Their 'good' adventures are really just above average. Like, you can see the potential there, but even Curse of Strahd, their peak module, was above average at best.
You're telling me they had a chance to weave together every little nugget of mystery from all the adventures, INCLUDING BG3 and they fucking squandered it all?
Pretty much? At this point, expect something good coming from them is not a good thing, and I think D&D fans should just leave D&D and fly to other tabletops who truly can appreciate them.
@@AmonHa01 No need to tell me, I mostly play and run OSE for a better balanced traditional experience, Troika! and Knave for simple gaming, and I love Shadowdark for OSR with a difficulty that's weighted slightly more to the player's advantage (really want to get a campaign going with that one!). Genuinely looking forward to The MCDM RPG, too - it looks like it keeps a lot of the crunchy tactical stuff in 5e I'm interested in. One thing that's obvious from the industry reports and from I've seen for myself is that people are perfectly capable and largely unopposed to learning a new system, so there's never been a better time than now. Despite this, I and I think many others still have a vestigial investment in D&D as a brand, even if we all just cut-and-paste bits we want and make it our own, even if we all know the de facto setting of "Forgotten Realms Plus Some Guys From Greyhawk" is just way, way too messy at this point. So much content runs downstream of the historical IP that anybody putting the work into improving on D&D content legally can't just call them Mind Flayers or Beholders which sucks because giving them the Mr. Pibb equivalents also kinda sucks. It's a combination of collectively having some investment in the historical franchise while being unable or unwilling to re-visit the idea of a brand new "vernacular" setting. Ideally the IP would be dissolved and we can all treat them in public how we do in private, but the next best thing is simply making more engaging original content and settings that people can collectively resonate with.
@@willowbriar2976 There's been some Forgotten Realms writers over the years such as Eric Boyd that have suggested Jergal was actually the god of death of the Spellweavers, implanted in the human pantheon, which provides more than enough of a prompt to explain why he has regained interest in the realms at the time of BG3 if you wanted to lean heavily into Spellweaver/Black Obelisk stuff. He was the canonical Netherese god of Death too so it can provide answers as to how the Crown of Karsus fell out of Mephistopheles' hands, how the Netherese managed to replicate Spellweaver technology, all sorts. If you prefer those to be open questions I don't blame you at all, there's just a neat little coincidence between the stories that could definitely be explored with more interest, and that's how I'd have done it if I had been doing a campaign strictly within FR
To those saying you can modify the adventure to tie in, or to make sense, or to be fun: Sure, but it's like going to a restaurant, ordering a burger, then finding the meat is pretty much just raw when it's given to you. Then when you complain, you're told that you could just go home, put it on the grill, and cook it yourself. Sure, that's possible, but if you're doing that then why on Toril did you come to a restaurant and pay them to cook it for you? Same with the book. This is supposed to be the very best that D&D can be, the big 50th anniversary celebration, but it's raw. It's bad. We can do better than them, but we're just some random players, and they're the huge company. This is not acceptable.
Exactly why I would much rather these big campaigns be sold as cookbooks, instead of restaurants. Give us the DM tools to tell the story our way instead of WotC's way, and be upfront about what it is we're buying. The Death House chapter could be a gazetteer on Barovia and how it's changed in the months since Curse of Strahd ended (and how Strahd reclaimed power when he returned), and the Peylon Tree in Krynn chapter could be a gazetteer on that region of Krynn (where even IS the Peylon Tree? The Dragonlance wiki has diddly squat), and could talk about how the War of the Lance ended and how the world is recovering (maybe some stat blocks for the Companions, with a Call of the Netherdeep-style quest hook to treat them as a rival adventuring party) And then place some obelisks on the map for each region and use them as quest hooks, with the option to go through they Peylon Tree OR head for the obelisk, with either serving as a McGuffin for the story to progress, with GUIDANCE on how to handle that--instead of just telling us to read a paragraph of flowery prose and railroad things to happen as these adventures currently work.
This is a great analogy. It explains why homebrew will always be best. Just like how a good home cooked meal made with love from your mama will always be better than any restaurant.
@@CreakyRangerGaming There's nothing inherently bad about a larger adventure, so long as you give clear breakdowns of what's in it in the beginning and break it up in usable chunks with clear directions of what's where and how it all ties together. What's frustrating is when it's just plunked into your lap as this inscrutable slab and it expects you to read the entire thing front to back before you have any idea what it's about or how any of it connects to anything. It is very possible to make big products and also have them be clear and concise and easy to use--that's just not how 5e has opted to do things thus far.
Totally agree. Big missed opportunity. I have a feeling book was meant to hit exactly on anniversary and was rushed. But who knows. Good luck with the fan boys ;)
Just goes to show, when a corporation puts a stranglehold on their creatives, forces them to split their time between a big final adventure and a new edition, and then fires a large amount of those same creatives just before the crucial final months of completing that adventure, you're not going to get something that is worth the cover price.
The easy fix would just be to have a shattered obelisk stand in the Sanctum, each shard taking you to each world, and have the adventure be about the party searching for both the shards and the rod. Vecna is truely unstoppable, his spell has already started taking effect when you reach him and the only way to defeat him is to take control of the obelisks he's aquired and use them all together to reset the multiverse
An easy fix is to stop buying products from WotC...they don't care about making quality products anymore so the beat thing we can do is walk away and find better products by people who actually care about what they're making.
I 100% agree. Without going into any spoiler territory, I was expecting waaaaaaaaay more out of this book and due to it's lackluster production I am forced to do too much heavy lifting as a DM. The entire adventure is lazily written (which may be more of a producer input such as limitation of pages, inclusion of specific characters and plot hooks or miscommunication between teams rather than a set of bad writers), full of "convenient" and uninspiring objectives, raillroaded campaign style and unfaithful to prior published lore. Much like WOTC 5e Dragonlance, Spelljammer and Planescape I feel like what was promised and hyped was not what was delivered and that in order to get the campaign I am running for my players to resemble anything that was hyped.... I am going to have to pour so much time that I would have been better off writing it from scratch.
@@TopTierKnees And frustrating. When any number of youtube content creators seem to create fixes that enhance this mess of storytelling into a compelling and fun game that I would love to run or play in versus what WOTC staff and it's shareholders are being paid bucketloads of cash to do "professionally". Granted there are always going to be DM's that want to alter or even completely re-write officially published material to fit their campaigns or the players at their table but I remember a time when buying a D&D book or campaign setting did not come with buyers remorse. Now it's all I experience.
@@itzybitzyspyder Indeed, far too many limbs. ***SPOILER ALERT*** I for one will be omitting that silly Scooby Doo reveal as well as adding in much of the published lore and things that make Vecna feel more like a brilliant mastermind playing 3D chess with the multiverse rather than some broken video game villain sitting around and meditating until he gets his one cut scene at the very end of the game. Jorphdan had pointed out soooo much cool stuff in the obelisk videos that I was excited to see in this release as payoff for being a D&D fan of over 3o years and the fact that not only were they not mentioned or part of the campaign but then the greatest hits romp around the Multiverse really feels like re-skinned meh McGuffin fetch quests with no soul or substance.
I do not think WOTC will be Lu mushing much longer. As Hasbro finishes up the last edition of D&D, Hasbro is turning to third party content now. It is better written, less drama, cost less.
Rant: No real references/consequences to the trilogy of modules, ie Tasha & Graz’zt’s Demi-god son’s demise by Vecna! Revenge?!? Dark Powers wanting previous escapees back? Asmodeus letting the cosmos being rearranged?!?
Eve of Ruin is supposed to a cash grab capitalizing on D&D's 50th, Veca's popularity from Stranger Things, and any remaining good will and nostalgia from fans. Remember they've openly said on many occasions they don't playtest AT ALL anything from the higher levels, I think level 12+.
I wonder if this is because they fired so many people that the ones who knew what the heck to do with the obelisks no longer work there. Heck, I don’t think many of the people who can write good adventures are there anymore. Even as a huge fan of D&D 5e I have to admit the content has been suffering lately. No wonder Larian stopped working with them, the ones behind the magic are all gone now. It’s up to us the players and DMs to make a good Eve of Ruin.
I was thinking the same, some of the cuts were early in 2023, over a year before this book came out. So maybe we got the "good enough version" because the chapter on the obelisks was on someones local drive that lost thier job.
Nah Chris Perkin was is and will be the head of story development and is somewhat of a savant when it comes to lore recall. . . It wouldn't have just slipped by and fell to the way side. It was a decision.
thats what happens when you enforce DIE, you end up hiring a LOT of untalented people just to fill in quotas for this sweet sweet ESG/Black rock money...
I'm confused because that makes sense, but other wise people told me that "many hands lighten the load"! (I'm only joking because pre_internet I'd always wanted to write a book that cross referenced sayings with counter-sayings. I'd name it "How To Counter Sayings With Counter Sayings"
Too many cooks, and people that want to just give a general idea (use chicken. Ok, breast, thigh, both white and dark meat?) without giving actual statistics/rules (ingredients which is the main reason behind buying new books rather than making up your own stuff anyway). I first noticed it in van richten’s guide to ravenloft when they just started saying “for this dark lord just use X generic monster stat). May have started before then, but getting all of the different domains and darklord stat blocks was what i was extremely excited for, but after getting the book i basically gave up on getting quality content.
Imagine if all the 5e adventures built up multiple high level parties and then those parties converged in this book. Your players (assuming you ran everything with the same group) could swap between different high level characters in different locations all fighting towards the same goal. Enemies could be extremely deadly and over powered, maybe some even unkillable, all because you already have other characters built and ready to go. Just think about how epic it would be having 4 or 5 parties of 4 or 5 players coming together after being brutally beaten, just barely retrieving all the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, and the whole table realizes it's all finally been worth it. They can now defeat Vecna... Maybe have that Avenger's moment at the end when half your epic-leveled characters have died, after defeating Vecna the remaining characters activate the obelisks and bring everyone back. I feel like it's a no brainer, but I guess things like that don't sell in the eyes of the higher ups. Personally, coming up with this idea makes me actually interested in getting all the books and running it like this. Maybe I will!
You're very close here to what I consider to be the central mystery of the obelisks and the spellweavers that I've been chasing for years now with fascination. My big difference from your interpretation is that when the spellweavers talk about the multiverse (or Dak'kon's codex in Planescape Torment talk about the False Realities), I think they're talking about the shattered prism cosmology established in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. They want to take all our different campaigns, the various novels, the cartoons, the movies, all the video games--every splinter reality created during the great primal war that involved Bahamut and Tiamat at the dawn of creation and reweave it together back into a single reality a gain--a True Reality. I think Vecna found out about that plan and did as much as he could to subvert it to be able to create a universe in his image. Is that what happened when 2e got remade in Die Vecna Die and turned into 3e? Is it the same thing another incarnation of Vecna did in Critical Role? Is he constantly testing the fences like a velociraptor in different realities until he eventually wins and gets his way? I think that might actually be Vecna's whole deal. Maybe the destruction of the original Spellweaver civilization, when they first tried to mend the cosmic prism of multiverses--maybe Vecna was there too. Is the central conflict of the multiverse of D&D just a chess game between Vecna and the shattered spellweaver civilization with forces like Mordenkainen trying to prevent either side from winning? It certainly would be interesting.
I too thought this would be a "reset" that ushers in the new editio... vers... rebrand? of D&D. Oh well. Doomed Forgotten Realms (which my man here has reviewed), specifically the Rise & Fall of Vecna, is a great Vecna-based alternative. And it's cheaper. I've run parts of it and it's been great. I especially love that he's taken over Waterdeep and used the Walking Statues, which have so far been treated as window dressing in 5e (IYKYK). Also there's a part where the PCs explore the inside of, and command, a gargantuan mechanical Fire Giant (basically a Warforged Titan).
I used to listen to the dragon talk podcasts and I swear I remember Chris Perkins talking about the black obelisks and their connection to vecna while being coy so I’m shocked that wizards didn’t use them in this adventure
Love this! Absolutely miss the Obelisk connections! Could you do a document of all this Spellweaver + Vecna + Obelisks stuff? 😆 🙏 It'd be nice to have the info collated.
Oh the obelisks are totally part of that plot. Then again i never read the book. I just looked at pictures and skimmed it and rewrote it to fit my campaing!
I honestly don't know who these mythical groups are that run every single published hard cover adventure running a single one to completion is a monumental task
I think this showcases once again that Hasbro doesn't care for the customer and only cares about its own pocket books. This feels like another let down from wizards of the Coast where they just put a bunch of glitter and gold on top of what is essentially a big pile of crap, and it's left up to us the players who have been with this brand for decades to better understand the history of this franchise and world that we love so that we can make a cohesive story for everyone that enjoys the game versus the company that apparently hates us and our game.
It isn't about them hating us or not. You can't personify a corporation. With a traded company like Hasbro, it is literally impossible for them to offer the highest quality product they are capable of offering. To do so would run counter to its purpose. The best products do not generate the most revenue, which is why the highest echelons of quality for any type of product are exclusive to small, private companies and individual artisans. In order to extract the maximum revenue from any product, you MUST decrease its quality. In the case of writing, like we see here, the decrease in quality comes as a concession to other things meant to generate sales or increase margins. Lower page counts, references to other products, a list of bullet points that must be hit in order to generate the most mass appeal; that sort of thing.
Meanwhile, I'm over in changeling: the dreaming land hoping Paradox don't touch it with a 10ft barge pole and make a paper mario sticker star out of it.
For D&D? Nope lol, but in fairness the best thing that ever happened to D&D (The OGL) was a byproduct of WotC being simultaneously schizophrenic with the brand while deluded in thinking they weren't.
The obelisk thing is kind of nuts, because imagine if we got to Infinity War and the gems were completely ignored and forgotten about, and we had a brand new plan from Thanos out of nowhere that didn't connect to any of the previous movies or foreshadowing.
I want to visit the world where Hasbro cherishes the WoTC creative team and takes their input very seriously, and carefully manages the cohesiveness of their product like Kevin Feige with the MCU.
I was hopeful but never convinced that they'd be able to pull it off. This kind of big event is very difficult and is made near impossible by meddling from the higher ups, something wotc is infamous for.
Thank you for your service Jorphdan! The obelisks were going to be a big part of my campaign and I was waiting for the adventure to come out to writing it in. Then it didn't have anything to do with it and now I have to come up with something on the spot because WotC didnt
me and a fellow dm had wild speculations that Vecna was forming his leauge of iconic villians to get the pieces of the rod for him and he´d give them what they´d desired once he was supreme over god and that the obelisks was also conected to it
They keep selling adventures when it’s setting lore and game material/expansions that people want. People need to just go back to 2E and 3E and realize what they’ve been missing and what they should demand from WotC going forward.
Your videos about the black obelisks made me start an ongoing campaign running through all the adventures. We’re squaring up and getting ready for the final adventure, looking bf forward to your video and have really loved the other videos you’ve done! Keep it up!
Fuck it. Imma homebrew a version where the players go through abridged versions of the modules Endgame style to learn their "secret" before Vecna's cultists can Thus Vecna is actively seeking secrets to accomplish a goal rather than sitting in a cave waiting for his death star laser to charge and the PCs may actually recognize the references Also gonna run Strahd first to get them to 10 with an emphasis on Dark Lord to foreshadow or even loop Kas into the plot before the dimb ass deception ploy written in Eve of Ruin
i think they not only missed the chance to bring in the obelisks but linking this adventure to the 2nd Edition adventure "Dead Gods" and having Orcus being co-antagonist or at least play a part in the adventure would have made it feel much more like a 50th special edition. Replace Vecna looking for the Rod of Seven Parts and have him rez Tenebrous to get "The Last Word" from that module then create a link about current form of Orcus gaining power as Vecna goes on his remaking the multiverse crusade. Orcus in quite a bit of the dnd lore gave Vecna the ability to become a Lich so go from that.
I'm actually *excited* to see your changes suggestions. Every single D&D 5e adventure I have run or played in is deeply flawed, usually in completely different ways, but not one has been on point enough I'd rate it higher than 3 out of 5. In fact, this extends to my experiences with other adventures in other systems as well (PF1e, PF2e, etc). I think the lesson is that you should always run your own campaign and just use adventure books like these as a resource, a place to pull plot ideas, dungeons, encounters, traps, magic items, NPCs, and so on from. Of course I want to run it by the book, I want to give my players the authentic "I did this" experience that can be related to others who have also run these adventures. But there does come a point where even a minimal effort to change the adventure results in a DRASTICALLY better adventure... and that's pretty much when you've DM'd a full campaign 1-20 (or similar quantity of play). You've seen enough, you know enough, every adventure is just better if you do it your way. Again, I'm excited to see your suggested changes. I'd love to run an adventure that ties into the obelisks. I included Vecna in a full campaign I ran a while back, and he (or she, in my case) was fantastic as an end boss. I also loved 2e's Die Vecna, Die! even though its such a different style of adventure from the kind of stuff we play these days.
I'm almost done with my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. I've been following and watching your stuff for years now and it's inspired me to try and follow a more obelisk oriented multi-campaign connection and maybe even now a Rod of Seven Parts campaign or something along those lines that is still a multiverse adventure dealing with the Raven Queen, Vecna, the Lady of Pain, etc. Thanks for your content Jorphdan ❤
I realize now I only had such high expectations for this module because of the compelling content you've put out over the years. You're 100% right, wotc delivered what THEY promised. Classic case of misaligned expectations. That said, I think the next video you release, may very well be my cannon version of what is meant to happen. Highly looking forward to it!
I've been building my players adventure torwards the obelisks and vecna for over 2 years now... was quite irritated when Eve of Ruin ignored all of it.
Sounds to me like d&d is slowly dying thanks to the incompetence of Hasbro and WOTC. All it needs is 1 good competitor and it's done and it's starting to look like this is gonna happen sooner than later.
The thing is, they got lots of competitors, but none is big enough by themself. The Games Workshop with Warhammer could be close, but not close enough. Let's face it - none of the "D&D clones" will ever be strong enough to overshadow its source, unless Hasbro ditches D&D on purpose. And, to quote Spaceballs: they're not just doing it for money. They do it for a shitload of money.
It already has one. Pathfinder kicked its ass during 4th Edition. That slowed down a ton when 5E came out. Now PF has had 2E out for sometime and has been their biggest rival. But even Paizo has been fucking up lately.
Rime of the frostmaiden was indeed amazing and I'm into your obelisks/weavers/netherese conspiracy community(if writing and brainstorming hooks about that was a job I'd apply) I can only wish Larloch will try something with the Obelisks if Vecna's not doing it.. I still hope there will be more mentions of the obelisks anyway, not all over with Vecna, is it?
I didn't expect anything from this adventure, and I got nothing. In the end, we have your great obelisk theory, and this will make for a much more interesting homebrew campaign than anything WotC can possibly produce.
I actualy forgot about the Obelisks. But you are right the book needs A ton of work to run properly. The book has some really great ideas in them. If you change them for example. Like the idea of chapter 1 is great. but it doesn't connect to the rest of the plot. And that goes for the rest as well. I would definitely make it an entire 1-20 campaign for starters. give every setting I want to be featured some time to breath. have characters from different planes united. like Avengers. Have the macguffin be somehow involved in there Backstory, have the obelisks pop-up. use the Framework of the Wizards from Chapter 2 and with a bit of Work you got yourself a badass-campaign that is engaging for every player that also feels satisfying as well.
I love your videos especially the Forgotten Realms lore ones. Did you really expect WotC to have a grasp on their own lore, let alone handle it remotely well?
Why the fuck would anyone think Hasbro would let WoTC reward loyal customers and their commitment to the lore, the experience, the game? DC20 is terrific.
I liked the fan theory but I didn't have a lot of hope that WotC would bite down on it. Even though the published adventures sometimes reference one another, they have all been pretty self contained. To put something like what you were describing together, they would have had to reverse a design decision they made early on to not load players and DMs down with a lot of back lore from previous editions. I don't personally agree with that decision but it has been their decision since 4E so I'm not surprised they've maintained it.
I was definitely right there with you and fully expected the obelisks to hold some sort of important key to the adventure. Perhaps they will carry the obelisks into the new edition and ride the concept for a while. I just hope if they do that it has an exciting review and we don't just sit back wondering why all the mystery and intrigue if they reveal falls kind of flat. Appreciate the video!
I’m very excited for your next video, I’ve been invested in the obelisk mystery and was very disheartened when they didn’t come into play in Eve of Ruin.
The lore behind the obelisks seems really cool, I didn’t know about any of that. I’m interested in running this adventure still as a sequel to DiA-when I ran that campaign, one of my players had a backstory that had a lot to do with Karsus, so I think I can tie in a lot of the cool weaver / Netherese stuff into the game and make it still feel relevant
Totally agree with you. SO many missed opportunities with Eve of Ruin… I’ll be running the adventure, but with bigtime modifications. I’m changing like 75% of it. 😆 Honestly, I do kind of enjoy picking apart the books & retooling them, but if I was a DM who preferred to run things “as written,” I’d be super let down.
Wasn't explained in phandelver that the obelisk in icewind Dale is one of the weavers ones? And after Vecna erased the weavers the knowledge of those was leaked (Maybe Acerack has something to do with that he has the knowledge to make them, like the one in the tomb of the nine gods) So the majority of the obelisks are netherese made but aren't as powerful As the one in icewind Dale I think Vecna is using original weavers knowledge to make his ritual And that the obelisks are a subplot that we are going to keep seeing in the WOTC adventures until we get a time travel one
I feel like it's one of those "Oh but if we connect the obelisk thing here then that's like requiring home works and won't be fun for new players and DMs" thing...though I feel there could have been a way to do it in the way that still hinted a bigger connection. Then again I am a fan of what MCU has done...to a degree.
When i first read through this adventure I was picturing Jorphdan's reaction to it :P To be fair... I think it has the... skeleton... of a good adventure there but really needs the DM to add lots of flesh on it to make it actually feel epic and worth the playtime.
Luckily for my brain, we're running a spelljammer game after finishing ToA and we saw a shattered black obelisk in a forest world. DM looked very pleased with himself so i guess at least our table gets an explanation lol
like any pre-written module, of course the DM will need to work on it: 1) use as much as you want of the location maps and encounters for a multi-part fetch quest of your choice; 2) change the roles of the superhero NPCs instead to make the PCs responsible for decisions and action; and 3) consider who will be the central villain NPC with strong role right from the start, linked logically with the fetch quest
I'd love to hear your improvements/modifications! I had similar high expectations. I started to get worried as info dropped & it seemed like it was going to be one big glorified fetch quest across realms to beat a mostly-absent villain. ...I haven't yet read it (on the off chance I play in it), but so far it feels a bit self-indulgent. If there was a solid story behind it all, driving forces, motivations, interactions, consequences & cataclysmic game changing events (perhaps tying a few things into the new rules) - it wouldn't feel negatively self-indulgent at all, it'd feel like a huge pay-off! The Avengers moment of D&D. Tying these disparate things cleverly & playfully together. I hear there is a twist at least. No idea what yet. So maybe there's more payoff than I know. But... it does feel like they really missed an opportunity for something glorious & transcendant. ...it's just another adventure. ... I'm kind of tempted to get Doomed Forgotten Realms & alter this adventure so it leads into that world, just to make it really feel better! Give the players a real urge to fight.
I am now free to introduce artifacts known as the "Device of Kwan Tam" that was taken from a transport that ended up in the Barrier Peaks that can link two Obelisks together and have them act in tandem regardless of their distance or location in the multiverse. Unfortunately, Vecna has not learned how to manufacture them but has learned to use and link them to other devices using fragments from the obelisks. There are other rumored artifacts of Kwan Tam that have disappeared. Does Vecna have them? Who is Kwan Tam? How is the Spelljammer universe involved?
I will be adding adventures in racing against the Cult in collecting secrets as side quests with consequences, namely the Book of Vile Darkness heist in Keys from the Golden Vault, and a couple with the Hand and Eye of Vecna. I am stealing the destruction of the plane concept and my group is going to go absolutely wild when i destroy Toril
The Spellweaver obelisks are still around just much larger and rarer, while the ones built by the Netherese were done so with magic they traded with Vecna. I kinda like the idea that Vecna is one of the reasons that the Netherese stayed in the Realms. Dark Forest Diplomacy
Just started this with my campaign and made a change that Vecna is seeking out the original gods of the universe and that the players need to intervene the gods before Vecna gets to them or stop the gods that fell to Vecna. The overall book was decent but I needed more impact.
Definitely going to run this and my players are excited to go back to their characters that finished Avernus. Looking forward to hearing about your changes.
One reason why Vecna doesn't use the obelisks might be that they don't work as intended. I mean, we have two examples of advanced civilizations who tried to use them and are now basically extinct. Maybe Vecna looked at that and went "nope".
The black spindle that was found buried deep within the reghed glacier is what caused netheril to fall years before Karsus' folley. it is also the city that had the obelisk capable of sending people into the past. I dont think it specifically stated that the other netherese cities had one each as well? Icewindale also states that that obelisk IS a netherese made obelisks, differentiating it from the others in the world... which i was hoping to be revealed as vecnas creationions in Eve of Ruin. all of those "lesser" or "vecna" obelisks seem to only store a soul or do some pointless minimal thing in comparison to the one in the necropolis. They house a soul or creature, Like a coutl, or angel or a demon... In the correct final 5E adventure, Vecna placed that black spindle in a place to be found by the netherese, knowing they would destroy themselves with it. His sort of "the first tipping point in his plan to remake reality" from there on it was the players own actions who freed him from sigil, it was the players who travelled across the multiverse and activated all of his obelisks, it was the players who realised that the obelisks were all placed wherever powerful laylines of each plane crossed. They siphoned power from the weave in order to get past Mystras "9th level spell cap rule" in such a way where vecna could cast a beyond 9th level spell to remake the multiverse...
Spellweavers showed up in the second monster manual for 3rd edition. There were Spellweaver ruins in the Shackled City adventure path from Dungeon Magazine.
I wasn’t disappointed until I caught up on your content and started wondering what these obelisks were for too. I love your theories. And agree it’s a missed opportunity.
Die Vecna Die! Was a very similar adventure and the original intention of that module was it seems to explain why 3rd edtion D&D was different from 2nd edition. But just like Eve of Ruin it just kind of was a greatest hits (Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Planescape only but still.) And then if you read the ending it semi implies that the universe had actually been changed, but it didn't directly state everything about those changes.
By my count there are 6 Obelisks & 7 Pieces of the Rod of 7 Parts. If a DM were to create a 7th Obelisk the adventure could start out with a huge level 10 dungeon where Vecna is using his ritual connecting the 7 Obelisks spread across Faerûn to undo the multiverse. The characters could fight a weakened Vecna at the beginning, disrupt the ritual, shattering the Obelisks and tossing the rod pieces across the multiverse. The Obelisks were the keys and now Vecna has to race against the party to try and complete his ritual before they thwart him
I, for one, harbor a sadness of loss for the worlds that could have been, yet never were. Your thoughts and feelings are still relevant to me. And, if it weren’t for the Intellectual Property issues, I would suggest that you write the adventures that you wanted to share in (with a Kickstarter of your very own). It’s a bit of a bummer.
love you jorphdan keep it up! When alex jones talk about the machine elves and 12 planar dimensions my head starts spinning, but when you talk about it i'm like hell yeah bruh.
I thought Chris Perkins mentioned that the all this would come forward with Eve of Ruin. Vecna, the obelisks, ECT. Unless the mention he made with the obelisk was just the Shattered Obelisk adventure
How curious, I was going to also do an extraplanar calamity type of situation off of the back of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Tasha and Mordenkainen are slated to make appearances already.
I definitely agree I wanted the obilisks & that they would be an excellent addition into a very loosely linear campaign. That said, I also don't think the extremely tightly written & lore bound campaign would have been better necessarily. What you & I & all the dms who love deep conspiracy based stories did over the last 10 years is insanely fun on our own. But to publish that adventure the book had to be at least twice as long to fit all that context or have a note at the begining saying, this "adventure assumes you have read all 5e adventures up to this point as well as your players having played preferably two or more adventures prior to this one for even the slightest context to this one." And what significant audience is gonna buy or try that? I think what's good (still would have at least liked obelisk aesthetics for this point, but oh well) is that it does not say you can't use the obelisks or weavers. & everything says Veccna is always dealing in layered schemes & alternate plans so nothing is standing in the way of dms plugging in the obelisks as tools. The same way, the dms & players who wread Fizban's can draw a connection between Acererak & his gold dragon victems of the Tomb of Horrors into a through line with multiversal dragon souls binding the adventure (in every world they meet a Farfabnix the Copper). This is getting ranty & I don't want that. I wanted Veccna to have more obsidian stonehenges too, but I think on that practical level our once-a-quarter 5e adventure/Greatest Hits album probably had to be more surface & worst case scenario inspire players to check out the Planescape, or Strahd, or Ebberon, or Acererak books they maybe hadn't & expamd from here. Lastly, I'm also surprised we didn't get much Torvag. Barovia is definitely greatest hits material, but the story touched more on Vecna's past there...
Thank you for your open and honest criticism of the campaign, I've been timid about buying any WoTC campaigns for awhile now and this is highlights why. How the team can spend so much time dropping obelisk hints and completely drop them is beyond me. It seems to me like they wanted to hit as much IP as possible in VEoR and the story suffered. It's easy to forget that WoTC is a large team and not as cohesive as some of the 3rd party publishers who's campaigns I tend to enjoy.
Spellwevers are detailed in the age of worms and help Kyuss use the obolisk (the spire of long shadows) to attain God hood and are detailed in the associated dragon magazine that was released with the counterpart adventure in dragon magazine
Spell weavers also feature in the Dungeon magazine 1- 20 super adventure featuring Kyuss, the Age of Worms. By the Paizo guys, gives some more lore on them from a dnd 3.5 perspective.
I am interested in running Vecna: Eve of Ruin and I have a few ideas of how I'd change things. - Instead of the wizards three - its the Circle of Eight, created by Mordenkainen to help balance the planes and multiverse. This would include Mordenkainen, Tasha, Alustriel and Laeral Silverhand, and some wizards from Eberron, Krynn, and my homebrew setting. - The obelisks will connect back to Vecna's plot and the party could go to each of the locations to learn secrets of Vecna and his plot. - Kas will still have a role to play in the adventure, but it would change to better fit the overall story and campaign. - The rod of seven parts will still play a key role in the campaign and story.
As a suggestion, include the archomentals from the cult of the Elder elemental eye Olhydra, Yan-C Bin, Imix, and Ogremoch and also add the Queen of Chaos, those were massive leaders on the Dawn War on Chaos side, and more importantly if we are talking about Miska the second prince of Demons, You should add too Demogorgon and Obox-Ob, Demogorgon as the current Prince of Demons Will likely be there to Ensure that this do not threathend it's domain of the whole Abyss, most likely not wanting Miska go be freed, Demogorgon would likely be accompained by Dagon the Prince of the Depths and some generals like Saint Kargoth or the Balor Belcheresk, Obox-Ob on the other hand is the first Prince of Demons, he was before murdered by the Queen of Chaos and have a massive resentment against Tana'ri Demons, his anger is greater with the Queen of Chaos, Miska and Demogorgon, he would likely be involved trying to murder Miska to regain some of his former power, so then he can murder Demogorgon to claim his Old title of Prince of Demons and then take his Revenge against the Queen of Chaos, but be wary, Obox-Ob may be a shadow of what he used to be but he is as powerful as Orcus himeself, You can also add stuff of Tharizdun since he created the Abyss and ka the most powerful and dangerous villain, who knows maybe Vecna thinks his ritual Will give him power to control the material plane, but maybe foolishly without knowing is freeing Tharizdun from his prison, hope this help You.
I'm somewhat glad that they didn't touch the spellweavers, I mostly associate Jergal with them. For more info on Jergal check out Jergal: Lord of the End of Everything by the Forgotten realms old guard Eric Boyd and George Krashos
Pedantic addition, but the spellweavers do have an Ecology of article in 3rd Edition (Dragon 338), and they feature in Dungeon Magazine's The Shackled City adventure path, though I haven't read enough to say the exact nature of their role.
It would have been nice if there was a tie-in to Phandelver and Below. Considering that one goes from levels 1 - 12, you could stitch together a 1 - 20 campaign if there was enough of a throughline.
The alternative art for Vecna book looks awesome. The adventure sounds interesting. It probably needs a good DM/GM/ST to run it. Feels like an Avengers or Justice League style campaign. Not too keen on DC20, but helping a friend or colleague is okay.
As a homebrew forever DM, I love 5e. If I tried to run the official adventures from WotC, I would probably feel different about the system. I've just never given a shit about D&D "canon". I always saw Eve of Ruin as a nod to Die Vecna Die! It was an over the top jaunt across settings to mark an edition shift, with Vecna as the antagonist.
There's a lot being asked of this campaign. WotC has to structure it to leave it open for DM/PC agency, or it gets slammed for railroading. I like the idea of destroying each world so the PCs have to jump. But leave it up to the DM. The obelisks are an FR item, even stated in I:RotFM. The conspiracy hype elevated expectations for a book that wasn't billed as a culmination of stories but as a celebration of them. The book is a collection of adventures with a bookending story. That's what it should be judged on.
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WotC has that Middass touch where everything they touch deadass becomes mid 😭
Well said lol
I initially read that as Mid Ass and ...yep
Underrated comment
Their 'good' adventures are really just above average. Like, you can see the potential there, but even Curse of Strahd, their peak module, was above average at best.
Thanks for the likes I'm still way too proud of myself for this pun lol
You're telling me they had a chance to weave together every little nugget of mystery from all the adventures, INCLUDING BG3 and they fucking squandered it all?
Pretty much? At this point, expect something good coming from them is not a good thing, and I think D&D fans should just leave D&D and fly to other tabletops who truly can appreciate them.
@@AmonHa01 No need to tell me, I mostly play and run OSE for a better balanced traditional experience, Troika! and Knave for simple gaming, and I love Shadowdark for OSR with a difficulty that's weighted slightly more to the player's advantage (really want to get a campaign going with that one!). Genuinely looking forward to The MCDM RPG, too - it looks like it keeps a lot of the crunchy tactical stuff in 5e I'm interested in. One thing that's obvious from the industry reports and from I've seen for myself is that people are perfectly capable and largely unopposed to learning a new system, so there's never been a better time than now.
Despite this, I and I think many others still have a vestigial investment in D&D as a brand, even if we all just cut-and-paste bits we want and make it our own, even if we all know the de facto setting of "Forgotten Realms Plus Some Guys From Greyhawk" is just way, way too messy at this point. So much content runs downstream of the historical IP that anybody putting the work into improving on D&D content legally can't just call them Mind Flayers or Beholders which sucks because giving them the Mr. Pibb equivalents also kinda sucks. It's a combination of collectively having some investment in the historical franchise while being unable or unwilling to re-visit the idea of a brand new "vernacular" setting. Ideally the IP would be dissolved and we can all treat them in public how we do in private, but the next best thing is simply making more engaging original content and settings that people can collectively resonate with.
How could they have connected BG3? I'm not doubting, I just don't know enough about the setting to make the connection myself
@@willowbriar2976 There's been some Forgotten Realms writers over the years such as Eric Boyd that have suggested Jergal was actually the god of death of the Spellweavers, implanted in the human pantheon, which provides more than enough of a prompt to explain why he has regained interest in the realms at the time of BG3 if you wanted to lean heavily into Spellweaver/Black Obelisk stuff. He was the canonical Netherese god of Death too so it can provide answers as to how the Crown of Karsus fell out of Mephistopheles' hands, how the Netherese managed to replicate Spellweaver technology, all sorts.
If you prefer those to be open questions I don't blame you at all, there's just a neat little coincidence between the stories that could definitely be explored with more interest, and that's how I'd have done it if I had been doing a campaign strictly within FR
To those saying you can modify the adventure to tie in, or to make sense, or to be fun: Sure, but it's like going to a restaurant, ordering a burger, then finding the meat is pretty much just raw when it's given to you. Then when you complain, you're told that you could just go home, put it on the grill, and cook it yourself. Sure, that's possible, but if you're doing that then why on Toril did you come to a restaurant and pay them to cook it for you? Same with the book. This is supposed to be the very best that D&D can be, the big 50th anniversary celebration, but it's raw. It's bad. We can do better than them, but we're just some random players, and they're the huge company. This is not acceptable.
It's wild that this is something that keeps needing to be explained.
Very apt analogy.
Exactly why I would much rather these big campaigns be sold as cookbooks, instead of restaurants. Give us the DM tools to tell the story our way instead of WotC's way, and be upfront about what it is we're buying.
The Death House chapter could be a gazetteer on Barovia and how it's changed in the months since Curse of Strahd ended (and how Strahd reclaimed power when he returned), and the Peylon Tree in Krynn chapter could be a gazetteer on that region of Krynn (where even IS the Peylon Tree? The Dragonlance wiki has diddly squat), and could talk about how the War of the Lance ended and how the world is recovering (maybe some stat blocks for the Companions, with a Call of the Netherdeep-style quest hook to treat them as a rival adventuring party)
And then place some obelisks on the map for each region and use them as quest hooks, with the option to go through they Peylon Tree OR head for the obelisk, with either serving as a McGuffin for the story to progress, with GUIDANCE on how to handle that--instead of just telling us to read a paragraph of flowery prose and railroad things to happen as these adventures currently work.
This is a great analogy. It explains why homebrew will always be best. Just like how a good home cooked meal made with love from your mama will always be better than any restaurant.
Maybe we should just go back to modules.
Would love that. These giant books are hard to run and manage in my opinion. The module style books would be better for new and old DM’s.
@@CreakyRangerGaming There's nothing inherently bad about a larger adventure, so long as you give clear breakdowns of what's in it in the beginning and break it up in usable chunks with clear directions of what's where and how it all ties together. What's frustrating is when it's just plunked into your lap as this inscrutable slab and it expects you to read the entire thing front to back before you have any idea what it's about or how any of it connects to anything. It is very possible to make big products and also have them be clear and concise and easy to use--that's just not how 5e has opted to do things thus far.
@@robertblank5206 Clearly it's not easy, because they fail utterly every time...
Totally agree. Big missed opportunity. I have a feeling book was meant to hit exactly on anniversary and was rushed. But who knows. Good luck with the fan boys ;)
If you want something that accomplishes what Jorphan describes, check out Doomed Forgotten Realms.
Just goes to show, when a corporation puts a stranglehold on their creatives, forces them to split their time between a big final adventure and a new edition, and then fires a large amount of those same creatives just before the crucial final months of completing that adventure, you're not going to get something that is worth the cover price.
The easy fix would just be to have a shattered obelisk stand in the Sanctum, each shard taking you to each world, and have the adventure be about the party searching for both the shards and the rod. Vecna is truely unstoppable, his spell has already started taking effect when you reach him and the only way to defeat him is to take control of the obelisks he's aquired and use them all together to reset the multiverse
so basically Mortal Kombat 11's ending?
halfway inclined to just rebuild the adventure into that. vecna is Kronika. why not.
An easy fix is to stop buying products from WotC...they don't care about making quality products anymore so the beat thing we can do is walk away and find better products by people who actually care about what they're making.
I 100% agree. Without going into any spoiler territory, I was expecting waaaaaaaaay more out of this book and due to it's lackluster production I am forced to do too much heavy lifting as a DM. The entire adventure is lazily written (which may be more of a producer input such as limitation of pages, inclusion of specific characters and plot hooks or miscommunication between teams rather than a set of bad writers), full of "convenient" and uninspiring objectives, raillroaded campaign style and unfaithful to prior published lore. Much like WOTC 5e Dragonlance, Spelljammer and Planescape I feel like what was promised and hyped was not what was delivered and that in order to get the campaign I am running for my players to resemble anything that was hyped.... I am going to have to pour so much time that I would have been better off writing it from scratch.
Expecting way more out of a WotC adventure has become the new norm. It's disappointing.
I can use it but I'm going to have to saw off chunks and rearrange them a bit.
@@TopTierKnees And frustrating. When any number of youtube content creators seem to create fixes that enhance this mess of storytelling into a compelling and fun game that I would love to run or play in versus what WOTC staff and it's shareholders are being paid bucketloads of cash to do "professionally". Granted there are always going to be DM's that want to alter or even completely re-write officially published material to fit their campaigns or the players at their table but I remember a time when buying a D&D book or campaign setting did not come with buyers remorse. Now it's all I experience.
@@itzybitzyspyder Indeed, far too many limbs. ***SPOILER ALERT*** I for one will be omitting that silly Scooby Doo reveal as well as adding in much of the published lore and things that make Vecna feel more like a brilliant mastermind playing 3D chess with the multiverse rather than some broken video game villain sitting around and meditating until he gets his one cut scene at the very end of the game. Jorphdan had pointed out soooo much cool stuff in the obelisk videos that I was excited to see in this release as payoff for being a D&D fan of over 3o years and the fact that not only were they not mentioned or part of the campaign but then the greatest hits romp around the Multiverse really feels like re-skinned meh McGuffin fetch quests with no soul or substance.
I do not think WOTC will be Lu mushing much longer.
As Hasbro finishes up the last edition of D&D, Hasbro is turning to third party content now. It is better written, less drama, cost less.
Chekhov's gun remains on the mantle above the fire place!😓
Rant: No real references/consequences to the trilogy of modules, ie Tasha & Graz’zt’s Demi-god son’s demise by Vecna! Revenge?!? Dark Powers wanting previous escapees back? Asmodeus letting the cosmos being rearranged?!?
Eve of Ruin is supposed to a cash grab capitalizing on D&D's 50th, Veca's popularity from Stranger Things, and any remaining good will and nostalgia from fans. Remember they've openly said on many occasions they don't playtest AT ALL anything from the higher levels, I think level 12+.
@@jamesyoung7400 Then WOTC should just make the level cap 10.
I wonder if this is because they fired so many people that the ones who knew what the heck to do with the obelisks no longer work there. Heck, I don’t think many of the people who can write good adventures are there anymore. Even as a huge fan of D&D 5e I have to admit the content has been suffering lately. No wonder Larian stopped working with them, the ones behind the magic are all gone now. It’s up to us the players and DMs to make a good Eve of Ruin.
I was thinking the same, some of the cuts were early in 2023, over a year before this book came out. So maybe we got the "good enough version" because the chapter on the obelisks was on someones local drive that lost thier job.
Nah Chris Perkin was is and will be the head of story development and is somewhat of a savant when it comes to lore recall. . . It wouldn't have just slipped by and fell to the way side. It was a decision.
@@Pyzsa I mean, Chris has gotten lore wrong on their "Lore You Should Know" segments, so like...😂
The biggest mistake of every dnd and magic player is to trust in wotc.
Too many cooks in the kitchen working on these adventures.
Exactly this.
thats what happens when you enforce DIE, you end up hiring a LOT of untalented people just to fill in quotas for this sweet sweet ESG/Black rock money...
I'm confused because that makes sense, but other wise people told me that "many hands lighten the load"!
(I'm only joking because pre_internet I'd always wanted to write a book that cross referenced sayings with counter-sayings. I'd name it "How To Counter Sayings With Counter Sayings"
Get the names of the cooks and google them. Look at any photo of them. That's why.
Too many cooks, and people that want to just give a general idea (use chicken. Ok, breast, thigh, both white and dark meat?) without giving actual statistics/rules (ingredients which is the main reason behind buying new books rather than making up your own stuff anyway). I first noticed it in van richten’s guide to ravenloft when they just started saying “for this dark lord just use X generic monster stat). May have started before then, but getting all of the different domains and darklord stat blocks was what i was extremely excited for, but after getting the book i basically gave up on getting quality content.
Imagine if all the 5e adventures built up multiple high level parties and then those parties converged in this book. Your players (assuming you ran everything with the same group) could swap between different high level characters in different locations all fighting towards the same goal. Enemies could be extremely deadly and over powered, maybe some even unkillable, all because you already have other characters built and ready to go.
Just think about how epic it would be having 4 or 5 parties of 4 or 5 players coming together after being brutally beaten, just barely retrieving all the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts, and the whole table realizes it's all finally been worth it. They can now defeat Vecna...
Maybe have that Avenger's moment at the end when half your epic-leveled characters have died, after defeating Vecna the remaining characters activate the obelisks and bring everyone back.
I feel like it's a no brainer, but I guess things like that don't sell in the eyes of the higher ups. Personally, coming up with this idea makes me actually interested in getting all the books and running it like this. Maybe I will!
And that's why my campaign took only 23 years
Jorphdan and countless other DMs about to have their thanos "fine... I'll do it myself" moment
You're very close here to what I consider to be the central mystery of the obelisks and the spellweavers that I've been chasing for years now with fascination. My big difference from your interpretation is that when the spellweavers talk about the multiverse (or Dak'kon's codex in Planescape Torment talk about the False Realities), I think they're talking about the shattered prism cosmology established in Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. They want to take all our different campaigns, the various novels, the cartoons, the movies, all the video games--every splinter reality created during the great primal war that involved Bahamut and Tiamat at the dawn of creation and reweave it together back into a single reality a gain--a True Reality. I think Vecna found out about that plan and did as much as he could to subvert it to be able to create a universe in his image. Is that what happened when 2e got remade in Die Vecna Die and turned into 3e? Is it the same thing another incarnation of Vecna did in Critical Role? Is he constantly testing the fences like a velociraptor in different realities until he eventually wins and gets his way? I think that might actually be Vecna's whole deal. Maybe the destruction of the original Spellweaver civilization, when they first tried to mend the cosmic prism of multiverses--maybe Vecna was there too. Is the central conflict of the multiverse of D&D just a chess game between Vecna and the shattered spellweaver civilization with forces like Mordenkainen trying to prevent either side from winning? It certainly would be interesting.
I too thought this would be a "reset" that ushers in the new editio... vers... rebrand? of D&D. Oh well.
Doomed Forgotten Realms (which my man here has reviewed), specifically the Rise & Fall of Vecna, is a great Vecna-based alternative. And it's cheaper. I've run parts of it and it's been great. I especially love that he's taken over Waterdeep and used the Walking Statues, which have so far been treated as window dressing in 5e (IYKYK). Also there's a part where the PCs explore the inside of, and command, a gargantuan mechanical Fire Giant (basically a Warforged Titan).
Im running it now. Its Ah-Mazing!😊
I used to listen to the dragon talk podcasts and I swear I remember Chris Perkins talking about the black obelisks and their connection to vecna while being coy so I’m shocked that wizards didn’t use them in this adventure
Love this! Absolutely miss the Obelisk connections!
Could you do a document of all this Spellweaver + Vecna + Obelisks stuff? 😆 🙏 It'd be nice to have the info collated.
Oh the obelisks are totally part of that plot. Then again i never read the book. I just looked at pictures and skimmed it and rewrote it to fit my campaing!
Is this a quote from Chris Cox?
I honestly don't know who these mythical groups are that run every single published hard cover adventure running a single one to completion is a monumental task
I can’t wait to see a Jorphdan fix to this adventure.
A DM put out a nice fix for it
I think this showcases once again that Hasbro doesn't care for the customer and only cares about its own pocket books.
This feels like another let down from wizards of the Coast where they just put a bunch of glitter and gold on top of what is essentially a big pile of crap, and it's left up to us the players who have been with this brand for decades to better understand the history of this franchise and world that we love so that we can make a cohesive story for everyone that enjoys the game versus the company that apparently hates us and our game.
It isn't about them hating us or not. You can't personify a corporation. With a traded company like Hasbro, it is literally impossible for them to offer the highest quality product they are capable of offering. To do so would run counter to its purpose. The best products do not generate the most revenue, which is why the highest echelons of quality for any type of product are exclusive to small, private companies and individual artisans. In order to extract the maximum revenue from any product, you MUST decrease its quality.
In the case of writing, like we see here, the decrease in quality comes as a concession to other things meant to generate sales or increase margins. Lower page counts, references to other products, a list of bullet points that must be hit in order to generate the most mass appeal; that sort of thing.
Meanwhile, I'm over in changeling: the dreaming land hoping Paradox don't touch it with a 10ft barge pole and make a paper mario sticker star out of it.
I remember when WotC were a quality company who put out carefully developed products. Anyone else remember that?
...No?...
You must have beend dreaming my dude.
No. I don't remember things that happened in your dreams.
For D&D? Nope lol, but in fairness the best thing that ever happened to D&D (The OGL) was a byproduct of WotC being simultaneously schizophrenic with the brand while deluded in thinking they weren't.
The obelisk thing is kind of nuts, because imagine if we got to Infinity War and the gems were completely ignored and forgotten about, and we had a brand new plan from Thanos out of nowhere that didn't connect to any of the previous movies or foreshadowing.
I want to visit the world where Hasbro cherishes the WoTC creative team and takes their input very seriously, and carefully manages the cohesiveness of their product like Kevin Feige with the MCU.
I was hopeful but never convinced that they'd be able to pull it off. This kind of big event is very difficult and is made near impossible by meddling from the higher ups, something wotc is infamous for.
Thank you for your service Jorphdan! The obelisks were going to be a big part of my campaign and I was waiting for the adventure to come out to writing it in. Then it didn't have anything to do with it and now I have to come up with something on the spot because WotC didnt
me and a fellow dm had wild speculations that Vecna was forming his leauge of iconic villians to get the pieces of the rod for him and he´d give them what they´d desired once he was supreme over god and that the obelisks was also conected to it
When will they learn that we don't want their stories, we want campaign settings to write our own stories.
They keep selling adventures when it’s setting lore and game material/expansions that people want. People need to just go back to 2E and 3E and realize what they’ve been missing and what they should demand from WotC going forward.
Your videos about the black obelisks made me start an ongoing campaign running through all the adventures. We’re squaring up and getting ready for the final adventure, looking bf forward to your video and have really loved the other videos you’ve done! Keep it up!
Fuck it. Imma homebrew a version where the players go through abridged versions of the modules Endgame style to learn their "secret" before Vecna's cultists can
Thus Vecna is actively seeking secrets to accomplish a goal rather than sitting in a cave waiting for his death star laser to charge and the PCs may actually recognize the references
Also gonna run Strahd first to get them to 10 with an emphasis on Dark Lord to foreshadow or even loop Kas into the plot before the dimb ass deception ploy written in Eve of Ruin
Your review is way nicer than mine. This adventure was so frustrating to read through by the end for me.
i think they not only missed the chance to bring in the obelisks but linking this adventure to the 2nd Edition adventure "Dead Gods" and having Orcus being co-antagonist or at least play a part in the adventure would have made it feel much more like a 50th special edition. Replace Vecna looking for the Rod of Seven Parts and have him rez Tenebrous to get "The Last Word" from that module then create a link about current form of Orcus gaining power as Vecna goes on his remaking the multiverse crusade. Orcus in quite a bit of the dnd lore gave Vecna the ability to become a Lich so go from that.
I'm actually *excited* to see your changes suggestions. Every single D&D 5e adventure I have run or played in is deeply flawed, usually in completely different ways, but not one has been on point enough I'd rate it higher than 3 out of 5. In fact, this extends to my experiences with other adventures in other systems as well (PF1e, PF2e, etc). I think the lesson is that you should always run your own campaign and just use adventure books like these as a resource, a place to pull plot ideas, dungeons, encounters, traps, magic items, NPCs, and so on from.
Of course I want to run it by the book, I want to give my players the authentic "I did this" experience that can be related to others who have also run these adventures. But there does come a point where even a minimal effort to change the adventure results in a DRASTICALLY better adventure... and that's pretty much when you've DM'd a full campaign 1-20 (or similar quantity of play). You've seen enough, you know enough, every adventure is just better if you do it your way.
Again, I'm excited to see your suggested changes. I'd love to run an adventure that ties into the obelisks. I included Vecna in a full campaign I ran a while back, and he (or she, in my case) was fantastic as an end boss. I also loved 2e's Die Vecna, Die! even though its such a different style of adventure from the kind of stuff we play these days.
The sad thing I feel is the best 5e modules were the revamp of older modules. And i was excited about the rod of law
I'm almost done with my Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign. I've been following and watching your stuff for years now and it's inspired me to try and follow a more obelisk oriented multi-campaign connection and maybe even now a Rod of Seven Parts campaign or something along those lines that is still a multiverse adventure dealing with the Raven Queen, Vecna, the Lady of Pain, etc. Thanks for your content Jorphdan ❤
I realize now I only had such high expectations for this module because of the compelling content you've put out over the years. You're 100% right, wotc delivered what THEY promised. Classic case of misaligned expectations. That said, I think the next video you release, may very well be my cannon version of what is meant to happen. Highly looking forward to it!
I've been building my players adventure torwards the obelisks and vecna for over 2 years now... was quite irritated when Eve of Ruin ignored all of it.
Sounds to me like d&d is slowly dying thanks to the incompetence of Hasbro and WOTC. All it needs is 1 good competitor and it's done and it's starting to look like this is gonna happen sooner than later.
The thing is, they got lots of competitors, but none is big enough by themself. The Games Workshop with Warhammer could be close, but not close enough. Let's face it - none of the "D&D clones" will ever be strong enough to overshadow its source, unless Hasbro ditches D&D on purpose. And, to quote Spaceballs: they're not just doing it for money. They do it for a shitload of money.
It already has one. Pathfinder kicked its ass during 4th Edition. That slowed down a ton when 5E came out. Now PF has had 2E out for sometime and has been their biggest rival. But even Paizo has been fucking up lately.
I dont believe there were any human beings writing this. Maybe they had a flesh and blood editor but all their writing is being done by ChatGPT now.
Rime of the frostmaiden was indeed amazing and I'm into your obelisks/weavers/netherese conspiracy community(if writing and brainstorming hooks about that was a job I'd apply) I can only wish Larloch will try something with the Obelisks if Vecna's not doing it.. I still hope there will be more mentions of the obelisks anyway, not all over with Vecna, is it?
I didn't expect anything from this adventure, and I got nothing. In the end, we have your great obelisk theory, and this will make for a much more interesting homebrew campaign than anything WotC can possibly produce.
Imagine having the key to the city and walking by the solid gold bank vault like "meh... I'm gonna get a coffee" 😂
I actualy forgot about the Obelisks. But you are right the book needs A ton of work to run properly. The book has some really great ideas in them. If you change them for example. Like the idea of chapter 1 is great. but it doesn't connect to the rest of the plot. And that goes for the rest as well. I would definitely make it an entire 1-20 campaign for starters. give every setting I want to be featured some time to breath. have characters from different planes united. like Avengers. Have the macguffin be somehow involved in there Backstory, have the obelisks pop-up. use the Framework of the Wizards from Chapter 2 and with a bit of Work you got yourself a badass-campaign that is engaging for every player that also feels satisfying as well.
The spellweavers were also in a 3.* monster manual, that is where I saw them first
I love your videos especially the Forgotten Realms lore ones. Did you really expect WotC to have a grasp on their own lore, let alone handle it remotely well?
Why the fuck would anyone think Hasbro would let WoTC reward loyal customers and their commitment to the lore, the experience, the game? DC20 is terrific.
The beauty of this is that I can happily hack this module into topiary.
I liked the fan theory but I didn't have a lot of hope that WotC would bite down on it. Even though the published adventures sometimes reference one another, they have all been pretty self contained. To put something like what you were describing together, they would have had to reverse a design decision they made early on to not load players and DMs down with a lot of back lore from previous editions. I don't personally agree with that decision but it has been their decision since 4E so I'm not surprised they've maintained it.
I was definitely right there with you and fully expected the obelisks to hold some sort of important key to the adventure. Perhaps they will carry the obelisks into the new edition and ride the concept for a while. I just hope if they do that it has an exciting review and we don't just sit back wondering why all the mystery and intrigue if they reveal falls kind of flat. Appreciate the video!
I’m very excited for your next video, I’ve been invested in the obelisk mystery and was very disheartened when they didn’t come into play in Eve of Ruin.
The lore behind the obelisks seems really cool, I didn’t know about any of that. I’m interested in running this adventure still as a sequel to DiA-when I ran that campaign, one of my players had a backstory that had a lot to do with Karsus, so I think I can tie in a lot of the cool weaver / Netherese stuff into the game and make it still feel relevant
Totally agree with you. SO many missed opportunities with Eve of Ruin… I’ll be running the adventure, but with bigtime modifications. I’m changing like 75% of it. 😆 Honestly, I do kind of enjoy picking apart the books & retooling them, but if I was a DM who preferred to run things “as written,” I’d be super let down.
Would love to see you throw together an obelisks megacampaign, with just the best of the best from 5e’s modules
I think “Vecna destroys Faerun and the adventurers have to use the obelisks to reset the multiverse” is a great adventure start
Perhaps they will do something in a future module? I do gotta admit, that your videos had me hyped up on that concept 😊
Wasn't explained in phandelver that the obelisk in icewind Dale is one of the weavers ones?
And after Vecna erased the weavers the knowledge of those was leaked
(Maybe Acerack has something to do with that he has the knowledge to make them, like the one in the tomb of the nine gods)
So the majority of the obelisks are netherese made but aren't as powerful
As the one in icewind Dale
I think Vecna is using original weavers knowledge to make his ritual
And that the obelisks are a subplot that we are going to keep seeing in the WOTC adventures until we get a time travel one
I feel like it's one of those "Oh but if we connect the obelisk thing here then that's like requiring home works and won't be fun for new players and DMs" thing...though I feel there could have been a way to do it in the way that still hinted a bigger connection. Then again I am a fan of what MCU has done...to a degree.
When i first read through this adventure I was picturing Jorphdan's reaction to it :P To be fair... I think it has the... skeleton... of a good adventure there but really needs the DM to add lots of flesh on it to make it actually feel epic and worth the playtime.
Luckily for my brain, we're running a spelljammer game after finishing ToA and we saw a shattered black obelisk in a forest world.
DM looked very pleased with himself so i guess at least our table gets an explanation lol
like any pre-written module, of course the DM will need to work on it: 1) use as much as you want of the location maps and encounters for a multi-part fetch quest of your choice; 2) change the roles of the superhero NPCs instead to make the PCs responsible for decisions and action; and 3) consider who will be the central villain NPC with strong role right from the start, linked logically with the fetch quest
I'd love to hear your improvements/modifications!
I had similar high expectations.
I started to get worried as info dropped & it seemed like it was going to be one big glorified fetch quest across realms to beat a mostly-absent villain.
...I haven't yet read it (on the off chance I play in it), but so far it feels a bit self-indulgent.
If there was a solid story behind it all, driving forces, motivations, interactions, consequences & cataclysmic game changing events (perhaps tying a few things into the new rules) - it wouldn't feel negatively self-indulgent at all, it'd feel like a huge pay-off! The Avengers moment of D&D. Tying these disparate things cleverly & playfully together.
I hear there is a twist at least. No idea what yet. So maybe there's more payoff than I know. But... it does feel like they really missed an opportunity for something glorious & transcendant.
...it's just another adventure.
... I'm kind of tempted to get Doomed Forgotten Realms & alter this adventure so it leads into that world, just to make it really feel better! Give the players a real urge to fight.
I am now free to introduce artifacts known as the "Device of Kwan Tam" that was taken from a transport that ended up in the Barrier Peaks that can link two Obelisks together and have them act in tandem regardless of their distance or location in the multiverse. Unfortunately, Vecna has not learned how to manufacture them but has learned to use and link them to other devices using fragments from the obelisks. There are other rumored artifacts of Kwan Tam that have disappeared. Does Vecna have them? Who is Kwan Tam? How is the Spelljammer universe involved?
I will be adding adventures in racing against the Cult in collecting secrets as side quests with consequences, namely the Book of Vile Darkness heist in Keys from the Golden Vault, and a couple with the Hand and Eye of Vecna.
I am stealing the destruction of the plane concept and my group is going to go absolutely wild when i destroy Toril
A new video from you is always a blessing especially in these Dming times...
The Spellweaver obelisks are still around just much larger and rarer, while the ones built by the Netherese were done so with magic they traded with Vecna.
I kinda like the idea that Vecna is one of the reasons that the Netherese stayed in the Realms. Dark Forest Diplomacy
Just started this with my campaign and made a change that Vecna is seeking out the original gods of the universe and that the players need to intervene the gods before Vecna gets to them or stop the gods that fell to Vecna.
The overall book was decent but I needed more impact.
I'm currently using an Obilisk in my campaign as a key to get to Thar Amphala so the heroes can prevent Vecna's resurrection.
I enjoy all of Jorphdan videos
Definitely going to run this and my players are excited to go back to their characters that finished Avernus. Looking forward to hearing about your changes.
Dang those weaving aliens were advanced, showing up in a book that wasn't published until 3 years after they made their appearance in it.
One reason why Vecna doesn't use the obelisks might be that they don't work as intended. I mean, we have two examples of advanced civilizations who tried to use them and are now basically extinct. Maybe Vecna looked at that and went "nope".
The black spindle that was found buried deep within the reghed glacier is what caused netheril to fall years before Karsus' folley. it is also the city that had the obelisk capable of sending people into the past. I dont think it specifically stated that the other netherese cities had one each as well? Icewindale also states that that obelisk IS a netherese made obelisks, differentiating it from the others in the world... which i was hoping to be revealed as vecnas creationions in Eve of Ruin. all of those "lesser" or "vecna" obelisks seem to only store a soul or do some pointless minimal thing in comparison to the one in the necropolis. They house a soul or creature, Like a coutl, or angel or a demon... In the correct final 5E adventure, Vecna placed that black spindle in a place to be found by the netherese, knowing they would destroy themselves with it. His sort of "the first tipping point in his plan to remake reality" from there on it was the players own actions who freed him from sigil, it was the players who travelled across the multiverse and activated all of his obelisks, it was the players who realised that the obelisks were all placed wherever powerful laylines of each plane crossed. They siphoned power from the weave in order to get past Mystras "9th level spell cap rule" in such a way where vecna could cast a beyond 9th level spell to remake the multiverse...
Spellweavers showed up in the second monster manual for 3rd edition. There were Spellweaver ruins in the Shackled City adventure path from Dungeon Magazine.
Seen a great rework of this adventure from gamemasters here on the tube. His work around made the adventure feel endgame level event. Worth a look.
I wasn’t disappointed until I caught up on your content and started wondering what these obelisks were for too. I love your theories. And agree it’s a missed opportunity.
Your intro was amazing. You're awesome, Jordan.
Die Vecna Die! Was a very similar adventure and the original intention of that module was it seems to explain why 3rd edtion D&D was different from 2nd edition.
But just like Eve of Ruin it just kind of was a greatest hits (Ravenloft, Greyhawk, Planescape only but still.) And then if you read the ending it semi implies that the universe had actually been changed, but it didn't directly state everything about those changes.
By my count there are 6 Obelisks & 7 Pieces of the Rod of 7 Parts. If a DM were to create a 7th Obelisk the adventure could start out with a huge level 10 dungeon where Vecna is using his ritual connecting the 7 Obelisks spread across Faerûn to undo the multiverse. The characters could fight a weakened Vecna at the beginning, disrupt the ritual, shattering the Obelisks and tossing the rod pieces across the multiverse. The Obelisks were the keys and now Vecna has to race against the party to try and complete his ritual before they thwart him
I, for one, harbor a sadness of loss for the worlds that could have been, yet never were.
Your thoughts and feelings are still relevant to me.
And, if it weren’t for the Intellectual Property issues, I would suggest that you write the adventures that you wanted to share in (with a Kickstarter of your very own).
It’s a bit of a bummer.
love you jorphdan keep it up!
When alex jones talk about the machine elves and 12 planar dimensions my head starts spinning, but when you talk about it i'm like hell yeah bruh.
I thought Chris Perkins mentioned that the all this would come forward with Eve of Ruin. Vecna, the obelisks, ECT. Unless the mention he made with the obelisk was just the Shattered Obelisk adventure
How curious, I was going to also do an extraplanar calamity type of situation off of the back of Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
Tasha and Mordenkainen are slated to make appearances already.
I definitely agree I wanted the obilisks & that they would be an excellent addition into a very loosely linear campaign.
That said, I also don't think the extremely tightly written & lore bound campaign would have been better necessarily.
What you & I & all the dms who love deep conspiracy based stories did over the last 10 years is insanely fun on our own. But to publish that adventure the book had to be at least twice as long to fit all that context or have a note at the begining saying, this "adventure assumes you have read all 5e adventures up to this point as well as your players having played preferably two or more adventures prior to this one for even the slightest context to this one." And what significant audience is gonna buy or try that?
I think what's good (still would have at least liked obelisk aesthetics for this point, but oh well) is that it does not say you can't use the obelisks or weavers. & everything says Veccna is always dealing in layered schemes & alternate plans so nothing is standing in the way of dms plugging in the obelisks as tools. The same way, the dms & players who wread Fizban's can draw a connection between Acererak & his gold dragon victems of the Tomb of Horrors into a through line with multiversal dragon souls binding the adventure (in every world they meet a Farfabnix the Copper).
This is getting ranty & I don't want that. I wanted Veccna to have more obsidian stonehenges too, but I think on that practical level our once-a-quarter 5e adventure/Greatest Hits album probably had to be more surface & worst case scenario inspire players to check out the Planescape, or Strahd, or Ebberon, or Acererak books they maybe hadn't & expamd from here.
Lastly, I'm also surprised we didn't get much Torvag. Barovia is definitely greatest hits material, but the story touched more on Vecna's past there...
Thank you for your open and honest criticism of the campaign, I've been timid about buying any WoTC campaigns for awhile now and this is highlights why.
How the team can spend so much time dropping obelisk hints and completely drop them is beyond me.
It seems to me like they wanted to hit as much IP as possible in VEoR and the story suffered.
It's easy to forget that WoTC is a large team and not as cohesive as some of the 3rd party publishers who's campaigns I tend to enjoy.
I love your work Jorphdan. How could we add obelisks to this book?
Next video I wanna go more in depth on how I'd manipulate this adventure to my liking! stay tuned!
Beard or no, 'tis fabulous to see you, Jorphdan!
Spellwevers are detailed in the age of worms and help Kyuss use the obolisk (the spire of long shadows) to attain God hood and are detailed in the associated dragon magazine that was released with the counterpart adventure in dragon magazine
Spell weavers also feature in the Dungeon magazine 1- 20 super adventure featuring Kyuss, the Age of Worms. By the Paizo guys, gives some more lore on them from a dnd 3.5 perspective.
I am interested in running Vecna: Eve of Ruin and I have a few ideas of how I'd change things.
- Instead of the wizards three - its the Circle of Eight, created by Mordenkainen to help balance the planes and multiverse. This would include Mordenkainen, Tasha, Alustriel and Laeral Silverhand, and some wizards from Eberron, Krynn, and my homebrew setting.
- The obelisks will connect back to Vecna's plot and the party could go to each of the locations to learn secrets of Vecna and his plot.
- Kas will still have a role to play in the adventure, but it would change to better fit the overall story and campaign.
- The rod of seven parts will still play a key role in the campaign and story.
As a suggestion, include the archomentals from the cult of the Elder elemental eye Olhydra, Yan-C Bin, Imix, and Ogremoch and also add the Queen of Chaos, those were massive leaders on the Dawn War on Chaos side, and more importantly if we are talking about Miska the second prince of Demons, You should add too Demogorgon and Obox-Ob, Demogorgon as the current Prince of Demons Will likely be there to Ensure that this do not threathend it's domain of the whole Abyss, most likely not wanting Miska go be freed, Demogorgon would likely be accompained by Dagon the Prince of the Depths and some generals like Saint Kargoth or the Balor Belcheresk, Obox-Ob on the other hand is the first Prince of Demons, he was before murdered by the Queen of Chaos and have a massive resentment against Tana'ri Demons, his anger is greater with the Queen of Chaos, Miska and Demogorgon, he would likely be involved trying to murder Miska to regain some of his former power, so then he can murder Demogorgon to claim his Old title of Prince of Demons and then take his Revenge against the Queen of Chaos, but be wary, Obox-Ob may be a shadow of what he used to be but he is as powerful as Orcus himeself, You can also add stuff of Tharizdun since he created the Abyss and ka the most powerful and dangerous villain, who knows maybe Vecna thinks his ritual Will give him power to control the material plane, but maybe foolishly without knowing is freeing Tharizdun from his prison, hope this help You.
I'm somewhat glad that they didn't touch the spellweavers, I mostly associate Jergal with them. For more info on Jergal check out Jergal: Lord of the End of Everything by the Forgotten realms old guard Eric Boyd and George Krashos
Pedantic addition, but the spellweavers do have an Ecology of article in 3rd Edition (Dragon 338), and they feature in Dungeon Magazine's The Shackled City adventure path, though I haven't read enough to say the exact nature of their role.
It would have been nice if there was a tie-in to Phandelver and Below. Considering that one goes from levels 1 - 12, you could stitch together a 1 - 20 campaign if there was enough of a throughline.
I'm using it to make an anthology adventure for me and my players/DMs. When we visit a world one of us has ran or intended to run into 1 adventure.
The alternative art for Vecna book looks awesome. The adventure sounds interesting. It probably needs a good DM/GM/ST to run it. Feels like an Avengers or Justice League style campaign.
Not too keen on DC20, but helping a friend or colleague is okay.
As a homebrew forever DM, I love 5e. If I tried to run the official adventures from WotC, I would probably feel different about the system. I've just never given a shit about D&D "canon".
I always saw Eve of Ruin as a nod to Die Vecna Die! It was an over the top jaunt across settings to mark an edition shift, with Vecna as the antagonist.
Jorphdan, a video on how you would rewrite the adventure to include the obelisks please!
Can't wait to see your modifications for Vecna: Eve of Ruin!
There's a lot being asked of this campaign.
WotC has to structure it to leave it open for DM/PC agency, or it gets slammed for railroading. I like the idea of destroying each world so the PCs have to jump. But leave it up to the DM.
The obelisks are an FR item, even stated in I:RotFM. The conspiracy hype elevated expectations for a book that wasn't billed as a culmination of stories but as a celebration of them.
The book is a collection of adventures with a bookending story. That's what it should be judged on.