A time of great change is upon Dungeons & Dragons. The game celebrates its 50th anniversary with a new set of core rulebooks coming out at the end of this year and the beginning of 2025. What better time than now for a retrospective look back at where the game has been?
Vecna: Eve Of Ruin offers a look back on history from inside the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a dive into the lore of the game itself and puts the players in the roles of saviors not just of their D&D world but of every D&D setting. Wizards of the Coast sent along a copy of this penultimate adventure to check out for this article.
Vecna: Eve Of Ruin Contents
The story of Vecna: Eve Of Ruin fairly straight forward. Vecna, one of the most powerful wizards in all the realms of Dungeons & Dragons, wants to take over all of those realms for his own. He’s dispatched cults throughout several worlds with orders to collect as many secrets as possible to power a magical ritual that will bring him to this goal.
Other powerful wizards are figuring out what he’s up to, like Mordenkainen, Tasha and Lady Alustriel Silverhand. These Wizards Three decide to cast a powerful wish spell to stop Vecna but it has an unusual effect. It summons the player characters to the wizards’ sanctum and they are tasked with finding a powerful artifact that they believe can stop Vecna.
The artifact is the legendary Rod of Many Parts scattered across several D&D worlds. The players must collect these pieces and confront Vecna before he can enact his ritual. There are a few twists along the way, which won’t get spoiled here, but the story offers a mix of dungeon crawls, diplomacy and exploration of exotic locations.
Vecna: Eve Of Ruin Impressions
This adventure offers a tour through the many worlds that D&D has to offer. The parts are located in settings like Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Planescape and, of course, the Forgotten Realms. This whirlwind tour speaks strongly to fans who have digested the lore over the past 50 years.
The adventure begins at level 10 and runs all the way to level 20. Most official adventures don’t embrace high level play. This storyline becomes a good one for groups looking to revisit characters from earlier Fifth Edition campaigns.
However, I was surprised that there wasn’t more guidance for Dungeon Masters for players returning to locations they’ve previously visited. Some of the settings like Planescape and Ravenloft were subjects of Fifth Edition campaign books. Players want to see how they’ve impacted a game world and I would have liked even something simple as a sidebar talking about how how campaign endings might influence the chapter of this story that features such a return.
The story also is shockingly linear leading from one world to the next in a specific fashion. High level play is notorious for bending the values of the Challenge Rating system, so why not let the players tackle the worlds in the order of their choosing? Dungeon Masters running this story are likely well versed in adjusting encounters for their players and it seems like a way to make players feel more in control of the end of their story.
This story harkens back to early Fifth Edition books aimed at players who wanted to embrace the lore of the game. One of the worlds, Greyhawk, looks to become more central in the upcoming core books. Some of these players have drifted away in the later stages of Fifth Edition and this book looks to bring them back for at least one more ride.
But that also means that there’s not much to offer fans who built their own setting during Fifth Edition. Players who have tenth level characters built up in a homebrew world might be reluctant to leave home, wish spell or not. If they don’t know who Tasha or Mordenkainen are they are less likely to risk their lives, epic story or not.
The monster entries in the back reflect a lot of high level heavy hitters. Many of these characters could be the villain in their own campaign. Groups looking to start a new campaign when the new core books come out might want to consider using this campaign as something of a sampler platter to see what world might be fun to settle down in for that campaign.
Vecna: Eve Of Ruin Opinion
Vecna: Eve Of Ruin offers a high level tour through some of Dungeons & Dragons’ greatest hits. Fans invested in the decades of lore should enjoy the Easter eggs, references and interactions with big players in the multiverse. But fans who only know Vecna as the Big Bad from Stranger Things might want to study up first before giving this campaign a spin.
