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.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Bummer.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm wondering if the Netheril supplement for the new FR books is basically a sausage made out of the parts from this adventure.

And TBH... I don't like it! Vecna has jack naughty word to do with Netheril. You wanna go back in time to fight an evil wizard-god in Netheril, write a story about Karsus, or send us back in time in Greyhawk before Vecna became a lich. Hell, half the adventure takes place in Sigil, send us back in time to the events of Die Vecna, Die (The Vecna, The) if you must.

In my campaign is have proxies for Ioulaum, Aumvor, Larloch and The Terraseer.

Karsus may or may not be involved.

Using Vecna over a Netherese lich or Faerun equivalent of Vecna (Szass Tam, Velsharoon, Myrkul) seems odd.

 

[J-H]

Statement: Vecna has name recognition. It is disappointing that they failed to follow through on their metaplot.
Interrogative: Do they not have a lore bible and master plan they work from?

 

[Charlaquin]

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

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.

 

[Scribe]

Interrogative: Do they not have a lore bible and master plan they work from?

Small Indy, and all that.

 

[Staffan]

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.

 

[J-H]

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.

Don't a lot of the Adventurers League seasons correspond with the big campaign book for the year?
If so, this would set up a payoff for the AL players at least.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Nah, it is good to have a world where other groups of heroes have done cool things that have nothing to do with your group of heroes, and there being big spread out elements that take years to "pay off", as long as the adventure where they pay off also sets them up so that a group that only runs that adventure isnt confused.

 

[Scribe]

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.

Totally disagree. Having The Big Publisher, have some breadcrumbs throughout its adventures, leading up to something big and unifying? Why not?

Dumping it half way because the guy got pulled into Executive is just lazy and poor change control.

There is space in the world for many kinds of content, and Wizards of all companies has the $ and potential staff to pull it off and reach a much wider set of players than anyone else.

But they dont.

 

[GarrettKP]

Forget the obelisks, I want to know why there a named Hag and Hag Coven in every 5E WotC campaign book. There's something strange going on there...

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