Tying together Tales from the Yarning Portal & its Sunless Citadel Module (Spoilers)

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Warning! If you don't want to learn anything about this adventure before going through it, read no further!

So I've been asked to DM a group of mixed experience players all starting at level 1. One of them bought and handed me the Tales from the Yawning Portal book. It seems interesting enough for a loose collection of level appropriate adventures.

After reading through Sunless Citadel and the intro, I have obviously missed something obvious and I have a probably simple question.

How have any of you all tied in the Yawning Portal bar with the Sunless Citadel? Just use the Portal Bar as a gathering place and send the party hiking to Oakhurst? I can totally do that as long as it doesn't mess anything up.

I can even have a couple easy "random encounter" type side quests ready if the party wants to clear wolves from some fields or something like that to build a bit of wealth first. This will make things seem less "rail-roady".

Thanks for any suggestions and advice. And please be kind if I'm missing the obvious :)

[Madfellow]

I haven't run the Yawning Portal myself, but an idea I had was to use the bar as a framing device. The PCs are in the bar after their adventures, and the adventures themselves are basically flashbacks. I'm not sure how well that would work in practice, but I hope it helps.

[Mister_Squinty]

How have any of you all tied in the Yawning Portal bar with the Sunless Citadel? Just use the Portal Bar as a gathering place and send the party hiking to Oakhurst? I can totally do that as long as it doesn't mess anything up.

I can even have a couple easy "random encounter" type side quests ready if the party wants to clear wolves from some fields or something like that to build a bit of wealth first. This will make things seem less "rail-roady".

Thanks for any suggestions and advice. And please be kind if I'm missing the obvious :)

Given that the adventures in Yawning Portal are reprints of classic modules from across the years, they were not originally intended to be run cohesively. You can pick and choose what you want to run and either start a new campaign around them or incorporate them into your existing world.

[ChampionWiggles]

I just recently ran the Sunless Citadel with my group, which consisted of mixed experience players. The way it ended up working out was the paladin of the group was a noble in Waterdeep, where the Yawning Portal is located in Forgotten Realms. He contracted the other characters for an adventuring group and met up with a contact at the Yawning Portal. The contact I had was a rogue-like character named Reggie. He worked for several other people and essentially deliver the hook by saying that he wanted to get good relations with the Hucrele's and wants the group to try and save them, as well as he wants them to investigate about this fruit that he keeps hearing about and deliver a piece of the fruit to him, which he would pay 200g per person for the fruit (I had the adventure happen right around the summer solstice just for that reason).

It gave multiple reasons for the party the care and it delivered the info for the adventure and they grabbed a ship to Neverwinter and then hiked to Oakhurst. It worked for me. I didn't add any extra encounters, but you could easily add some more stuff to make the journey there feel more special than "you're fast traveling to the ACTUAL adventure"

[the_brazenburn]

It specifically says that the Yawning Portal is located directly above Undermountain. I've made all the different portions of Undermountain be the TftYP detached adventures, going from Sunless Citadel closest to the surface to Tomb of Horrors deepest underground.

[Sigreid]

I just set the Sunless Citadel down next to their home town. About a 7 mile hike away to the entrance.

[Quoxis]

My GM ran the yawning portal as a tavern where a stranger would tell stories to anyone willing to listen (and to pay for another round, of course). The GM plays the stranger who tells the game like the story, randomly switching between in-game explanations (the normal style, „you see an old bridge with a Troll trying to hide underneath“) and roleplaying the storyteller („the four brave adventurers then saw an old bridge with a Troll hiding underneath“) - the players even had the chance to play random boo-ers in the tavern whenever they felt the story wasn’t going their way.

[Avonar]

The way I did it was to have them meet the wife of Erky, the gnome prisoner, in the Yawning Portal. She told the party of his disappearance and about the Citadel, and offered a reward for his return.