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IN THE NOVELS

From 1994-2004, the Yawning Portal also appeared in a number of tie-in novels and short stories (with one additional appearance in 2009). Here’s a brief round-up of unique facts about the inn established in these novels. As stories, of course, these include a number of small descriptive details.

WATERDEEP (Troy Denning, aka Richard Awlinson, 1989)

• “Yawning Portal” not only refers to the well; it’s also a “tongue-in-cheek reference to the tendency of those who indulged in the tavern’s fare to tell tall tales.”
• Durnan’s office has a couch.

Note: This is a novelization of the events from FRE3 Waterdeep. Or vice versa, with both being released more or less simultaneously and shared passages of text.

ELFSONG (Elaine Cunningham, 1994)

• There is a secret tunnel between Blackstaff Tower and a “secret backroom” at the Yawning Portal which is hidden behind the storeroom. (It’s one of what are apparently a network of such tunnels, including another that runs to Piergeiron’s Palace. The secret room is used for meetings between certain Lords of Waterdeep (including Khelben, Laeral, Mirt, Kitten (Nymara Scheiron), and Brian the Swordmaster).
• There are live musical performances in the taproom, including by the Masked Minstrel.

REALMS OF THE UNDERDARK (“A Slow Day in Skullport,” Ed Greenwood, 1996)

• There are multiple wine cellars in the Yawning Portal, of which one is the “deepest” and home to bottles covered with “gray, furry dust.” It also contains various trophies from Durnan’s swordswinging days, including a lich’s periapt, a pair of tusks from a giant orc, and the “swords of fallen foes” (many of which gleam with enchantments). Some of the stone pillars within this cellar have secret vaults concealed within them, including Durnan’s old adventuring sword and a magic ring.
• These lower chambers (and possibly the entire inn?) are warded against teleportation (and possibly other magic).
• Belaerd, a black licorice whisky from Sheirtalar, is among the Portal’s offerings.
• Durnan is often known to sing ancient battle ballads in the taproom.
• There are enchanted, floating baskets that are used to move drinks and other supplies around the Yawning Portal.

REALMS OF THE ARCANE (“The Grotto of Dreams,” Mark Anthony, 1997)

• The taproom well is called the “Well of Entry.”

THORNHOLD (Elaine Cunningham, 1998)

• The tunnel connected to the Wet Well (which is here a hole in the floor covered by a board) leads more directly to Skullport.

Note: It’s possible that the “secret door” in Skullport (1999) was attempting to reference this passage from the 1998 novel. But the details are sufficiently different, that I don’t think so.

ELMINSTER IN HELL (Ed Greenwood, 2001)

• Durnan keeps a crossbow behind the bar.

WINDWALKER (Elaine Cunningham, 2003)

• There is a secret back door which is magically concealed using a powder gifted to Durnan by Khelben Arunsun and probably leads directly into the inn’s stables. (After closing the door, you rub the powder into the gap around the door and it vanishes.)

REALMS OF THE DRAGONS (“The Keeper of Secrets,” Ed Greenwood, 2004)

• The Yawning Portal has a well-oiled back door which “swings wildly” in Mirt’s wake and leads into the kitchen.
• There’s a trapdoor in the taproom with a spell on it that only lets Durnan open it. The chute inside leads down into “unseen depths” and Durnan dumps corpses down it. “Something that slobbered” waits their arrival.
• Orders are not “bawled.” (You get one warning and then you get ejected.)
• The taproom is lit by candle wheels hung overhead.
• You might see a lance-and-lion game board set up on the smooth-polished bar. (Mirt often plays with Durnan.)
• Black Sail is an ale on tap.
• Durnan keeps a “baldric heavy with warblades” on a peg on the wall behind the bar.

DOWNSHADOW (Erik Scott Deble, 2009)

This novel takes place in 1479 DR.

• The climb from the bottom to the top of the well is described as “a bow shot—a long hard climb.”
• There’s a harness at the end of the rope in the well.

ENDLESS QUEST: TO CATCH A THIEF (Matt Forbeck, 2018)

The Yawning Portal briefly appears in this choose-your-own-adventure book, but contains no detailed description of the tavern. (Although the character is told that there’s a secret route to Skullport there.)

LATER EXPEDITIONS TO UNDERMOUNTAIN

The Yawning Portal next appears in the 3^rd Edition City of Splendors (2004), still listed as building C48 (inn, Class C, 3 floors). The entry describing the inn is quite brief, but does state:

Yawning Portal: Built atop the ruins of Halaster’s Hold, the Yawning portal inn (C48) contains the primary entrance to Undermountain, a large well that drops down into Undermountain’s first dungeon level (UM L1). Secondary entrances are found in the inn as well, including a link to the inn’s less well known “wet” well and a passage leading out of the Yawning Portal’s cellars.

There is also an NPC named Adama Miiralin, who’s a regular at the Yawning Portal. I am not attempting a survey of all the various patrons of the Portal over the years, but Adama is notable because he keeps a record of everyone entering Undermountain.

Expedition to Undermountain (2007) includes additional details on the Yawning Portal, including what I believe is the first reference to the city “exiling the worst of its criminals to the depths of Undermountain” through the Well of Entry.

• The Yawning Portal is “built of stone, with a slate roof and an upper floor of guest rooms.” The inn seems to have lost a floor in this description, but later adds one instead by saying “there are three floors of guest rooms.”
• The tavern’s sign reads “The Yawning Portal,” with the words deeply carved into a silvery piece of weathered wood suspended from two short loops of black chain suspended from a black-painted iron pole above the front door.

The front door leads directly into the common room where:

• The floor is “well worn boards.”
• Word paneling adorns the walls, with an elbow rail and rich blue tapestries hung at intervals.
• The furniture is made from heavy, stout wood.
• Some of the tables have been built around the wooden pillars that hold up the ceiling and can’t be moved.
• The Well of Entry is now referred to as the “Entry Well.”
• Those who would journey into Undermountain are referred to as “The Called” and there are often hopefuls looking to join or form adventuring groups in the Yawning Portal.
• The crossbow below the bar is now a double crossbow, loaded with sleep arrows, and has been joined by a rod of flame extinguishing and a +2 seeking and returning handaxe (although Durnan often just “hurls a metal tankard when most brawls break out”).
• Durnan will dose drinks with sleeping powder to take care of rowdy drunks.

The Entry Well:

• “[T]apers as it descends, from 40 feet across at the top to 30 feet across at the bottom.”
• 200 feet deep. (Although this is possibly only the length of the rope, in which case its depth does not appear to be given. In any case, the depth returns to 140 feet in all future references.)
• The rope has a bucket attached to the end of it.
• A pulley system allows Durnan to raise or lower the bucket; there’s also a release lever that will drop the rope to the bottom of the well.

The upper floors are reached by “steep wooden stairs opening off the common room.” In winter, these rooms are heated by barrels filled with fireplace-heated stones that are placed at the end of every floor’s central hall.

Expedition to Undermountain also includes a good deal of detailed information about particular patrons and the fourteen live-in staff members. Some of these staff members sleep in the stables, while others take unoccupied guest rooms on the third floor (or relocate to cots in the cellar if the inn is full). Durnan’s family also live in rooms on the top floor.

Our next major expedition to Undermountain is Halls of Undermountain (2012), a 4^th Edition adventure which takes place in 1479 DR. The new or altered details for the Yawning Portal here are:

• “[T]hree upper floors of guest rooms…” (This is almost certainly just a slip-up, but it’s been a hundred years so you could certainly imagine that at some point Durnan added an extra floor.)
• The inn is now run by Durnan the Sixth, descendant of the original Durnan.
• The entrance/exit cost for the Entry Well is now 10 gp. (Inflation will kill you. Literally.)
• No healing or help is provided to returning adventurers, but Durnan will send a runner to fetch a cleric for no extra charge.
• The Wet Well is now referred to as the Wet Way. It’s located in the cellar instead of a backroom, where a curtained archway hides the well. The well descends uninterrupted to a cistern, but a separate passage leads up from the cistern into Undermountain. (Durnan VI has no idea the Wet Way connects to Undermountain.)
• At least some of the Yawning Portal’s rooms are suites.

There is another goodly selection of Yawning Portal regulars detailed here.

Also in the 4^th Edition era, the 2010 D&D Encounters organized play adventure Halaster’s Lost Apprentice also took the players to the Yawning Portal:

• The taproom has glass windows.
• The backdoor is (a) visible from the taproom and (b) leads into the alley behind the Yawning Portal.
• This alley, inexplicably, has a canal running down the middle of it. (Waterdeep doesn’t have canals. Although maybe it does now: The 4^th Edition-era map of Waterdeep infamously forgot to turn on some layers before exporting, resulting in all the streets and Castle Waterdeep disappearing.)

5TH EDITION ERA

The Yawning Portal does not appear in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, making its debut in 5^th Edition as the framing device in Tales from the Yawning Portal (2017).

• It turns out the original Durnan went into Undermountain in the late 14^th century. When he returned a hundred years later, he paid off Durnan VI (and apparently kicked him and his family out of the inn).
• There are balconies on the second and third floors of the tavern that overlook the Entry Well.
• The entrance/exit fee has been reduced back to 1 gp.
• There is a sizable list of curios displayed in the taproom (p. 6), which I won’t reproduce here.

The inn next shows up in the opening scene of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (2018):

• “The place is a stone building with a slate roof and several chimneys.”
• “Most of the ground floor is taken up by the tavern’s common room.” (This doesn’t explicitly eliminate the numerous backrooms, private rooms, secret rooms, and guest rooms that have previously been found on the first floor, but it seems to have had that effect on subsequent depictions of the Yawning Portal.)
• The candle wheels have been replaced with iron lanterns hanging from the ceiling and candles on the tables.
• There’s an incredibly cool fireplace next to the bar which looks like the ceiling-high head of a demon with flames burning in its mouth.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage (2018) expands on this description, with a particular focus on the entrance to Undermountain itself:

• It takes 10 rounds to descend the Well if you’re being winched down.
• The walls of the Well are “crumbly, but have abundant handholds and footholds.”

The other entrances to Undermountain from the Yawning Portal are conspicuously absent, particularly given that this book is the first to ostensibly present the dungeon in its entirety (albeit at a fraction of its former size).

Our very last stop here is DDAL08-00 Once In Waterdeep, a D&D Adventurers League adventure from 2018. It notably includes a map of the inn (more on that below), but also:

• Asserts that the Well is not the foundation of Halaster’s old tower, but rather “the tip of a sunken stone tower.”
• A stage has been constructed by a travelling theater company at one end of the common room, draped with curtains. (This is presumably temporary, but might be something that happens on a not infrequent basis.)
• Durnan has a Welcomer’s Brew that gives 5 temporary hit points.
• One of Waterdeep’s “signature double-decker dray carriages” smashes through the front wall.

Next: The Maps

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26B: A Disposition of Treasure

There were three main problems to overcome: The sheer weight of the arcane equipment and precious metals. The pit of chaos warping the hallway. And the difficulty of lifting the material out of the basement here at Greyson House.

Out of everything, the “Drill of the Banewarrens” was going to prove the most difficult: Everything else could be mostly parceled up into smaller bundles, but the drill was both bulky and weighed several thousand pounds all by itself.

“Could we just sell the location of the drill to somebody?” Elestra asked.

“Like House Erthuo?” Tee said. “I doubt they’d be all that interested considering what just happened.”

“How can you make encumbrance fun?”

You can’t.

But you also can’t make hit points fun, and for much the same reason.

Hit points are just a number: It goes up. It goes down. At a certain value you might suffer penalties. At another you fall unconscious.

So, too, with encumbrance: The number goes up. The number goes down. At a certain value you suffer penalties. At another you can’t carry any more.

Hit points and encumbrance are simple gauges, and you can’t make them “fun” for the same reason you can’t make the gas gauge on your car fun.

But driving a car? That can be fun. And so is combat in D&D and a lot of other roleplaying games that use hit points.

The gauge isn’t fun. It’s just a gauge. But the system in which that gauge is used – for which, in fact, that gauge may be an essential part – can be all kinds of fun.

So the better question is:

“Why do we want to track encumbrance?”

Encumbrance is often most useful in expedition-based play: You put together the resources for an expedition, then expend those resources on the expedition to maximize your returns.

Encumbrance is, in large part, a budget. Without a budget, the solution is always “bring everything,” which is kind of like playing 52-card draw poker: Without limited resources, there is no challenge.

(Tangentially, one interesting facet of such play in 1974 D&D, because it had a system for resolving characters fleeing from combat, is jettisoning equipment in order to pick up speed in flight-pursuit situations. It became a unique way for bulk resource management to impact combat-based play.)

This kind of gameplay does become obfuscated if the encumbrance system is unwieldy and difficult or fiddly to use. (Imagine if hit points, for example, could only be tracked by keeping an exhaustive list of forty or fifty different individual entries on your character sheet. Combat would almost certainly become a slog.) Unfortunately, a lot of encumbrance systems are unwieldy and difficult to use, with the result that many groups simply ignore it (either decisively or by default through “close enough” fudging).

What you want, of course, is an encumbrance system that’s easy to use so that encumbrance-based play will effortlessly integrate into your play. Correctly designed slot-based systems, like Encumbrance By Stone, for example, can make tracking nitty gritty encumbrance as easy as writing down your equipment list.

THE OTHER HALF OF THE EXPEDITION

Prepping the resource pool for an expedition and then expending those resources efficiently in order to maximize your success is the front half of an adventure.

The other half of the adventure is returning home with what you’ve gained, which, in the case of D&D, is usually treasure.

We’ve talked about this a bit before, but creating bulky, difficult-to-transport treasure (and/or putting it in places where it’s difficult to extract it) can create its own unique challenges. We’ve seen the players here come up with a creative solution for disposing of the orrery, and now they’re being challenged once again with the Drill of the Banewarrens and some of the other treasure.

(And this stuff is all just a few hundred feet under a major city. Stick it in the middle of a jungle and watch what happens!)

“But, Justin, challenge isn’t really a big focus for my group! We’re much more interested in narrative, storytelling, and roleplaying!”

Drama is born of adversity.

And I don’t mean that you’re wrong or that you should value challenge-based gameplay more, I mean that in expedition-type stories encumbrance-based challenges are a fundamental part of the drama you’re looking for. (Look at, say, Indiana Jones trying to get the Ark of the Covenant out of Egypt.)

For example, a scene in which the players are roleplaying through the crushing guilt their characters are feeling because their decisions resulted in the deaths of innocent people that they feel responsible for? Grappling with the difficult dilemmas created by balancing expediency of liquidating their treasure against the responsibility of who’s benefiting from that treasure? This stuff is pure gold for dramatic play!

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26C – Running the Campaign: Running With Background Events
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 26B: A DISPOSITION OF TREASURE

August 24th, 2008
The 13th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The bodies of Faeliel and the other Erthuo scholars were gone, and the Erthuo mercenaries had gone with them. Reconvening in the dilapidated living room of Greyson House, there was an involved discussion revolving around how they could go about getting the rest of the bulky valuables out of the complex below.

There were three main problems to overcome: The sheer weight of the arcane equipment and precious metals. The pit of chaos warping the hallway. And the difficulty of lifting the material out of the basement here at Greyson House.

Out of everything, the “Drill of the Banewarrens” was going to prove the most difficult: Everything else could be mostly parceled up into smaller bundles, but the drill was both bulky and weighed several thousand pounds all by itself.

“Could we just sell the location of the drill to somebody?” Elestra asked.

“Like House Erthuo?” Tee said. “I doubt they’d be all that interested considering what just happened.”

In the end, they decided on a complex scheme involving fifteen hired laborers to move the drill; an architect to design the supports and ramps necessary to get it up into Greyson House; and then spells from Dominic and Elestra to quickly create the structure itself.

It was going to take some time to pull all of that together. Plus, they still had to get rid of the chaositech items. (“And the sooner the better,” Tee said.)

So Agnarr headed back down into Ghul’s Labyrinth to keep an eye on things. Dominic and Elestra headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel to rest up and prepare the proper spells.

THE HALLOWED VAULT

Tee and Ranthir headed towards the location in the Temple District they had been given by Aoska when they had asked for a secure place to store the tainted items.

They found the address wedged into a narrow gap on the Street of a Million Gods. The door opened to reveal a small, largely unadorned room with little more than a door draped with a beaded curtain. An elderly man sat in a worn-looking chair.

They were momentarily confused, but once they had identified themselves to the elderly man they were led through the beaded curtain and down a narrow flight of stone stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs they emerged into a long chamber lit with a pale blue light. A shallow pool of holy water ran the length of the room. The walls were covered in niches of various shapes and sizes, all of them obscured by sheens of silvery energy… except for one, towards which the elderly man pointed.

Taking her cue, Tee approached the niche and placed within it the tainted items she carried. As she drew back her hands, the niche quickly sealed itself with the same silvery energy as the others.

Tee turned to the man. “Thank you.”

He smiled, nodded, and led them back out onto the street.

THE TROUBLE WITH ILTUMAR

Tor returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. As he came through the door, Tellith called him over to the front desk. Apparently Hirus Feek, one of the owners of the Bull and Bear Armory next door, had stopped by and asked if Tee or Elestra or any of their companions could spare a few minutes to meet with him.

Tor turned around and headed back out into Delver’s Square. As he entered the Bull and Bear, Hirus – a skinny, balding man with a thin gray hair – smiled at him.

Tor quickly explained that Tee and Elestra weren’t with him, but he had been the first to return to the Ghostly Minstrel and he wasn’t sure when the others might return.

“That’s all right,” Hirus said. “I just needed to speak with one of you about Iltumar.”

“About Iltumar?” Tor said. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m not sure,” Hirus said, frowning. “He’s been hanging out with some shady people. Ruffians. I don’t like it. I was hoping one of you might be able to speak with him. Straighten him out. He looks up to you.”

“Any idea who they are, exactly?” Tor asked.

Hirus shook his head. “Not really. But I heard Ilutmar say something about ‘the Brotherhood’ the other day. For some reason, I didn’t like the sound of that.”

“Is Iltumar here now?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“When will he back?”

“He’s supposed to be back here by 10 o’clock.”

Tor agreed to come back then and try to talk with Iltumar. Then he headed back towards the Ghostly Minstrel.

Coming out of the Bull and Bear, however, he spotted Elestra and Dominic coming across the square. He called out to them and, as they headed into the Ghostly Minstrel together, quickly filled them in on the Iltumar situation.

Tee arrived as they were grabbing some food and drink from the bar. She told them that she had sent messengers to Castle Shard, Jevicca (as a representative of the Dreaming Apothecary), House Erthuo, and even a place called Avery’s Armory with details on the drill, construct parts, and adamantine – basically every place she thought might be interested in them.

As Tee was finishing up her explanation, Iltumar entered the inn. Elestra, seizing the opportunity called him over.

“What are you doing?” Tee hissed to her while giving Iltumar a friendly smile and wave.

Elestra waved her off. “Trust me, I’ll explain later.”

“Tee! Elestra!” Iltumar grinned. “Master Tor!”

“How are you doing, Iltumar?” Elestra asked.

“Very well!” he said. “Very well indeed.”

“That’s good.”

Tee decided to make the best of it. “I’ve got an answer for your riddle.”

“Really?” Iltumar said. “Already?”

“I couldn’t help thinking about it,” Tee said. “Is the answer a fish and the ocean?”

Iltumar pursed his lips. “That’s… close.”

“Huh,” Tee said. “Then it must be a fish and the river.”

“That’s right!” Iltumar clapped his hands. “Do you have a riddle for me?”

Tee shook her head. And then her eyes widened. As Iltumar had raised his hands to clap, she’d spotted a new ring on his finger: A ring marked with the symbol of a broken square.

She had a ring just like that in her bag of holding. They had found it in Pythoness House as part of a cache of artifacts belonging to the chaos cultists. Tee glanced over towards Elestra, and she could tell that she’d seen it, too.

Thinking quickly, Tee smiled broadly. “Oh! That’s a nice ring! Where did you get it?”

Iltumar suddenly seemed very nervous. “What? Oh, this ring? Just… around.”

“Really? I’d love to have a ring like that!” Tee was putting everything she had into a flirtatious voice. “Do you think I could have it?”

“No,” Iltumar said sharply. “I can’t.”

“Oh…” Tee suddenly got very sad.

“It’s just… Somebody gave it to me.”

“Oh,” Tee said, brightening slightly. “Another girl?”

But it wasn’t working. Iltumar babbled slightly and then clammed up. Tee was left promising to come up with a new riddle for him soon, and then he went off to get a drink.

Seizing the opportunity, the others quickly filled Tee in on what Hirus had told him.

“Do we think there’s a connection between the ‘Brotherhood’ and the chaos cultists?” Elestra asked.

“There must be,” Tee said.

“What should be do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Tee said. “At least not right now. We’ll let Tor talk to him later.”

MAKING THE SALE

Tor and Dominic headed back to Greyson House to rejoin Agnarr. Tor was uncomfortable with letting entirely unknown workers handle the material directly (they might steal stuff). So, taking crates from the basement of Greyson House, he started packing up as much of the loose material as he could.

Tee, meanwhile, received a letter from Avery’s Armory, informing her that he was always interested in sources of adamantine and would be willing to pay market value for anything she might have (which she estimated to be worth a few thousand gold).

Later that evening, Tee was able to track Jevicca down in the common room of the Ghostly Minstrel. When she showed her the schematics of the Drill of the Banewarrens, Jevicca became very interested and immediately offered 10,000 gold pieces on behalf of the Inverted Pyramid.

Tee thought that was a decent offer, but told Jevicca she would need to check with the others first (since they all had equal stakes in the matter).

It was perhaps well that she did, because a few minutes later a letter from Castle Shard arrived. In response, Tee caught a carriage.

It turned out that Lord Zavere was also primarily interested in the drill. He offered to not only purchase both the drill and the construct parts for a total of 13,000 gold pieces, but to take care of transporting all of it, as well. Plus, he would deliver the adamantine directly to Avery’s Armory for them.

It was an offer that significantly simplified things for them. (And saved them a large chunk of money.) Tee accepted it on the spot.

After leaving Castle Shard, Tee sent a messenger to Jevicca to inform her that she had accepted a different offer. Then she stopped by Avery’s Armory personally to confirm the deal with him. Once that was done, she headed back to Greyson House and told Tor to stop prepping crates: It had all been taken care of.

KADMUS AND THE GATE

(09/14/790)

The night passed quietly.

The next morning, a gate appeared in the middle of the corridor. Kadmus stepped through the portal, greeted them cordially, and, with one hand, lifted the impossibly heavy adamantine drill.

They were universally taken aback by this prodigious display of strength.

“Remind me never to pick a fight with him,” Tor said.

It took Kadmus about fifteen minutes to move everything through the gate. When he was finished, Zavere stepped through himself. Handing Tee a pouch filled with platinum, he promised to have the adamantine delivered to Avery by noon at the latest.

Zavere stepped back through the gate. A moment later, it disappeared.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Treasure Logistics – Campaign Journal: Session 26C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Last week we looked at what you can do when the PCs decide to call in a Big Uber-NPC to deal with their problems. But what happens they decide to call the cops? Or the CIA? Or the army? The big organizations of Little Guys who keep civilization working?

If you have evidence proving that someone is a murderer, it makes sense to call the cops. But how do you keep the spotlight on the PCs?

Good gaming! I’ll see you at the table!

 

The Yawning Portal seems utterly synonymous with the Forgotten Realms today, but it actually didn’t appear in the original Forgotten Realm Campaign Setting boxed set, published in July 1987.

The wait was not particularly long, however. By the end of the year, driven in part by the prodigious amount of Realmslore Ed Greenwood had created for his setting, TSR had released nearly a dozen Forgotten Realms books, including FR1 Waterdeep and the North and the first details of Durnan’s tavern.

(The “and the North” portion of the title was actually something of a misnomer. According to Shannon Appelcline, Greenwood had warned TSR that his Waterdeep lore alone was enough to fill a book. And that was more than true: Almost all of the material about the rest of the North got knocked out of FR1 and later handed over to Jennell Jaquays for FR5 The Savage Frontier. It’s unclear why they didn’t just drop “and the North” from the title. Perhaps they felt locked in by the title they had solicited? But I digress.)

THE EARLY DAYS

In FR1 Waterdeep and the North, the Yawning Portal appears as Building #4:

4. The Yawning Portal (inn) – See Durnan, p. 17

Thus, most of the original information about the Yawning Portal is actually contained in the NPC write-up of its proprietor, and these are fairly barebones: It contains a “well-like shaft leading down into Undermountain, the subterranean ways under Mount Waterdeep.”

The Yawning Portal’s next appearance is in the City System (1988), a boxed set filled to the brim with twelve huge poster maps, ten of which joined together to form an insanely huge map of the city. The City System was designed to be used in conjunction with FR1 Waterdeep and the North: FR1 described the city. The boxed set only included the huge maps and a small pamphlet with useful tools (like random Street Scenes and indices).

(This confused the heck out of me as a kid, who bought City System but never saw a copy of FR1 at the local game store.)

In the City System, therefore, the Yawning Portal remains Building #4, but no additional text description is provided. The boxed set does include the first official map of the interior of the inn, but we’ll come back to this later.

The Yawning Portal’s next appearance was in the adventure module FRE3 Waterdeep (1989), also by Ed Greenwood. The PCs are taken to the Yawning Portal by Elminster and Khelben Arunsun the Blackstaff. The adventure tells DMs that they can use the map from the City System boxed set, but also includes a much more detailed description of the Portal’s interior:

• It’s a “large, rambling building.”
• A signboard above the “round door” reads “The Yawning Portal,” and “on the door itself, someone has chalked ‘Come Ye Inn.’” (sic)
• It is dimly lit.
• There’s at least one private side room.
• A 14-year-old girl works as a server.

Most notably, FRE3 adds a second well to the Yawning Portal:

Durnan leads the party to the back of the inn. (…) The innkeeper lifts a huge bar from the door with one hand, as though it weighs nothing, and leans it against the wall. Then he opens the door and leads you into a dark room. The torch’s flickering light shows a covered wall and a table. On the table lie coils of rope, a tinder box, and a half dozen unlit torches…

“I haven’t been down this back way in some time,” he says. “We usually go down the dry one; it keeps the water cleaner.”

At some distance down the well, there’s a side tunnel that leads into a cavernous region of Undermountain which includes the Pool of Loss.

(The reason for this addition is fairly obvious: The adventure wants to send the PCs to Undermountain, but doesn’t have the space or page count to do that. So Durnan has a short cut that takes the PCs more or less directly to where they need to go.)

Despite only being an adventure module, FRE3 Waterdeep was frequently cited in TSR products as the authoritative source for the Yawning Portal. This notably includes the Ruins of Undermountain boxed set (1991), which rather hilariously notes:

More about Durnan and the inn can be found in the sourcebook FR1/Waterdeep And The North, the City System boxed set, and the module FRE3/Waterdeep. Details of the inn itself have been omitted from these pages to allow DMs free rein in customizing this rambling, shady place.

“We’ve detailed this location in THREE different books, but we haven’t included those details here so that you can have ‘free rein’ in customizing it.” Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say, TSR.

(Ruins of Undermountain II actually doubles down on the absurdity here, similarly demurring to describe the inn, but this time asserting that “the Yawning Portal is detailed in the original Ruins of Undermountain boxed set,” where, of course, readers will instead find the boxed set declaring that it definitely does no such thing.)

But because the Portal actually hasn’t been particularly detailed previously, Ruins of Undermountain does add several new details:

• “The Portal is a rambling, dingy, blue-tapestried building of smoothly carved pillars and paneling.”
• It is located “squarely on the site of the long-vanished tower and fortified warehouses of the archmage Halaster Blackcloak.”
• It is the “the only known entrance” to Undermountain accessible to the general public.
• The first well is 40’ in diameter and located in the main taproom. It’s “situated between the bar and most of the dining tables” and surrounded by a “waist-high, foot-thick stone ring/rampart.” Lit torches are placed around the circumference of the well and there’s a massive block-and-tackle “hanging from a stone lintel above the well, hiding among the roof beams.” The well is 140 feet deep, dark below 50 feet, and there are noisemakers at the bottom (used to signal the taproom for the rope to be lowered).
• You pay Durnan 1 gold piece per head to be lowered into Undermountain.
• The “wet well,” which is used only for washing water, is lesser-known and hidden in a backroom. It leads to a section of the dungeon not detailed in the boxed set, but which connects “with the city sewers in many places” and the plane of Hades (via the Pool of Loss). It’s possible that there are actually multiple passages intersecting the wet well, but the phrasing here is ambiguous.

Now, you might expect to find some reference to the Yawning Portal in Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep (1992), but not really. It has a city map which my copy lacks, but which I believe is essentially identical to the one from FR1 Waterdeep and the North and on which the Portal remains Building #4. And it has a footnote telling you to go check out FRE3 Waterdeep.

So our next stop is actually the City of Splendors boxed set (1994), which is very much designed to replace both FR1 Waterdeep and the North and the City System boxed set (although it lacks the latter’s prodigious map). The numbered key for Waterdeep is overhauled with ward-based numbering, and the Yawning Portal is now C48 (C for the Castle Ward).

City of Splendors mostly compiles the known information about the Yawning Portal from all of our previous sources, but there are a few notable new details:

• Durnan established the Yawning Portal in 1306 DR.
• The Yawning Portal is a 3-story Class C building. (Class C buildings are generally the “tall row houses that line the streets” with shops on the ground floor and offices or apartments above that, but the “better-kept” inns and taverns are also grouped in here.)
• It now also costs 1 gold piece to get pulled OUT of Undermountain. (Make sure to budget accordingly.) I believe this is also the first reference to patrons wagering on would-be adventurers.

There is actually now a long break in the Yawning Portal being described in RPG supplements, with one interesting sidenote in Skullport (1999), which claims in two different places (p. 9 and 64) that there is a secret door in the Yawning Portal’s wine cellar which leads, along a side passage, to the Bonewatch Pass, a tunnel which runs all the way to Skullport.

THE VIDEO GAME ERA

During this gap in RPG books from 1994-2004, the Yawning Portal actually makes two notable appearances in video games: Descent to Undermountain in 1994 and Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark in 2003.

These are particularly notable because, as far as I can tell, they’re the first visual depictions of the tavern.

Note: Some online sources claim that the Yawning Portal also appeared in the Eye of the Beholder games, but although there is an unnamed tavern that briefly appears in the later games of that trilogy, there’s nothing to suggest that it’s the Yawning Portal.

The depiction of the tavern in Descent to Undermountain is rather severely limited by the FPS technology of time, with everything rendered in Doom-style blocks.

• The common room is depicted as a big square room, with a big square well.
• Rather than a rope dangling over the well, there’s a wooden platform with a skull-embossed cage that’s lowered into Undermountain.
• The common room is surrounded by a hallway studded with guest rooms. (The guests are delightfully eclectic, including a mind flayer, a drow, and the Open Lord’s son.)

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark has a very different design for the inn. The game starts on the second floor, which features:

• An armory in the back corner of the inn, stocked with adventuring gear.
• A large common room, which is sort of a hostel with multiple bunkbeds and a small library of books.

A stair leads down to the first floor where there’s:

• Another common room, this one with cheap cots for sleeping but also accoutered with medical supplies for treating those injured escaping from Undermountain
• The taproom which… uh… lacks any taps? (The games’ presentation is a little ramshackle here.)

Notably the taproom also lacks a well. The well is instead located in the basement, and is less of a well and more of a “gaping chasm.” A “well” is located on a rocky spur jutting out over the chasm, and is protected by a clockwork brass dome that irises up and down.

(The pointlessness of this defensive device is established a moment later when a beholder floats up out of the chasm and near-murders Durnan.)

More recently, in the new Neverwinter game (2019), the Yawning Portal is depicted once more:

This presentation is heavily influenced by the Portal’s presentation in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (as we’ll see below).

• The taproom is shown to have a vaulted ceiling all the way to the third floor, with balconies featuring additional seating lining three sides of the room (and skylights!).
• The three-sided bar juts out into the room.

Next: Novels & Later Expeditions