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.

 

[jasper]

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?

Looks at the hype and other bs they advertise about a book before they drop it. Then read the book, no master plan, no journeyman plan, but apprentice plans yes.

 

[Marandahir]

You also have a lot more familiarity with the setting than people like me, who picked up the Strixhaven book hoping for a magic school setting (which it doesn't do, unless you want to make your own setting doc pulling more details out of the adventure).

When WotC is charging ~$50 for a book, the answer should never be "well, this book is obviously incomplete unless you go and pick up additional products." Bonus content, sure. Content that I'd argue is necessary to run the book as promoted, no.

Strixhaven clearly had a messy development process, though, and isn't really typical of WotC books over the last few years, IMO.

Fair -- though I would note taht the "additional products" are not products but free web enhancements for the setting.

I agree that the mechanical identity of Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos was a bit of a last minute bait and switch because the "cross-class subclasses" did NOT go over well.

I think it does Magic School Setting pretty well, but then again, I read the free webnovellas and enjoyed the freely available card art and the Planeswalker Guide in addition to the D&D book itself.

I do think that it was what showed WotC tho that MtG settings aren't always the best on-brand crossport to meet the genre needs. It's very much a magic school setting, but it's very a particular Liberal Arts college/university magic school focused on dichotomies and the push-pull of each discipline (representative of the 5 Enemy Color pairings featured – WB Silverquill is the Eloquent Arts (theatre, debate, treatise, scrivening), with a tension between light and shadow, illumination and deception; UR Prismari is the Fine & Performing Arts (but not Theatre), with a tension of structure/systems and chaos/inspiration; BG Witherbloom is the Natural & Chemical Sciences with a tension between Life and Death (between Herbalism and Poisons; between Botany/Plants and Zoology/Bones); RW Lorehold is Archeology with a tensions between Collectivist Movements Theory and "Big Man" theory; and GU Quandrix is Math & Physics with a tension between Empiricism and Rationalism, between the observable Naturals Laws and the Quantum Math underpinning that visible reality).

These are fascinating research centers to represent the real tension within Liberal Arts institutions, especially ones that focus on interdisciplinarity and learning Broader points of view in education. But I get that they're less useful if you're looking for HP with the Serial Numbers filed off; Strixhaven was made for MtG first and adapted to D&D second because it's a homegrown Magic School IP. But they might have done better fleshing out one of the magic school articles from 4E's Dragon issues for folks who want a less real-world inspired university and more strictly classical Wizard tropes.