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.

 

[Retreater]

The obelisks are at best an Easter Egg. Few players are going to care (or remember) that there were random obelisks in an adventure they played 8 years ago. After my players are done with a campaign, that's basically the end of it. They certainly don't think the campaigns are connected in any way. Considering that each of these mega campaign adventures were each like Level 1-12, designed to be played with different characters.

 

[Reynard]

It isn't like modules are run the moment they are purchased. They might sit on the shelf for years while the current campaign runs its course. So it would be easy to hint at Vecna in any of the campaigns, and make the obelisks more central, and then use those characters in Eve.

 

[tetrasodium]

The obelisks are at best an Easter Egg. Few players are going to care (or remember) that there were random obelisks in an adventure they played 8 years ago. After my players are done with a campaign, that's basically the end of it. They certainly don't think the campaigns are connected in any way. Considering that each of these mega campaign adventures were each like Level 1-12, designed to be played with different characters.

More importantly is the fact that the adventures themselves didn't have enough detail about them for the gm to say literally anything with confidence when a player says "neat, that's right up my PC's alley! I want to study it with $skill to learn about it". Temporal magic? Ancient Netherese script? Dimensional bridging? Nahhh... It's a mysterious obelisk.

 

[SkidAce]

More importantly is the fact that the adventures themselves didn't have enough detail about them for the gm to say literally anything with confidence when a player says "neat, that's right up my PC's alley! I want to study it with $skill to learn about it". Temporal magic? Ancient Netherese script? Dimensional bridging? Nahhh... It's a mysterious obelisk.

In my case, that's a feature.

 

[tetrasodium]

In my case, that's a feature.

Your ignoring the point on why it's a failure to support GMs and didn't even bother to expound even a single detail on why I could be good... so I'll make one up for you.

I'm so tired of that attitude from 5e hardcover module railroad connectors who can't even imagine other styles of campaign but are certain they are enthusiastically engaged in 5e's OneTrueWay of play. The problem is not that I couldn't come up with something when a player does that... The problem is that I very much could and because I run sandboxy games , that thing would go somewhere that would need an eventual retcon.

A simple sidebar saying that the gm should be aware there are plans for these many monoliths involving [a sentence or two of plan breadcrumbs] in a future adventure dedicated to their purpose is plenty for a sandbox gm to allow players to investigate a little but know that it's a dead end of potential retcon for now until they encounter another monolith with additional details down the line

 

[SkidAce]

Your ignoring the point on why it's a failure to support GMs and didn't even bother to expound even a single detail on why I could be good... so I'll make one up for you.

I'm so tired of that attitude from 5e hardcover module railroad connectors who can't even imagine other styles of campaign but are certain they are enthusiastically engaged in 5e's OneTrueWay of play. The problem is not that I couldn't come up with something when a player does that... The problem is that I very much could and because I run sandboxy games , that thing would go somewhere that would need an eventual retcon.

A simple sidebar saying that the gm should be aware there are plans for these many monoliths involving [a sentence or two of plan breadcrumbs] in a future adventure dedicated to their purpose is plenty for a sandbox gm to allow players to investigate a little but know that it's a dead end of potential retcon for now until they encounter another monolith with additional details down the line

I wasn't ignoring anything. And I said "In my case".

game on friend!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

I don't know. A god of secrets shouldn't be focused on hitting the big red reset button on the multiverse as his main aim. He should be about secrets, including digging them up, securing them for himself and killing anyone else who knows them. Maybe one of those secrets is resetting the multiverse, but the dude has to come up with a whole second thing he cares about.

I think the way to make a Vecna-based adventure would be to have him and his servants be part of the background of a whole campaign, with the players only slowly figuring out who the conspiracy is run by. And, by its very nature, Vecna's involvement should be a surprise even to most of his servants, which rules out Hand for a Head Guy and Eyeball for a Head Guy. Maybe instead, everyone thinks they're serving a totally different god and late in the game, the PCs discover that god has been dead for centuries and someone else has been the benefactor of their cult instead.

If the goal is to eventually take on Vecna, this would probably need to be a two-book adventure campaign, with a low level conspiracy being behind the obvious threat and the second one being about taking on that conspiracy and discovering multiple levels of secrets.

 

[Reynard]

I don't know. A god of secrets shouldn't be focused on hitting the big red reset button on the multiverse as his main aim. He should be about secrets, including digging them up, securing them for himself and killing anyone else who knows them. Maybe one of those secrets is resetting the multiverse, but the dude has to come up with a whole second thing he cares about.

I think the way to make a Vecna-based adventure would be to have him and his servants be part of the background of a whole campaign, with the players only slowly figuring out who the conspiracy is run by. And, by its very nature, Vecna's involvement should be a surprise even to most of his servants, which rules out Hand for a Head Guy and Eyeball for a Head Guy. Maybe instead, everyone thinks they're serving a totally different god and late in the game, the PCs discover that god has been dead for centuries and someone else has been the benefactor of their cult instead.

If the goal is to eventually take on Vecna, this would probably need to be a two-book adventure campaign, with a low level conspiracy being behind the obvious threat and the second one being about taking on that conspiracy and discovering multiple levels of secrets.

I think he got Stranger Thingsed into being Generic BBEG, rather than his role as God of Secrets.