Tales from the Yawning Portal: White Plume Mountain

Three weapons have been stolen and hidden in the depths of White Plume Mountain. The locals believe that the mountain is haunted, but they have no idea of the horrors that are hidden in its depths.

White Plume Mountain was originally written by Lawrence Schick and published in 1979. It is a dungeon crawl in a sandbox where the characters are looking for three stolen weapons of great power. The location of the mountain is flexible and you can place it in almost any remote location in your campaign. This adventure has been updated for 5e and is fourteen pages long including all the art and maps, but there is a lot packed into those few pages.

I believe Dan Scott is the artist of the Terraced Aquarium that captured my imagination all those years ago.

I have wanted to play White Plume Mountain since the 80s (yes, I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons that long). There was a picture of the Terraced Aquarium (room 26) that I saw and was fascinated by it, but no one wanted to DM it until my wife said she would.

White Plume Mountain is more than just a dungeon crawl and murder hobo spree. Sure, the party can pick a fight with whatever comes their way or they can try talking. There are riddles and puzzles to solve along with the epic fights. Your players that love roleplaying will not have much to do in this adventure, but your combat and explorer types will be thrilled. There are several interesting challenges that will require teamwork and out-of-the-box thinking. No two parties will tackle the dungeon the same.

The adventure does not answer who was behind the stealing of the three weapons. All of the creatures encountered in the dungeon are prisoners. This is something that you as the DM can build upon and add to White Plume Mountain with additional levels and encounters.

White Plume Mountain is what I was hoping Tomb of Horrors would be. Was it worth waiting all these years to play? Yes, yes it was. Should you run it for your table? Yes, yes you should. It is a great one-shot adventure or as part of a campaign. It works on so many levels and allows imaginative players to have a very different experience from your beer and peanuts style of players.

How it Played

It took our party about six hours to complete the adventure which also included our travel to the region of the mountain. We had a bet going in as to who was the big bad, he was either going to be an imposter, undead, or himself. We also believed that there would be a dragon at the end. There was no dragon and the adventure does not provide the answer as to who was behind the stealing of the magic items. This is typical of old-school adventures, they leave space and unanswered questions for DMs to bring their own conclusions and stories.

This is a dungeon crawl, but does not look and feel like your typical dungeon. The mountain’s unique make-up adds to the way that the place looks. There are natural caves that are filled with geysers or flooded with boiling hot water. There are hallways filled with water and dangers. There are a lot of monsters in this adventure. Twenty different monsters to be specific, so be prepared with stats and notes.

There are three ways to go inside the main part of the dungeon. Each has unique topography and challenges that lead to fights that each stand out on their own. Of the three stolen weapons, we ended up finding Whelm first and I believe that is the right way to go for any party. The vampire fight was hard for us, but if your party has a paladin or cleric, then he should die rather quickly.

Each of the weapons is guarded by a powerful monster or set of monsters. Each way has a unique puzzle that needs to be solved to access where the weapon is stored. In a way, this is three dungeons in one with three different endings.

The Terraced Aquarium is the best of the set-piece fights. It feels like the climax of the dungeon, but it can happen early on or right in the middle of the adventure, depending on what hallway the party takes. I think I would change the map so that players went down the three hallways in a specific order, but that would take away from the sandbox nature of the adventure. There are ways to nudge characters in certain ways without taking away their agency. For instance, set up the three hallways so that the characters reach the one that you want them to go down first be closest to where the characters enter. This is just my opinion and I believe however your party tackles the mountain is up to them.

The way the adventure went, I thought we could schmooze our way past the beasts at the top of the terrace, but I was wrong. The fight became quite desperate as we were on the wrong side of the action economy. I tried to soften the enemies with two fireballs but all I ended up doing was shattering the glass and giving them easy access to the food (aka us).

The fight with the oni was a bit underwhelming after the intensity of the Terraced Aquarium. As a player, the oni felt like he was the final boss, but that is not how he is described in the adventure. He is just another prisoner of the dungeon.

We made a new friend in the dungeon named Nine. He was a great addition to our party and we planned to make him a central piece of our retirement plans. Unfortunately, Nine fell in the Terraced Aquarium and we still mourn his passing every day.

What was Changed

The adventure was played as written. The DM did make an update that the weapons that were stolen were from families that our characters were connected to. This is very much a plug-and-play adventure except for being prepared with stats on all the different monsters.

The scales are from 1 to 10 with 1 being little to none and a 10 being the main focus of the adventure.

Role Playing: 1 – Not a lot of chances to show off your role-playing skills, but that is not the point of this particular adventure.

Combat: 10 – In the immortal words of Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, “Let them fight.”

Exploring: 10 – There is so much to see and so much to do. You will need to be ready to respond to different environments, solve puzzles, and answer riddles. The dungeon is big enough to be interesting, but not so big that it feels like a slog.