WotC Vecna Eve of Ruin: Everything You Need To Know

WotC has posted a 19-minute video telling you 'everything you need to know' about Vecna: Eve Of Ruin.

• Starts at 10th level, goes to 20th.
• Classic villains and setting, famous characters, D&D's legacy.
• Vecna wants to become the supreme being of the multiverse.
• Vecna is a god of secrets and secrets and the power of secrets are a theme throughout the book.
• A mechanical subsystem for using the power of secrets during combat.
• Going back to Ravenloft, the Nine Hells, places where 5th Edition has been in the last 10 years.
• It would be a fun 'meta experience' for players to visit locations they remember lore about.
• Finding pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, pieces throughout the multiverse.
• Each piece in one of seven distinct planes or settings.
• Allustriel Silverhand has noticed something is wrong, puts call out to Tasha and Mordenkainen, who come to her sanctum in Sigil.
• The (10th level) PCs are fated to confront Vecna.
• Lord Soth and Strahd show up. Tiamat is mentioned but doesn't appear 'on screen'.
• Twists, turns, spoilers.
• It's a 'love letter to D&D'.

 

[Retreater]

Did you not read the adventure, cause that's not how the adventure works.

You generally only take on one type of Giant's fortress for one.

I might be confusing it with how I modified it and forgot what I changed. It's been 5+ years since I ran it. Fair enough.

 

[pukunui]

SKT is as much an homage to "Lear the Giant King" from Dungeon 78 and FR5 The Savage Frontier as it is an homage to Against the Giants. It's also full of deep cuts like Iymrith the blue dragon and the Wyrmskull Throne.

 

[marimbaguy715]

Netherdeep is a Critical Role production, not actually written by WotC.

I wanna touch on this point because I think this is a common misconception. Go read the credits of the book and you'll see the names of a ton of WotC staff and people who have worked with WotC on other projects. It isn't like Matt Mercer handed WotC a complete campaign and they published it - there was clearly a lot of work done by WotC on the book.

 

[MockingBird]

I'd go as far to say that 5e has had the better adventures out of the past couple of editions (3e and 4e). That's not counting PF 1e sine it had some good and notable adventure paths. 5e adventures seem to be an easy target for the overly critical. They aren't perfect by any means but put them in perspective and they are pretty good.

 

[MerricB]

I'd go as far to say that 5e has had the better adventures out of the past couple of editions (3e and 4e). That's not counting PF 1e sine it had some good and notable adventure paths. 5e adventures seem to be an easy target for the overly critical. They aren't perfect by any means but put them in perspective and they are pretty good.

There's no question. 3E has Red Hand of Doom, possibly The Sunless Citadel and not much else. 4E... Madness at Gardmore Abbey.

In fact, it gets pretty hard to find good adventures in 2E. There are a few that are well regarded, but whenever you look at the "Top Adventures of all time" lists, most of 2E - which had a high adventure count released - is missing

Dungeon's 2004 list back in the 3E days, when 2E was a lot more higher on people's minds, has the following entries from 2E:

• Gates of Firestorm Peak
• Dead Gods
• Return to the Tomb of Horrors
• The Ruins of Undermountain
• WGR6 The City of Skulls

Night Below is missing... huh. I'm wondering how many are familiar with City of Skulls.

Comparatively, both 3E and 4E had hardly any adventures released (as separate products, not counting Dungeon magazine or other publishers).

Cheers,
Merric

 

[pukunui]

Comparatively, both 3E and 4E had hardly any adventures released (as separate products, not counting Dungeon magazine or other publishers).

I remember back in the 3e days, the mantra was that adventures aren't profitable (because only the DM buys them). Obviously WotC managed to find a way to make them profitable with 5e even if the DM is still the only one who buys them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I wanna touch on this point because I think this is a common misconception. Go read the credits of the book and you'll see the names of a ton of WotC staff and people who have worked with WotC on other projects. It isn't like Matt Mercer handed WotC a complete campaign and they published it - there was clearly a lot of work done by WotC on the book.

And Mercer himself had very little input into it.

And is structured like WotC adventures so that is can be easily broken up for parts.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There's no question. 3E has Red Hand of Doom, possibly The Sunless Citadel and not much else. 4E... Madness at Gardmore Abbey.

In fact, it gets pretty hard to find good adventures in 2E. There are a few that are well regarded, but whenever you look at the "Top Adventures of all time" lists, most of 2E - which had a high adventure count released - is missing

Dungeon's 2004 list back in the 3E days, when 2E was a lot more higher on people's minds, has the following entries from 2E:

• Gates of Firestorm Peak
• Dead Gods
• Return to the Tomb of Horrors
• The Ruins of Undermountain
• WGR6 The City of Skulls

Night Below is missing... huh. I'm wondering how many are familiar with City of Skulls.

Comparatively, both 3E and 4E had hardly any adventures released (as separate products, not counting Dungeon magazine or other publishers).

Cheers,
Merric

I tend to associate 2nd edition adventures with "the Ravenloft period". The only one I had was Ship of Horrors, which is more a wannabe novel than an actual adventure.

Never had any adventures for 3rd or 4th edition. The best thing from that period was probably Masks of the Betrayer, and that was a crpg.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Honestly not really. Temple of Elemental Evil despite the name had shockingly little to do with Elemental Evil. Like the main villain is Zuggtmoy

With hindsight, ToEE was pretty terrible. PotA takes the concept and tries to turn it into something that makes some kind of sense.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I remember back in the 3e days, the mantra was that adventures aren't profitable (because only the DM buys them). Obviously WotC managed to find a way to make them profitable with 5e even if the DM is still the only one who buys them.

"Only the DM buys them" tends to be true of the other rulebooks as well, not just adventures. So it's more something they have to live with than something they have solved. "How to make D&D profitable" is really still not solved, outside of CRPG flukes.