The Sunless Citadel is the first adventure presented in the 5th edition compilation book, Tales From the Yawning Portal. It is an introductory adventure, first developed for the 3rd edition D&D back in the year 2000. Designed for PC levels 1 – 3, the adventure dungeon has two distinct levels. The first has an interesting dynamic between two rival tribes (one kobold and the other goblin) as they vie for control of the upper level. In sandbox fashion, the players can choose which faction to support and have a variety of ways to acheive victory. The second level is a classic dungeon crawl as the party works to defeat a mad Druid who controls an evil tree borne from the corpse of a vampire and his army of blights. The players also have to contend with the remnants of the evil cult that built this citadel, and there’s even a petulant dragon.
What follows is a complete overview of our experience playing this adventure. Bear in mind that my players were all 5th level when we started the adventure, so I had to boost most of the monsters in abilities or numbers to make it challenging for my players. Also, we played this campaign during the 2020 pandemic, so I also discuss our successes and our failures at playing the adventure remotely.
There are five sections to my overview:
The Campaign Diaries – Our heroes go on a quest for a missing group of adventurers, led by a strange man and his miniature giant space-hamster.
The Charts – I always make at least two charts to organize my adventure; an Encounter List and a Monster Stats sheet. I’ve included charts from the base adventure and my modified version for 5th level characters.
The Maps – All the maps that I used to run The Sunless Citadel, including some custom maps. The Player Maps have all hidden locations, traps, and secret areas removed. They are also great for a virtual tabletop.
The Images – They say a picture tells a thousand words, so I included all of the images I used to help tell my story, including those found in the original printing of the module.
The Extras – I used very few handouts during this adventure, mostly because we played the entire session virtually via Zoom. So here, I included all the steps I took to run the game remotely and how to create your own Fog of War maps. As for the handouts, I usually print them using a variety of construction and specialty papers cut to fit my printer. The Handouts can be printed as is or used as a starting point for your own creative spin.
If there is anything else that you think I should have here to help you run your own campaign, please leave a comment.
Campaign Diary
Session 1 – Our heroes agree to commit goblin genocide for the price of a single iron key, and then get trapped behind enemy lines.
Session 2 – Our heroes storm the goblin camp. They almost get wiped out by some rats, rescue a creepy gnome and impersonate a god.
Session 3 – Our heroes invade the lower level. They kill some stuff, add to their menagerie, and one hero turns Chaotic Stupid.
Session 4 – The penultimate conclusion. Our heroes fight an epic battle with wizards & druids & trees, oh my. Oh, and there’s a vampire.
Session 5 – The actual conclusion. Our heroes finally get that iron key and instantly regret ever wanting to see what it opened.
The Charts
Here are the two charts I make to better organize my adventures. First is an Encounter List that includes each room at a glance, including its location, monters and NPCs, traps, treasures, experience points earned, and any other special features of each room.
Sunless Citadel Encounter List
Second, I like to have a Monster Stat sheet that has every monster and NPC in the adventure listed with all of their important stats all on one page. This saves my from having to having multiple books open when combat begins. The stat sheet should be self-explanatory, but for further details about this and all my other charts, check out my Dungeon Master Resource Page
When I ran my players through this adventure, they were all at least 5th level, which made them way too powerful for this 1st level adventure. I’ve included a modified Encounter List and Monster Stat sheet, adjusting most of the encounters to reflect their higher level and adding some new traps. I also included all of the newly-leveled NPCs and additional monsters that I used in the adventure, such as the Vine Creeper, my improved Dragon Priest, and the vampire, Gulthias. Here are the links:
Sunless Citadel Encounter List modified 5th level
Sunless Citadel Monster Stats modified 5th level
The Maps
I prefer the maps that come with the Yawning Portal reprint to the original, but both of them have a few minor issues. The first is that the map does not include every trap listed in the adventure and I found that I would forget to include it during gameplay, so I added all the traps on my modified map below. I also included more traps which I indicated with a blue “T” and describe in the applicable session diary. Second, it alway bugged me that the goblins do not have their own entrance to the Citadel. It makes no sense that they have to go through the Kobold area to enter or exit. I added a series of rock ledge “stairs” north of the Guard Room #36. Lastly, I changed the nature of Room #7 significantly and I altered the map to reflect this.
The Images
I’ll start with the pictures that came with the 5th Edition reprint presented in Tales From the Yawning Portal, followed by those that were drawn for the Original publication, and then I’ll include a few others that I appropriated (i.e. stole) from other sources.
From the Original 2000 printing of the 3rd Edition D&D Adventure
A few extras from unnamed sources.
The Extras
I only used one handout during the adventure and of course it has a typo in it where I refer to the Hobgoblin Chief by the wrong name. But it does do a good job of answering most of the story’s questions should the dialog with Belak go as poorly as it did in my game. Plus, it gives a method to restore the enthralled adventurers should you desire that.
Fog of War
Due to the Pandemic, we began the adventure playing remotely. There are a number of wonderful products and websites that facilitate this style of roleplaying, but I was curious to see if it could be done completely for free. It can but it wasn’t great. It was functional but it requires a fair amount of pre-planning and a lot of forgiveness from your players.
We generally play on a dining room table, but for remote play I set up a card table inside our home office. The battle mat goes on the card table and the two boys sit there. I am next to the table and next to the office desk which has the computer on it. The computer will have the map of the dungeon which I have loaded into Photoshop to run a poor man’s Fog of War for the dungeon. I then set up three camera phones (mine and the boys’). One camera is propped up to view the computer monitor, a second is on the desk looking at the players, and the third is attached to a flexible floor lamp, looking stright down at the battle mat on the table. I set up a Zoom call between the three phones and my remote players’ Ipad and we had a rough-around-the-edges but free Remote D&D session.
My biggest task for this play was creating the Fog of War effect for the dungeon. I used photoshop and here is my step-by-step method for creating your own.
Miniature Montage
Now I may not have had many handouts, but I did paint over 50 minis just for this adventure. Here’s a gallery of most of them.
So that’s about it. If there is anything else that you wish I had included in this Sunless Citadel Resource Guide, please let me know.
And if you like these Resources pages, then check out the ones I’ve created for the other campaigns I’m running at the D&D Campaign Resources Page.
As always, it’s better to show than tell, and Game On!
Game Night Blog 
As a new DM I can not tell you how much I appreciate all of the work you put into this. Thank you for sharing this with the world. Indeed brother. Game on!
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You are welcome! Now share it with all your friends. And your enemies. I don’t discriminate. But seriously, you’re welcome and I’m thrilled you found it useful.
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Thanks so much for providing such a valuable resource. It’s been years since I’ve ran this adventure so I didn’t have all of my old stuff. This was great!
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You’re very welcome. I don’t have any of my old stuff either. I gave it ALL away to a ex-friend’s kid when she wanted to learn. Before I had kids of my own.
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THIS IS AWSOME
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Thank you very much. You’re awesome too!
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I haven’t DM’ed in a long while, so this was very helpful. Thanks for your work!
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I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading it.
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I have not DMed for 50 years. I only started playing again for my grandson when he was ten. There is a world of difference between the first edition and the fifth. Thank you for sharing your entertaining journal and many insights into how DMing has changed!
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Thanks Lee. Welcome to the club. I understand completely. When I resumed playing again it felt like a whole different game. Good to have you back.
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Thank you for these incredibly useful resources! I like your idea to create a separate goblin entrance in to fortress, I think I’ll use that. I’m confused about the hallway that connects area 39 to area 41. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation in ToTYP about this room and whether to the 2 doors on the north wall of area 39 are locked or not. Maybe you came up with a soulution and I just haven’t read about it in the session diaries yet. Nothing a little creativity can’t fix.
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Tales From the Yawning Portal*
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You’re welco…
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You are very welcome, Jon. I love hearing from new people who dig my nonsense. I left all those doors unlocked to allow for the possibility of the players finding the right room via the wrong way. I did place a trap there as something the goblins would do to protect the room. My players never entered this hallway, so I did not discuss it during the blog. Have fun storming the citadel!
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Your nonsense is easy digging, I look forward to lurking around the rest of your site. I like the idea of trapping that hallway as well, originally I was just thinking of barring the northern doors in room 39 from the other side. Anyway, awesome work and thanks again!
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And thank you for taking the time to reach out and comment. I appreciate all of them.
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Very usefull! Just one question. For spellcasters on the monster stat sheet, what does “Spells 4/3/2” mean (for example with Erky on the monster stats for 5th level)? And what does the (3) in his list of spells mean? I couldn’t find anything about it on this page or the overview page.
Many thanks for all your work! It helps out starting DMs like me greatly 🙂
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Sorry about that. I’ll add in an explanation about that. It’s my shorthand for the number of spells he can cast. Four 1st level spells, three 2nd level, and two 3rd level. Hope this helps.
I’m happy you found the page useful. Good luck running your game.
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Hello! I was planning on running the citadel by projecting the battlemap and I want it to act as a fog of war like you did, would it be possible to get the psd you created? The article was very interesting, thanks for all the resources!
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I’ve had to shrink down my web photos to save on storage space. But if you go to 5etools.com, they have the largest map files of this adventure that I’ve found on the web.
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Okay thanks! I’ll make sure to check that out, it’ll be my first time DMing so I’m not always sure on what tool to use haha
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No problem. There’s a lot out there to digest. BTW some of the photos on that site are compressed into a html or web file that you cannot open in photoshop. But you can open the file in Paint which comes with windows and then save it as a jpeg. That’s what I do.
Good luck DMing. You’ll be great. If you have any questions. I’m here to ask.
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Thanks for the pro-tip and the kind words! I’ll do my best for sure
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The reprinting is also superior in the aftermath/conclusion. It goes from “If the heroes cut down the Gulthias Tree, its twisted influence over the Sunless Citadel vanishes, and any supplicants die (this includes Sharwyn and Braford).” to “If the characters kill the Gulthias Tree, Sharwyn and Braford die 24 hours later (unless you decide they can be saved somehow).
The reminder for the DM that they can make up a way for the players to save Sharwyn and Braford is a nice touch in the reprinted version.
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Getting ready to start a new game with 3 or 4 PC’s, at least 1 a newbie.
Gonna run Tales From Yawning Portal.
This page is TERRIFIC!
Gonna digest this page for a couple weeks and start maybe New Years Eve ?
Any suggestions on enlarging maps from Sunless Citadel?
Ed
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Thanks Ed. Welcome aboard and Happy Holidays. As for enlarging the maps, if you mean higher resolution maps that can be printed, go to 5etools.com. They have every adventure online with large format maps of the adventure. Sunless Citadel is in the Tales from the Yawning Portal section.
If you mean expanding the maps, you could add a whole Underdark area leading from where you fight the bugbear boss or increasing the number of rooms in the tomb section on the first floor.
Keep me posted on your progress. I love hearing about how other campaigns treat the same adventure.
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Thank you for all of this, it’s making my campaign a fair bit easier to run.
Would you happen to have a version to the journal entry with white background? Would make it easier to edit, such as removing parts of text or make it look more like parchment.
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Thank you for the AMAZING breakdown and resources. I haven’t DMed in a while and am playing with some folks who have never played. Dusting off the books because my youngest daughter has asked to play. I picked this module because I felt it was a good way to recut my teeth and introduce new players. Your map tweeks and suggestions are great. Looking forward to family game nights. 🙂
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I am DMing this for the first time myself. I love how helpful your website is!! I really like how you have the option to save the characters in the end with the vampire bit. What stats did you give the vampire? Is it just from the MM? And what were the changes you made to room #7? Are the changes described in your diary sessions? Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated!!
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