lovingly-described, although that description may not be relevant to the adventure.

And the bibliophiles will be happy to know that each adventure is named after the book that sparks the adventure, with books generally featuring heavily in several of the adventures. But, with one adventure per level up through 16 (except for level 4, which gets two) they could also be played in succession as a thematically-linked campaign. Only a few have a firm tie to Candlekeep, so they can generally be dropped into any campaign without much effort – in most of the adventures, the book is a passage to a demiplane or simply tells the characters to go off and do an adventure somewhere else. Further down, after a spoiler bar/graphic break you can find a more detailed look designed for prospective DMs – that part will have spoilers.Īlthough they are linked by the frame location of Candlekeep, there is no overarching story in the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries. Because this is an adventure book, the top part of this review will be spoiler-free.