Welcoming hungry adventurers
In Dungeons & Dragons: The Yawning Portal, you compete against each other as barkeeps, seating and serving starving adventurers while staying one step ahead; snagging bonus tips even when you weren't the one who sat them. Rude? Why, that's practically expected in the tavern line of work because perfectly matching their meal preferences rewards you with the Perfect Match Bonus (PMB).
Oh, but here comes the catch. Now you find yourself manning the tavern alone on a busy night shift! Heroes gotta eat, and they can't have their meal if they aren't seated. Introducing the solo challenge: Serve the party and complete additional objectives before the dinner service ends! Whoever survived the glory days of the Diner Dash franchise may just have the upper hand here. Just sayin'.
Solo mode setup
Using only the two end pieces of the game board, attach them together to form your tables for the night. Place one of each Food token in the middle of the table in any order, then set all four Action tiles face up showing the food symbol side.
Instead of separating the Hero cards into individual decks, shuffle them all together into a single deck and draw four as your first customers, placing them in a row from left to right. Next, shuffle the Objective cards and draw four, placing them face up on the outermost tables with the Victory Point (VP) star symbol always facing left.
Dinner service
While most of The Yawning Portal's components work the same as in multiplayer, the solo mode differs in three key ways: card draws, seating order, and completing objectives.
Instead of holding Hero cards in hand, you serve each adventurer in order of appearance from left to right. When an opportunity arises to draw more Hero cards, the new ones join the back of the queue. When playing a card, the Hero can be seated at any available spot at the table.
The timer element comes from the Objective cards. While completing them earns you extra points, you'll need to act fast. Notice how the X mark on each card appears in a different position? This indicates the deadline: If a Food token is placed on the marked spot before you complete the Objective, it's forfeited and can no longer be scored.
Dinner service ends when Food tokens fill both ends of the table. In the scoring phase, gems are multiplied accordingly, each completed Objective is worth 5 VP, and each collected gem set earns a standard endgame bonus of 3 VP.
Who let the barkeeps clock out?
Will you always be facing dinner service on your own? Hopefully not. The Yawning Portal shines with two or more players. The unpredictability of other players' actions can work in your favour just as easily as against you. Solo, on the other hand, leaves you entirely at the mercy of your own Food token placements, requiring careful use of Action tiles to rearrange the table and serve the next adventurer. I do find it very frustrating to meet certain PMBs at times in addition to the limited seating.
That said, solo mode has its own replay value. Try rearranging the Objective cards to either loosen or tighten the dinner service and see how high you can push your score to, which means keeping track of your personal best. The real challenge here would be to beat your own record.
Closing time
While I like the concept of seating the Heroes on a first come, first serve basis, The Yawning Portal truly comes alive with others because of the interaction, the rivalry, and the satisfaction of swooping in on someone else's PMB. And unless your forward planning in solo mode borders on chess-level calculation, you're just a barkeep holding down an undermanned tavern. Now stop reading and go hire some help. We've got hungry adventurers and tables to fill!
Things worth noting:
- Likes: Micro-managing your own tavern.
- Dislikes: If you have Diner Dash PTSD.
