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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

I don't work from a master plan - creativity doesn't work that way - and I don't expect it from others.

Clearly Perkins started dropping in the obelisks with only a vague idea of doing something with them down the line (and at a time when it was far from certain 5e would be successful). By the time he writes Rime of the Frostmaiden he has clearly decided he wants to do a Netheril time travel adventure, so he makes the obelisk in that a hook for it. This has a slight problem in that some of those in obelisks aren't in the FR. Not a big deal since obelisks are common enough and could be unrelated. Which is reasonable, but unsatisfactory for people who feel the have to collect them all. However, corporate do have a plan - cap off the 2014 rules with an epic adventure featuring Captain Name-Recognition - "write it Perkins!" So CP is stuck with trying to shoe-horn Vecna into his Netherise time travel adventure. Getting moved elsewhere got him out of it, but left his successors with a plot that clearly wasn't working and not much time to come up with a replacement. So the task was divided up with the chapters split between different people. Hence Vecna Eve of Ruin (possibly some rebellious meta-commentary in the title) is basically an anthology, with a bunch of unrelated adventures tied together by a very weak plot.

 

[Artamo]

It’s not to say that one couldn’t write a good Vecna adventure, or that even the one in the back of Perkins’ mind was a bad one. As far as we know the basic components were simply Vecna, Netheril, and time travel. That’s not a plot; that’s a writing prompt. They just opted for something completely different for whatever reason.

I think the bigger problem is that the adventure starts at level 10. I don’t know about you but for me, stakes and tension come from drama, not from simply being high level. The campaign throws the characters into a trip around the multiverse Avengers Endgame style. But the problem is unless one’s played all of those adventures, the various chapters are not really going to resonate. The PCs obviously haven’t gone through all of them, and most likely the players haven’t played all of them. All it can really do is feel more like a travelogue than something with heft.

It also doesn’t help that, as Mike Shea pointed out in a review, it uses the tired, god awful trope of having a major NPC betray the party. It’s just been done so many times, and never feels good or right in the moment. It’s either completely obvious or so out of left field as to seem like a DM gotcha just to mess with players.