D&D's Obelisk Plotline Was Supposed to Be Resolved in Vecna: Eve of Ruin

Chris Perkins has revealed that the obelisks scattered throughout various 5E adventures published by Wizards of the Coast was originally supposed to play a central role in the Vecna: Eve of Ruin adventure capping off Fifth Edition. Many Dungeons & Dragons adventures published for Fifth Edition featured mysterious black obelisks. These obelisks were revealed to be capable of time-travel and were tied to a mysterious group called the Weavers as well as the Netherese Empire. In Rime of the Frostmaiden, it was revealed that Vecna had obtained one of these obelisks and it was hinted that Vecna would use the obelisks in his plot to rewrite all of reality.

Vecna's possession of an obelisk was never followed up on, but it was apparently supposed to be a plot point in Vecna: Eve of Ruin. In a recent interview with Polygon, Perkins provided his vision for Vecna: Eve of Ruin. "The original plan, in my mind, was that we would actually culminate the story by going back in time to fight the Netherese Empire,” Perkins said. “It was always on our radar to bring Netheril back in some way. And this was the way I envisioned it happening, because the only way you could really fight Netheril again is to travel back in time."

“I was excited about the idea of a time travel adventure,” Perkins said later in the interview, “simply because it would feel very different from the other campaigns we had done up to that point. And I thought given time and attention, we could do some really fun things with Netheril and explore a style of magic that felt different from contemporary magic. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks would be sort of like the vibe I'd go for, where the magic is so weird it almost feels technological.”

Unfortunately, plans changed when Perkins' role at Wizards of the Coast shifted in his latter years with the company. “The reason it was dropped was that different people were in charge of the adventure design,” Perkins said. “I had rolled off a lot of my hands-on product work to help out with other parts of the business. And so, when I creatively walked away from the day-to-day adventure creation, we sort of lost the plot.”

Polygon has been periodically publishing interviews with Perkins, including an introspective on Rime of the Frostmaiden, and some insight on 5E's adventure design.

 

[Reynard]

I, for one, am glad this fell through. Having hints scattered throughout half a dozen (or however many) campaign adventures for something big coming down the line is antithetical to how RPGs are supposed to work. That's the kind of stuff you do if you're writing novels, or a comic book, or something, but no-one is running all the campaigns like that. You could do it within a single campaign, but not as a multi-campaign plotline.

Unless one expects there customers to play most of those campaigns. Easter eggs and metaplots are rewards for PLAYERS, not characters.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Princes of the Apocalypse don’t really fit the pattern, but they were the first two such adventure books for 5e.

IIRC PotA was supposed to launch with a player supplement. It got canceled so they released some of the races for free online, which is how 5e players first got the genasi and goliath (IIRC, it may have been the first non-UA player supplement to add races to 5e), and I think some of the class and feat options got shunted later into Xanathar's.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

Vecna has jack naughty word to do with Netheril.

Whoa. Language.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

This article is very interesting. I had always suspected that 5e’s big-honking-adventure books were backdoor setting guides. Tyranny of Dragons and Princes of the Apocalypse don’t really fit the pattern, but they were the first two such adventure books for 5e. Starting with Out of the Abyss, which was pretty transparently built like “everything you need to know to run adventures in the Underdark” with the plot mostly being an excuse to tour the PCs around the major Underdark cities. Curse of Strahd was the Ravenloft (though limited to Barovia) source book; Tomb of Annihilation was the Chult sourcebook; Dragon Heist and Mad Mage were Waterdeep sourcebooks; Descent into Avernus was both a Baldur’s Gate and Nine Hells sourcebook… Storm King’s Thunder and Witchlight don’t fit the mold quite as cleanly, but the intent is clearly there with a lot of them.

This also explains why those campaign books all feel like they have paper thin plots to me. As Chris says here, they focused on the locations first and then came up with reasons for the players to need to go there after. That results in them all being “and then” stories, instead of “but/therefore” stories. The motivations feel weak because they’re just excuses to get the party to the next location the designers had already decided they were going to go. Needless to say, I do not share Polygon’s apparent adoration for this approach to adventure design. Seeing that they have taken a different approach with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms gives me hope that maybe they’ve moved on from this experiment and will try writing future adventures with the primary goal of being good adventures instead of that being secondary to the goal of being secret setting guides.

I agree with everything you said. However, that's what I liked about these books! The mashup of campaign setting and adventure path was smart from both a business and creative perspective. To me, at least. I tend to habitually pull apart adventures and put them back together, even if they're near-perfect. So it's easy for me to overlook the metaplot problems if the individual pieces are neat. And, for what it's worth, Storm King's Thunder doubled as a sourcebook for The North and Wild Beyond the Witchlight was a sourcebook for the Domains of Delight/Feywild of a similar scope to Curse of Strahd for the Domains of Dread/Shadowfell.

 

[tetrasodium]

Probably for the best. Netheril was a horrible place filled with a lot of horrible powerful people. I can't imagine anything deserving of being called Netheril surviving this excessive review process as anything still identifiable as Netheril.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I still think Witchlight is like a backdoor pilot for a future setting, like it happened with the first Ravenloft adventure.

Other idea within my head is WotC would like some event like DC crisis of infinite earths to can explain possible reboots and retcons, with changes like the new PC species and classes.

* What if a new setting was created justificied by demiplanes created by Vecna?

* The action-live serie "Loki" by Disney+ could show us some clue about how could be the chronomancer brotherhoods in 5e.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I do not share Polygon’s apparent adoration for this approach to adventure design.

Polygon's D&D writer seems to have played 5E and nothing else and even that only for about five minutes now.

A lot better than not having an RPG writer, but a lot of cringeworthy takes coming out of Polygon at the moment.

Seeing that they have taken a different approach with Adventures in the Forgotten Realms gives me hope that maybe they’ve moved on from this experiment and will try writing future adventures with the primary goal of being good adventures instead of that being secondary to the goal of being secret setting guides.

At the very least, if they want to spotlight different corners of the D&D multiverse, they need to switch to a situations-based adventure format, where instead of having little railroads sitting at each locale, there's a mess and a need for heroes to intervene, and enough tools for the DM to be able to respond to whatever the players come up with.

I am optimistic that the new crop of folks being brought into WotC are more up on state of the art adventure design and will not be defaulting to railroads for all adventures.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Because Crawford, one of the team leads at the time, has said Hags are his favorite creatures.

Hags are pretty awesome and historically underutilized in D&D. They're much more worthy of being given some TLC to make them more popular than some of the weirdos that WotC tried to elevate under 3E.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I agree with everything you said. However, that's what I liked about these books! The mashup of campaign setting and adventure path was smart from both a business and creative perspective. To me, at least. I tend to habitually pull apart adventures and put them back together, even if they're near-perfect. So it's easy for me to overlook the metaplot problems if the individual pieces are neat. And, for what it's worth, Storm King's Thunder doubled as a sourcebook for The North and Wild Beyond the Witchlight was a sourcebook for the Domains of Delight/Feywild of a similar scope to Curse of Strahd for the Domains of Dread/Shadowfell.

When it works, it's great. When it doesn't work, well, you get Strixhaven, which doesn't really function as a setting book or as a campaign.

 

[TravDoc42]

I wonder if the weird mention of the spell weavers in Phandalin & Below: The Shattered Obelisk would have play a bigger role. I would love to see stat blocks for them, they're my favourite D&D monsters that haven't gotten 5e stats.