Paul Farquhar
Legend
You need to have the right player. I did it once (as the traitor).
Did you ever see The Adventure Game on the BBC?
D&D 5E Enhancing Vecna: Eve of Ruin *SPOILERS*
- Thread starter pukunui
- Start date
Did you ever see The Adventure Game on the BBC?
pukunui
Legend
Yes, I have played in games where someone else has turned out to be a traitor. I can’t think of a single instance where I enjoyed that surprise.
Nope. Never heard of it.
evilbob
Adventurer
Hey folks! I'd like to weigh in as well. Our group is excited to play a game that actually goes to level 20 so I finally read through this adventure, and my opinion is: it's bad.
I actually like that it feels like a Disney Theme Park ride through Avengers Endgame But D&D. The issue is that it's a veritable what's-what of bad adventure design: hyper-railroaded plot, idiot villain, zero personal stakes, dumb twist 2ndary villain, NPCs as signposts, the whole campaign is a fetch quest for an item that isn't needed - I mean it goes on and on, and the lack of player agency is frustrating. (I read one review that noted it should be easy to defeat most of the locations via dimension door - assuming you don't see through the dumb twist villain in chapter 2 and just skip to the end.) And having just finished the Tiamat campaign - another poorly written and extremely railroady game - where my players very nearly killed Tiamat in about 3 rounds, I was very wary of the stat blocks presented for the level 20 characters to face. BIG thanks to @dave2008 for some well-crafted updates! (I wish I had seen that Tiamat before finishing the last campaign!)
Also, one of the top google results for Eve of Ruin is a WONDERFUL reddit post about how to transform the entire campaign into even more of a time-travel plot except that it actually ties together and the macguffin is required. They are assembled and fight Vecna at the beginning, fail, and then have to go get the rod specifically to stop him, and Kas is openly helping them (and betraying them too). Vecna can interfere along the way, and even be defeated multiple times, but once they reassemble the rod they can go BACK to the "final" battle to stop him again.
So here's what I'm going to do: lean in to the Avengers Endgame But D&D, and make it personal. Instead of a theme park ride through different settings, my players are going to have a multiversal jaunt through many of our past campaigns, including Ravenloft, Witchlight, and homebrew stuff. Some of us have played together for over 20 years, so there's a lot to choose from - and not all of them are D&D! We've dabbled in Vampire, a Shadowrun-style Apocalypse World game, Delta Green, Mouseguard - and there will be at least a little bit of all of them. I've kept every player sheet that's ever been in a game I've run, so I still have all their names, classes, species, etc. The chapters can be reskinned or replaced, and there will be tiny snippets here and there of others.
Also, to help solve some of the other issues, I'm restructuring the plot like this:
Chapter one is about a rival cult that is trying to find out more about the cult of Vecna, and establishing that conjuration magic is weakened and doesn't work well. (Vecna's cult would never kidnap people and draw attention to themselves when they can just charm them, read their minds for secrets, and no one would be the wiser.) Fighting that cult leads to information that helps them find the Vecna ritual, and when that is stopped the group is shunted to the centralized base (a place in one of my games that is more personal than Sigil).
The assembled group of powerful NPCs (that are actually important to the party, instead of the Wizards Three, although one is still Tasha) let them know that Vecna has been compiling secrets for eons; he learned the secret that other worlds, even universes exist - and he's discovered that in exactly one of these, he rules supreme and all the other gods are dead. He has been gathering enough secrets on how this all works that he believes he can unmake the entire multiverse and keep only the universe where he is the only god, his rule is eternal, and he was never defeated.
The NPCs were trying to create a spell that would stop him but in the end it only summoned champions from across different universes. Fortunately one was Kas and he knows where Vecna would be: the Cave of Shattered Reflection on the plane of Pandemonium. It is the central vortex of all chaos. So the whole group goes there to stop him, because his victory is eminent! When they arrive, the battle starts, and they are completely wiped: but before they can all finally die, one important NPC manages to fly into the vortex and break the timeline (and destroy herself). This shunts them all back to the base.
At this point Kas reveals that he had a backup plan, based on what he knows about Vecna and his plans: re-creating the Rod of Seven Parts. It is the ultimate form of Law on multiple universes, so it should be enough to stop the ritual, which is the ultimate form of chaos. However, Vecna foresaw this of course and shattered it into 7 parts, each of which was flung into various universes and timelines. The casters get together and start to research where these parts may be; they believe the NPC's sacrifice gave them enough time to put it all together before Vecna can recreate the timeline he was just in. They're trying to figure out where all the parts are; the party is free to go about this however they want, but everyone else has been severely weakened and several of their universes are crumbling. The party is from a newer universe and it hasn't been completely mined of secrets by Vecna yet, so they still have the ability go on. Once the rod has been re-created, they can use the remaining bits of their combined powers to send the party back to the same point in the battle - without their help this time - and they can try to stop Vecna again.
The big problem with all this, though, is that teleportation magic has been locked down across the multiverse; Vecna has foreseen that someone might try to reassemble the parts and has stolen part of the Weave - the core of all time and existence - that aligns with conjuring. However, Tasha realizes that there's one way to travel that doesn't rely on conjuration: fey magic. Fey magic works on belief and whimsy, and not a fundamental law of the universe. She is able to use her future self to send the Witchlight carnival to their base, which can take them to all the places they need to go. They roughly choose the order, based on how their NPC allies are discovering the locations, and are occasionally ambushed while traveling by one of Vecna's incarnations that will end up shunting them into side universes from which they need to find a way out. Also, the other NPCs are gradually removed as they return to their timelines... which are fading away.
Once the party gets the rod, Kas will do his betrayal shenanigans, and once that's settled they can head back to the "final" battle. However, even beating Vecna here isn't enough: they know he'll just reform and probably try the whole thing again sometime in the future. The only way to make sure they stop him for good is to find his phylactery - and that must be located in the one place where Vecna would know it would still exist: in the universe where he is the only god. Fortunately conjuration magic has been restored, so the party can immediately head to the ultimate domain of Vecna for the REAL final showdown, and then destroy his phylactery once and for all.
It's corny and still a little railroady, but just as cinematic and much more personal. Just throwing this out into the ether for anyone who wants it!
I actually like that it feels like a Disney Theme Park ride through Avengers Endgame But D&D. The issue is that it's a veritable what's-what of bad adventure design: hyper-railroaded plot, idiot villain, zero personal stakes, dumb twist 2ndary villain, NPCs as signposts, the whole campaign is a fetch quest for an item that isn't needed - I mean it goes on and on, and the lack of player agency is frustrating. (I read one review that noted it should be easy to defeat most of the locations via dimension door - assuming you don't see through the dumb twist villain in chapter 2 and just skip to the end.) And having just finished the Tiamat campaign - another poorly written and extremely railroady game - where my players very nearly killed Tiamat in about 3 rounds, I was very wary of the stat blocks presented for the level 20 characters to face. BIG thanks to @dave2008 for some well-crafted updates! (I wish I had seen that Tiamat before finishing the last campaign!)
Also, one of the top google results for Eve of Ruin is a WONDERFUL reddit post about how to transform the entire campaign into even more of a time-travel plot except that it actually ties together and the macguffin is required. They are assembled and fight Vecna at the beginning, fail, and then have to go get the rod specifically to stop him, and Kas is openly helping them (and betraying them too). Vecna can interfere along the way, and even be defeated multiple times, but once they reassemble the rod they can go BACK to the "final" battle to stop him again.
So here's what I'm going to do: lean in to the Avengers Endgame But D&D, and make it personal. Instead of a theme park ride through different settings, my players are going to have a multiversal jaunt through many of our past campaigns, including Ravenloft, Witchlight, and homebrew stuff. Some of us have played together for over 20 years, so there's a lot to choose from - and not all of them are D&D! We've dabbled in Vampire, a Shadowrun-style Apocalypse World game, Delta Green, Mouseguard - and there will be at least a little bit of all of them. I've kept every player sheet that's ever been in a game I've run, so I still have all their names, classes, species, etc. The chapters can be reskinned or replaced, and there will be tiny snippets here and there of others.
Also, to help solve some of the other issues, I'm restructuring the plot like this:
Chapter one is about a rival cult that is trying to find out more about the cult of Vecna, and establishing that conjuration magic is weakened and doesn't work well. (Vecna's cult would never kidnap people and draw attention to themselves when they can just charm them, read their minds for secrets, and no one would be the wiser.) Fighting that cult leads to information that helps them find the Vecna ritual, and when that is stopped the group is shunted to the centralized base (a place in one of my games that is more personal than Sigil).
The assembled group of powerful NPCs (that are actually important to the party, instead of the Wizards Three, although one is still Tasha) let them know that Vecna has been compiling secrets for eons; he learned the secret that other worlds, even universes exist - and he's discovered that in exactly one of these, he rules supreme and all the other gods are dead. He has been gathering enough secrets on how this all works that he believes he can unmake the entire multiverse and keep only the universe where he is the only god, his rule is eternal, and he was never defeated.
The NPCs were trying to create a spell that would stop him but in the end it only summoned champions from across different universes. Fortunately one was Kas and he knows where Vecna would be: the Cave of Shattered Reflection on the plane of Pandemonium. It is the central vortex of all chaos. So the whole group goes there to stop him, because his victory is eminent! When they arrive, the battle starts, and they are completely wiped: but before they can all finally die, one important NPC manages to fly into the vortex and break the timeline (and destroy herself). This shunts them all back to the base.
At this point Kas reveals that he had a backup plan, based on what he knows about Vecna and his plans: re-creating the Rod of Seven Parts. It is the ultimate form of Law on multiple universes, so it should be enough to stop the ritual, which is the ultimate form of chaos. However, Vecna foresaw this of course and shattered it into 7 parts, each of which was flung into various universes and timelines. The casters get together and start to research where these parts may be; they believe the NPC's sacrifice gave them enough time to put it all together before Vecna can recreate the timeline he was just in. They're trying to figure out where all the parts are; the party is free to go about this however they want, but everyone else has been severely weakened and several of their universes are crumbling. The party is from a newer universe and it hasn't been completely mined of secrets by Vecna yet, so they still have the ability go on. Once the rod has been re-created, they can use the remaining bits of their combined powers to send the party back to the same point in the battle - without their help this time - and they can try to stop Vecna again.
The big problem with all this, though, is that teleportation magic has been locked down across the multiverse; Vecna has foreseen that someone might try to reassemble the parts and has stolen part of the Weave - the core of all time and existence - that aligns with conjuring. However, Tasha realizes that there's one way to travel that doesn't rely on conjuration: fey magic. Fey magic works on belief and whimsy, and not a fundamental law of the universe. She is able to use her future self to send the Witchlight carnival to their base, which can take them to all the places they need to go. They roughly choose the order, based on how their NPC allies are discovering the locations, and are occasionally ambushed while traveling by one of Vecna's incarnations that will end up shunting them into side universes from which they need to find a way out. Also, the other NPCs are gradually removed as they return to their timelines... which are fading away.
Once the party gets the rod, Kas will do his betrayal shenanigans, and once that's settled they can head back to the "final" battle. However, even beating Vecna here isn't enough: they know he'll just reform and probably try the whole thing again sometime in the future. The only way to make sure they stop him for good is to find his phylactery - and that must be located in the one place where Vecna would know it would still exist: in the universe where he is the only god. Fortunately conjuration magic has been restored, so the party can immediately head to the ultimate domain of Vecna for the REAL final showdown, and then destroy his phylactery once and for all.
It's corny and still a little railroady, but just as cinematic and much more personal. Just throwing this out into the ether for anyone who wants it!
Last edited:
evilbob
Adventurer
One more thought: the whole "secrets" thing is just so weird. They had a great opportunity to create an allegory about how keeping secrets can rot us from the inside, and working through them gives you strength. I mean he's literally the god of dysfunctional communication! 
But instead you also keep secrets, and then... blurt them out into the wind to get a boost? I mean I get it, it's mechanically easy to define, but it's just so... inelegant.
My thought is to give players the same sort of "power points" but they earn them by resolving secrets, not just learning them. I've also worked with each player so all their characters have secrets themselves, and at least one other character has some knowledge of what their secret is, with the idea that this will hopefully grow naturally over time into character development. Or not! Their choice.
But instead you also keep secrets, and then... blurt them out into the wind to get a boost? I mean I get it, it's mechanically easy to define, but it's just so... inelegant.My thought is to give players the same sort of "power points" but they earn them by resolving secrets, not just learning them. I've also worked with each player so all their characters have secrets themselves, and at least one other character has some knowledge of what their secret is, with the idea that this will hopefully grow naturally over time into character development. Or not! Their choice.
Clint_L
Legend
Yeah, the underlying concept is cool but the execution is dumb and lacks meaningful stakes. I completely reworked it to make it meaningful to the party, I added in Hawkins from Stranger Things as the only locale/Vecna that anyone in my group aside from me would know anything about, and I jettisoned Kas as too inside baseball.
Clint_L
Legend
Same.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
It's weird that this wasn't in the book by default.
plecostomus
Explorer
Another rework I've been looking at is GM Carlos's VEOR remix-
VEOR Remix by GM Carlos v 1.2.0
I found the overall narrative concepts of this remix immediately satisfying in terms of explaining why the gods aren't helping (now they are!), giving the Rod something to do, and Mordenkasen issues (and making Mord easier to replace which is important to my game). The author has also been slowly adding reworks of individual chapters.
The idea that Vecna's ritual is already remaking stuff and is just barely being held back by the rest of the gods means you have an opportunity to, even temporarily or as a vision, start twisting up the adventures that got characters up to level for VEOR. That darn Vecna starts stealing or altering PC's past victories and friends, and to get their world back they need to defeat him.
I like your thoughts about the Secrets system too. I would love to meaningfully disassemble Vecna's role as God of Secrets. And if PCs instead want to get cozy with Vecna to the point where they are getting power from him, I have a hand and eye to sell them.
VEOR Remix by GM Carlos v 1.2.0
I found the overall narrative concepts of this remix immediately satisfying in terms of explaining why the gods aren't helping (now they are!), giving the Rod something to do, and Mordenkasen issues (and making Mord easier to replace which is important to my game). The author has also been slowly adding reworks of individual chapters.
The idea that Vecna's ritual is already remaking stuff and is just barely being held back by the rest of the gods means you have an opportunity to, even temporarily or as a vision, start twisting up the adventures that got characters up to level for VEOR. That darn Vecna starts stealing or altering PC's past victories and friends, and to get their world back they need to defeat him.
I like your thoughts about the Secrets system too. I would love to meaningfully disassemble Vecna's role as God of Secrets. And if PCs instead want to get cozy with Vecna to the point where they are getting power from him, I have a hand and eye to sell them.
evilbob
Adventurer
And as long as I'm necroing this thread (get it) I'd like to roll a knowledge (high level campaigns) by @ECMO3 for advice.
Sidebar: I actually read through all 49 pages of this thread: D&D (2024) - Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts and what I saw was the original observation about issues with a high-level 2024 game get ridiculed repeatedly by several people, and then the rest of the thread was ECMO3's (impressively) calm and reasonable responses that showed not only their level of expertise in every raised concern, but also that the people trying to point out "obvious" errors had zero/near-zero experience or objective evidence for their complaints, all of which turned out to be incorrect.
To anyone with experience running or playing this game or other up-to-20 5.5 games:
Given that Eve of Ruin is a 5.0 campaign and I'm running it with 5.5 characters (and using 5.5 monsters whenever I can), broadly: what would you do to change things if you were running it?
We have an Oathbreaker Paladin, Moon Druid, Battle Master Fighter, Assassin Rogue, and Lore Bard (who is the least power-gamey of the group). None of my group are multi-classers, nor do I think they'll bother with it down the line (maybe the rogue?). I'm cutting chapters 3 and 6 (Spelljammer and Krynn, just for story reasons) and completely changing chapter 2, so no worries with that material. Some ideas I've read from other posts include:
Sidebar: I actually read through all 49 pages of this thread: D&D (2024) - Wrapping up first 2-20 2024 campaign this week, some of my thoughts and what I saw was the original observation about issues with a high-level 2024 game get ridiculed repeatedly by several people, and then the rest of the thread was ECMO3's (impressively) calm and reasonable responses that showed not only their level of expertise in every raised concern, but also that the people trying to point out "obvious" errors had zero/near-zero experience or objective evidence for their complaints, all of which turned out to be incorrect.
To anyone with experience running or playing this game or other up-to-20 5.5 games:
Given that Eve of Ruin is a 5.0 campaign and I'm running it with 5.5 characters (and using 5.5 monsters whenever I can), broadly: what would you do to change things if you were running it?
We have an Oathbreaker Paladin, Moon Druid, Battle Master Fighter, Assassin Rogue, and Lore Bard (who is the least power-gamey of the group). None of my group are multi-classers, nor do I think they'll bother with it down the line (maybe the rogue?). I'm cutting chapters 3 and 6 (Spelljammer and Krynn, just for story reasons) and completely changing chapter 2, so no worries with that material. Some ideas I've read from other posts include:
- Don't allow Vicious weapons, or houserule them as Very Rare (I'd probably do the latter)
- Don't give unrestricted free reign to PCs to buy or craft whatever they want (which will be hard to do as there is a central city hub that is specifically for that purpose)
- I'll probably houserule the 3.5 rule that you can't have more than 2 magical rings
- I'm going to use Dave2008's excellent "Apostles of Ruin" update to the bosses, which make them at least 6-10 times harder
- I know ECMO3 talks about Tasha's Hid. Laughter and Command as being the most broken spells in 5.5; would you change the spells or just try to play around them?
Shardstone
Hero
S
Spelljammer + Dead Gods could be going to the jungle continent and finding a shipwreck in the remains of a dead giant (it's a really big giant) or a skyship crashed into an old colossus.
