If C.S. Lewis was a Game Master, then The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe wouldn’t work at all.
Fortunately, he was a novelist.
If you want to write a story, then you’ll be just fine emulating Lewis. But if you want to design adventures for your favorite tabletop roleplaying game, then you’ll need to do things a little differently.
THE MAPS OF WATERDEEP
Now that we’ve walked through the textual history of the Yawning Portal, let’s take a peek at how the location has been mapped over the years.
The first official map of the Yawning Portal’s interior appears in the City System boxed set. But to fully understand these interior maps, we first need to take a look at the exterior maps of the inn, starting with the Waterdeep city map from FR1 Waterdeep and the North:
I’ve enhanced the shape of Building #4 (Yawning Portal) here to make it clear, since the only available scan was done with a potato.
The next exterior map is from the City System boxed set. The Yawning Portal is still Building #4 and it still appears in the same general location (on Rainrun Street between Cook Street and Beinimbra’s Street), but the shape of the building has changed to a simple rectangle:
The orientation of the map has also been rotated.
The next map of Waterdeep is found in TM4 City of Waterdeep Trail Map (1989), which is simply a recolored version of the FR1 map. The map in Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep, similarly, is a re-scaled version of the same map. FRE3 Waterdeep makes the map even smaller and colors the whole city gray.
In 1990, the Forgotten Realms Atlas by Karen Wynn Forstad included a new map of Waterdeep. A version of this map in red scale was also reproduced in the manual for the first Eye of the Beholder video game:
It shows a rectangular building, although given the style and scale of the map I wouldn’t read too much into that.
A new map of Waterdeep was created for 3rd Edition’s City of Splendors sourcebook, and featured the Yawning Portal as building C48:
You may notice that the shape of the building reverted to the original FR1 map, with a few slight differences.
I am fairly certain that the next map of Waterdeep was found in the 4th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. This map was never reproduced at a large scale (nor was it made for such) and is more or less useless for our purposes.
Finally we have the 5th Edition poster map produced for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist:
You’ll notice that this map features a new outline for the Yawning Portal, although I think it can actually be interpreted in two different ways. The first is a slight variation of the City System map (with a new building directly to the east of the tavern):
And the second seems to be more of a variation on the FR1 shape:
In addition to these maps, there are two other interesting depictions of the Yawning Portal along similar lines. First, the Descent Into Undermountain computer game featured a navigational splash screen that identifies a specific building as the Yawning Portal:
Obviously Waterdeep is somewhat abstracted here (they could only model so many three-dimensional buildings), but the Yawning Portal resembles its rectangular presentation in the City System boxed set.
However, in addition to its prodigious poster maps, the City System boxed set also included a poster depicting an aerial view of Waterdeep. This poster is pretty spectacular. Although only depicting the southern end of the city due to perspective, its execution is meticulous: You can track specific streets and navigate through the city’s depiction.
And if you navigate to Soothsayer’s Way and then drop down to Rainrun Street… there’s the Yawning Portal:
I’m not certain if the artist actually knew they were depicting the Yawning Portal here. But although not strictly accurate (following the map, there should be an alley on the east side of the building), it’s (a) a 3-floor C-class building and (b) its shape is remarkably similar to that shown on the FR1 map (which is quite possibly the version the artist was working from if the City System cartography hadn’t been completed yet).
In the same vein, we can also look at Mike Schley’s map of the city used for the Lords of Waterdeep board game:
Other depictions of the Yawning Portal’s exterior are quite rare, actually. Notably Clyde Caldwell’s cover for FRE3 Waterdeep (and novelization) included the inn’s sign, the design of which was then clearly followed for an interior illustration by Ron Spencer in Expedition to Undermountain:
(Ironically, the description of the sign in Expedition to Undermountain of being “a board weathered to a silvery hue” is clearly describing the Caldwell cover, not the definitely-not-silvery wood of its own illustration.)
MAPS OF THE YAWNING PORTAL
Now we’ll turn our attention to the maps depicting the interior of the Yawning Portal. As I’d mentioned, the first such map was found in the City System boxed set:
It’s my belief that the cartographer here didn’t get a full brief. In the City System boxed set, the Yawning Portal is only described as, “Building 4, Inn.” So he drew a map that matched the dimensions of Building 4 on the city map.
One thing to note is that, up to this point, the number of floors in the Yawning Portal had not been definitively listed. The map indicates “Upper Floors” (plural), so how many floors in total? At least three. And three is, in fact, the answer listed in City of Splendors a few years later.
But there’s no staircase from the second to third floor.
For years, when looking at this map, I’d also erroneously concluded that there was, hilariously, no Well! But that’s because I was looking for the Well where I expected it to be: in the common room. But the Well actually is shown: It’s in the small room second-to-the-left at the top of the map.
You know who else missed it, though?
The cartographer for Expedition to Undermountain, which is also our next map of the Yawning Portal:
You can see that the cartographer more or less follows the same floorplan as the original map, although due to their somewhat chunky assets compromises have to be made. (For example, multiple rooms no longer have beds.) It’s possible that the reason the well disappeared from the back room is because the cartographer just didn’t have an appropriate asset to drop in.
(But given the reputation of the Yawning Portal at this point, I would love to know what decision process resulted in this map being created and published.)
In 2012, we finally get a map of the Yawning Portal which includes the titular portal. From Halls of Undermountain:
The other thing to note about this map is that the outline of the building is based on the original outline (as seen on the FR1 and later City of Splendors maps), not the rectangular outline from City System. Maps for the other floors of the building are not given, but you may notice multiple staircases up and one leading down to the “lower chambers.”
I have a few quibbles, but this is a most excellent map and almost certainly the one I would choose to use when running the Yawning Portal: It’s got the Well of Entry, private meeting rooms, properly arrayed tables, etc. It even has privies! (Which I can only imagine drop waste directly down into some unlucky portion of Undermountain. Of course, there was one unfortunate incident where tentacles reached up and sucked a patron down. But only occasionally do otyughs come rambling up looking for a second helping…)
Our final official map comes from DDAL08-00 Once In Waterdeep:
Although this map seems to take some inspiration from the Halls of Undermountain map (compare the Kitchen, Meeting Room, and Lounge running down one side of the map), the overall effort is, unfortunately, quite underwhelming. It lacks quite a few key features, reverts to the rectangular outline of the building, and quite underwhelms by only offering eight guest rooms in total.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Besides the depictions of the Yawning Portal in video games (which we’ve already discussed), there have been quite a few illustrations of the interior of the Yawning Portal scattered around various D&D books (although not as many as you might think). Most are actually quite generic in character and I’m not going to attempt to catalogue them all.
There are, however, two notable exceptions, both of which come from 5th Edition.
First, this illustration from the 5th Edition Player’s Handbook by Scott Murphy:
Notice the devil-head fireplace in the background. As far as I can tell, this is the first time such a fireplace is described or depicted in the Yawning Portal, but it has since become iconic, appearing time and time again in illustrations of the inn.
One of the reasons for this, I believe, is because of its appearance in this image by Jason Thompson from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist:
This image is not a map, but it is incredibly detailed and has had a significant impact on the mental image most people have of the tavern.
One thing I will note here is that this image does NOT depict the Well of Entry thrusting through the front wall of the tavern. In researching this article, I became aware that this had somehow become a semi-popular interpretation of the image.
But Thompson’s art is clearly a cut-away view. You can see that the floor in front of the Well has been cut away to show the adventurers descending.
DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26D: Elestra Digs Deep
Jamill slammed back the last of his amber-colored drink. “Okay, this is your last chance. Who sent you?”
Elestra suddenly became aware that two rather large men with short clubs strapped to their thighs had suddenly materialized out of the crowd behind her. She stammered, unable to find any kind of answer that would satisfy Jamill.
Jamill jerked his head and headed towards the back of the bar. The two thugs laid their hands on Elestra’s arms. She got the message and let them hustle her out through the back door of the tavern.
When you have factions in your game, those factions should react to the actions of the PCs.
But if factions act as if they know every action the PCs take – as if they were omniscient, all-knowing entities with an eavesdropping device planted under the gaming table — that becomes a frustrating experience for the players and stifles their ingenuity.
There are a number of methods you can use for handling this, but I’ve generally gotten good results taking the decision out of my hands and mechanically determining it.
For example, you might have a random faction encounter check, similar to a random encounter check. For example, roll 1d6 once per day and if you roll a 1, some faction is going to take action against the PCs (or, at least, based on what they know about the PCs’ actions). Increase this to a 2 in 6 chance if the PCs have been making a lot of “noise.”
Another option is to mechanically check whether specific PC actions are detected by relevant factions (e.g., the faction they’re taking the action against or a faction that has them under surveillance). You can think of this as a stealth-type resolution, but at a more abstract level (and possibly using different skills).
Note: This is different than a situation where a faction DEFINITELY knows what the PCs are doing. For example, if the PCs break into a Renraku facility and get spotted by surveillance cameras or fight NPCs who escape and can identify them, you can just actively play Renraku’s response.
A key thing I recommend here is that the PCs should be able to influence the outcome of these mechanics, ideally in a way that involves meaningful choices by the players and is more than just an all-or-nothing decision to take or not take the risky action.
For example, the events in this session use the counter-intelligence system I shared here on the Alexandrian back in 2010. (When I originally mentioned them in this article and talked about the gameplay they made possible that otherwise would never have arisen, it was specifically this Ptolus campaign I was talking about.)
The other thing to note about these counter-intelligence mechanics is that they aren’t uni-directional: The players can also use them to figure out if people are asking questions about them.
In the case of this session, the impact on play was pretty straightforward:
Elestra really had dug a deep hole for herself here, and I thought it quite likely that the scenario was now going to turn into a rescue op by the other PCs. (Or possibly even somebody finding Elestra’s body in an alley. The decision not to tell anyone else in the group what she was doing was incredibly risky.) But she managed to turn the tables quite nicely.
Taking Jamill back to their rooms, on the other hand, was a potentially disastrous decision from a counter-intelligence standpoint: The bad guys didn’t know who Elestra was, but if they knew where she lived they’d be able to figure it out pretty quick.
Tee recognized the risk and took some very smart actions to blunt the counter-intelligence vectors that had been established. Just dumping Jamill somewhere would have left him free to continue trying to figure out who Elestra was and why she’d been asking questions. Running him out of town under the guise of the cult itself AND planting the idea that Elestra had been “dealt with” even if she decided to stay in town was both a plan and a contingency plan.
The follow-up decision to then use Jamill’s identity to infiltrate the cult itself was also smart play, and would shape how the entire scenario would play out.
NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 27A – Running the Campaign: Missing Clues
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
SESSION 26D: ELESTRA DIGS DEEP
August 24th, 2008
The 14th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty
As two o’clock neared, Elestra headed to Tavern Row.
The Onyx Spider was a large, squat, two-story building wedged into the south end of Tavern Row. Elestra knew it to have a seedy and dangerous reputation. And as she passed through the front doors into the common room, it wasn’t hard to figure out where the tavern had gotten its name from: In the center of the room, levitating ten feet off the floor and embedded in a huge crystal sphere, was a giant spider carved from black onyx. It looked expensive.
Elestra spotted Jamill at the bar and pushed her way through the crowd to where he was standing.
“So you’re interested in the Brotherhood?” Jamill asked her, stonefaced.
Elestra nodded. “I might be interested in joining.”
“Might be?”
“I guess I just want to know about it.”
Jamill’s brow furrowed. “Right. Okay, who told you about the Brotherhood?”
Elestra hesitated. “A friend.”
“Who?”
“Well, it was more a friend of a friend… you know?”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t really… He kind of spoke to me in confidence and…”
Jamill slammed back the last of his amber-colored drink. “Okay, this is your last chance. Who sent you?”
Elestra suddenly became aware that two rather large men with short clubs strapped to their thighs had suddenly materialized out of the crowd behind her. She stammered, unable to find any kind of answer that would satisfy Jamill.
Jamill jerked his head and headed towards the back of the bar. The two thugs laid their hands on Elestra’s arms. She got the message and let them hustle her out through the back door of the tavern.
As they stepped through the door into the narrow alley behind the Onyx Spider, however, the two thugs briefly took their hands off Elestra. She immediately called upon the Spirit of the City and began her transformation in to a bird, hoping to fly away.
But the thugs were too quick for her. A large hand snapped out and grabbed the fragile sparrow-Elestra in mid-flight. She could feel it crushing the delicate bones of her new form and she was forced to abandon the attempt.
The two thugs reached for their clubs, but even as she landed lightly on the floor of the alley, Elestra was quick to draw her rapier. Her blade lashed out at the face of one of the thugs, cutting a deep gash through one cheek.
The thug screamed in pain, but even as Elestra grinned with satisfaction she felt the other thug’s club smash into her already aching ribs. Ignoring the blinding flash of pain, she spun around and cut a matching gash across the second thug’s cheek.
Jamill stepped out of the alley. He had drawn a longsword, but his swing seemed slow and clumsy to Elestra. She easily parried it and drove her own blade viciously past his defenses, skewering him through the stomach.
With a deep groan, Jamill let his longsword slip from his fingers and sank to the dirty cobbles of the alley. The two thugs stared at Elestra, glanced at each other, and then ran off in opposite directions.
Thinking quickly, Elestra grabbed Jamill (who had now slipped from shock into unconsciousness), threw him over her shoulder, and headed north towards the Ghostly Minstrel. Circumspectly circling around the inn, Elestra snuck in through the kitchen and headed upstairs.
She grabbed Agnarr from his room and left him to bind and blindfold Jamill in her room while she went back downstairs to leave a message with Tellith to let the others know that she would like them to come up to her room as soon as they returned.
TEE IS THE CLEVER ONE
Tee and Dominic arrived back at the Ghostly Minstrel together. Receiving Elestra’s message (by way of Tellith) they headed up to her room.
When they knocked, Elestra cracked the door slightly and peeked out at them. “Oh! Hello!” She visibly scanned the hall behind them to make sure that it was empty, then ushered them inside.
Agnarr was sitting on the bed with a vaguely bored expression on his face. Jamill was trussed up in the middle of the room, still unconscious. Elestra shuffled her feet nervously.
Tee looked back and forth between the three of them. “What am I looking at, exactly?”
Elestra, in a slightly disjointed fashion, explained everything that had happened. Tee was unbelieving. Wasn’t this exactly what she had told Elestra not to do?
“And then you brought him here?” Tee said, incredulously. “Why would you—“
Another knock came at the door. Tee quickly waved Elestra out of the way and cracked the door.
It was Tor.
“I had a message from Elestra to come up?”
Tee nodded. “Elestra has created a… situation.” She opened the door wide enough for Tor to see Jamill. “And it would probably be better if you weren’t part of this developing disaster.”
“Haven’t you just told him pretty much everything there is to tell?” Dominic said. “Just let him in.”
But Tor nodded to Tee and left. Tee shut the door.
“What—“ Elestra started.
“Shhh.” Tee cut her off. “Let me think.”
She had asked Elestra not to go asking questions, but she had. And now she was faced with almost exactly the type of situation she had feared: A cultist in their rooms, compromising whatever safety or security might be left at the Ghostly Minstrel. Anywhere else would have been—
“Elestra, I need you to go out and find a vacant warehouse. Somewhere far away from here. Try the South Market.”
“What are you—?”
“Just go. We’ve got to get this done before he wakes up.” Elestra left. Tee turned to Dominic and Agnarr. “You two stay here and keep an eye on him. If it looks like he’s going to wake up, knock him out again.”
Tee dashed out of the room and headed across Delver’s Square to Ebbert’s. She bought a strange, eclectic collection of material and then returned to the Ghostly Minstrel as quickly as she could.
By the time Elestra returned with the location of a suitable warehouse in the South Market, Tee had stripped down the common items she had purchased and assembled the makeshift components of a primitive disguise. Her biggest goal had been to make herself look human instead of elfish, hoping that would be enough to throw people off the trail if it came to that. (Of course, Elestra hadn’t been disguised at all… but there wasn’t much she could do about that.)
Tee had Agnarr and the others carry Jamill downstairs and load him into a carriage, making protestations as he went about how his friend had had “too much to drink”. Tee surreptiously joined them a few moments later. She bribed the carriage driver well and had him drop them off at the empty warehouse.
TEE HUSTLES
There was a dilapidated chair in the corner of the warehouse. She had Agnarr tie Jamill to it and then told everyone to wait outside.
“Will you be okay?” Agnarr asked.
“If not, you’ll hear me shouting. I have big lungs.” Tee gave a slightly nervous grin.
Once the others had left, though, she slipped the broken square ring that they had found in Pythoness House onto her finger and pushed those nervous feelings deep inside and set her face in a look of cold determination. Then she slapped Jamill awake.
“I’m ashamed of you.”
Jamill shook his head. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
Tee removed his blindfold, carefully making sure that he would see the ring on her finger without letting him know that she was trying to make sure he saw it.
Jamill shook his head again, trying to get his bleary eyes to focus. “What happened?”
“You couldn’t handle a little girl?” Scorn dripped from Tee’s voice. “A little girl who turns into a bird?”
Jamill suddenly turned surly. “She was tougher than she looked…”
“She’s been dealt with,” Tee said with a finality that made it clear that Jamill was lucky that he hadn’t been “dealt with”, too. “You’re an embarrassment. You’re embarrassing us. Get out of town. Don’t come back.”
And then she left him… still tied up.
BACK TO ELESTRA’S ROOM
Tee rejoined the others. She stripped off her disguise and they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel, gathering Ranthir and Tor on their way back to Elestra’s room.
They quickly compared their notes from the day. Tor filled them in on his fear that Iltumar might be followed by cultists, his meeting with Shim, and the news that they had been followed.
“But Shim said that it was an Imperial priestess.”
“What does that mean?” Elestra said.
“Do you think that the Church might be in league with the cultists somehow?” Tee said.
Dominic suddenly looked queasy and uncertain.
“Or perhaps there are just some members of the Church who are cultists,” Ranthir said. “The Truth of the Hidden God said that the Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife infiltrates religions.”
“Is it possible that Rehobath is working with Wuntad?” Elestra asked.
A flurry of panicky hypotheses followed, but then Tor held up his hands. “There’s something else you should all know.” He paused for a moment, trying to find the right words to express something that felt like a confession. “I’ve started taking steps towards becoming a knight with the Order of the Dawn…”
“Congratulations!” Tee said, a huge smile spreading across her face. “That’s wonderful!”
“But that means,” Tor said, “That the priestess might have been following me. The Order might be keeping an eye on me to make sure that I don’t do anything unworthy.”
To a large degree, all of this left them back at square one: Tee hadn’t dared to ask Jamill any questions because it might have made him suspicious enough for her gambit to fail. They didn’t know how to interpret the information that Shim had given to Tor. All they’d really done was to confirm that Iltumar was tied up with some very dangerous people.
“As much as I hate to say it,” Tee said, “Elestra may have had the right idea. If we move quickly, I might be able to find someone else in the Brotherhood that I can talk to by using Jamill’s name as a contact… before he has a chance to warn them or they discover that he’s missing.”
This didn’t thrill any of them, but it seemed like their best chance at this point.
“Of course,” Tee said with a withering look in Elestra’s direction. “I’ll be taking proper precautions.”
And she walked out.
NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Counterintelligence Vectors – Campaign Journal: Session 27A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
The Alexandrian’s newest video is the first part of a cover-to-cover Let’s Read of the 1974 Edition of D&D.
I find that a lot of Let’s Reads are basically just, “Hey! Look! There are words on the page!” Personally, I don’t find these particularly valuable because… well, I can just read it myself. My goal with this Let’s Read was to really dive into the history of D&D — not just how it came to be, but also how it was played and how that play evolved over time.
OD&D thus becomes a lens through which we can learn far more than just what’s on the page.
