WotC Vecna: Eve of Ruin Player Advice from WotC

Following on from a video offering DM Advice, WotC's Todd Kendrick talks to senior designer Amanda Hamon, who offers advice for players playing through the upcoming Vecna: Eve of Ruin.

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[SteveC]

Any time you have an adventure path, you're going to have something of a railroad because it presents you with content for several adventures and connects them.

If you look at a lot of early adventures, they present a site or sites where you can go and pretty much say "Go at it." Keep on the Borderlands is the best example of this that I can think of. I just played a 50th-anniversary Keep adventure, and the DM went out of his way to describe all of the havoc that adventuring parties had done to the local environment over the last 50 years.

When we have adventure paths with multiple locations and a reason to go to each of them in turn, that's a different experience than what we had before. We also usually get a story that's designed to play out over the course of the sessions. That's just different than what we see in most published adventures now.

This style of adventures have gotten a bad rap from fans of more traditional adventure site modules. And I think that's unfair because both styles have advantages and disadvantages. If you want a big hardcover book that takes your group from 1-20, it's difficult to do that with a sandbox. Morrus pointed out that Curse of Strahd has a beginning and an end, but lets you pretty much go for the majority of the adventure, and I think that's why it's viewed as such a good adventure.

I suspect that Vecna will be a series of small adventures that are all linked so that you go from one to another. We'll have to see how that works out.

 

[darjr]

Giants then drow then queen was an adventure path. Admittedly not like current ones.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

As I once been told, players will curse the railroad, then sit in the sandbox, waiting for a train to arrive.

I've seen that!

If you look at a lot of early adventures, they present a site or sites where you can go and pretty much say "Go at it."

It's easy to not be a Railroad if the entire adventure takes place at a single Station.

I will never stop trying to make "rollercoaster" a thing.

Now that you've introduced me to the term, I think I will join you!

 

[Weiley31]

"Be ready to follow the railroad"

Vecna as he lies broken at the end: CURSE MY LOVE OF CHOO-CHOO TRAINS!!!

Gets murdered by Thomas the Tank Engine.

 

[Reynard]

Giants then drow then queen was an adventure path. Admittedly not like current ones.

I don't think it really qualifies, if the term is going to have any useful meaning. Dragonlance certainly was one, though, and that trilogy of Time of Troubles FR adventures.

 

[Stormonu]

I think the GDQ series would count, myself. There were others too, the Slavelord series (A1-4), Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4), Saltmarsh series (U1-4) and the Desert of Desolation (originally I3-5). There's also the Lendore Isle series (L1-3), Sentinel/Gauntlet (UK1-2), Dungeonland/Beyond The Magic Mirror is a kinda, and I've heard there's links between The Lost Caverns and Temple of Tharizdun.

They certainly got more complex and better tied together as time went on. Dragonlance was certainly the big one that had an extended, epic story running throughout it, but it wasn't the first.

 

[SteveC]

I think the GDQ series is a pretty good analogy for how an old-school adventure path could be created. I do think there's a big difference, though: with that series, there are different on-ramps and the end of a particular adventure has a resolution that more modern adventure paths don't.

I have played the GDQ series multiple times, and the DM started it at various points. In one case, we had a higher level party start with the Halls of the Fire Giant King with the assumption being that other groups had cleared the previous sites. And we eventually finished the fire giant adventure and then went on to something else. We picked up the D series with entirely different characters much later on.

I just don't see that as something easy to do with this upcoming adventure, especially since it's about the end of the multiverse.

 

[Zaukrie]

I think the GDQ series is a pretty good analogy for how an old-school adventure path could be created. I do think there's a big difference, though: with that series, there are different on-ramps and the end of a particular adventure has a resolution that more modern adventure paths don't.

I have played the GDQ series multiple times, and the DM started it at various points. In one case, we had a higher level party start with the Halls of the Fire Giant King with the assumption being that other groups had cleared the previous sites. And we eventually finished the fire giant adventure and then went on to something else. We picked up the D series with entirely different characters much later on.

I just don't see that as something easy to do with this upcoming adventure, especially since it's about the end of the multiverse.

You don't see it being possible other groups did part of the work?

 

[SteveC]

You don't see it being possible other groups did part of the work?

Oh sure, you can 100% do that. I just find it less likely that a DM will start the adventure in chapter 4 (meaning, in the middle of this adventure) than just not pick up G1 and start with G2 or G3. They were entirely different products.

 

[Stormonu]

You don't see it being possible other groups did part of the work?

You could, but I could see the players getting lost or confused quickly. There's likely to be hints, clues or encounters from earlier in the adventure that those "coming in late" might miss out on.