Vecna : Eve of Ruin

by Amanda Harmon (Lead Designer), Kate Irwin (Art Director), Makenzie De Armas (Designer)

WHO WILL SAVE EXISTENCE?
The notorious lich Vecna is weaving a ritual to eliminate good, obliterate the gods, and subjugate all worlds. To stop Vecna before he remakes the universe, the heroes work with three of the multiverse’s most famous archmages, travel to far-flung locales, and rebuild the legendary Rod of Seven Parts.

Vecna: Eve of Ruin™ is a high-stakes Dungeons & Dragons adventure in which the fate of the multiverse hangs in the balance. The heroes begin in the Forgotten Realms® and travel to Planescape®, Spelljammer®, Eberron®, Ravenloft®, Dragonlance®, and Greyhawk® as they race to save existence from obliteration.

A Dungeons & Dragons adventure for characters of levels 10–20.

For use with the fifth edition Player’s Handbook®, Monster Manual®, and Dungeon Master’s Guide®.

Contents:
Dare you say his name? Fans of Stranger Things will be delighted to discover that Vecna is back – with a vengeance. This notorious D&D villain has set his sights on something more terrifying than ever: the end of existence itself.
Dungeon Masters and players alike will unlock their full potential in this epic high-level adventure, which is designed for 10th to 20th level characters. You hold the power to change the multiverse, so what are you waiting for? Legends aren't born – they're made.
Join the battle for the multiverse alongside legendary allies who you may recognize from other D&D adventures. This book includes detailed character dossiers with exclusive insight into these illustrious figures.
Journey through memorable fantasy locations during your race to save existence. From the wild space galaxies of Spelljammer® to the mist-shrouded vistas of Ravenloft®, your quest will carry you all over the D&D multiverse.
Take on over 30 terrifying new monsters spawning from all over the multiverse. Battling these beasts will bring you one step closer to foiling Vecna's plans and vanquishing evil, once and for all.

Genres: Fantasy, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2024

Reviews

[Arseni Kritchever · Rating 2 out of 5]

Won't be a long review (I hesitate to even call it a review since I have not attempted to run this adventure) because to list why it's a very flawed adventure, albeit with a lot of potential and some cool parts, is to spoil a very big part of it.

First to sum up what this adventure is:
* A high level adventure (from level 10 to 20 I believe) that sends the party across many different established settings such as Greyhawk, Eberron, Krynn, and more.
* A race to stop the evil god-lich Vecna from remaking the entire multiverse for... reasons...
* A McGuffin hunt as player characters must find the parts of a magical artifact before another evil entity does.

What are the problems with this adventure:
* Without spoiling much, the true villain and the twist of this adventure just does not work.
* The writers clearly struggled with how to write an adventure meant for high-level characters which have ridiculously powerful spells and other abilities at their disposal. Hence so many locations just say "Teleport doesn't work here" "Divination does not work here" "Plane shift does not work here". It's just bad design.
* The main plot is a worse railroad than most published adventures and quickly disintegrates if the players are even slightly suspicious or are paying a bit of attention.
* Some of the locations are very good (hats off to the adventure set in Eberron especially!) while others are very lacklustre and boring (the adventures set on Krynn and Greyhawk could be set literally anywhere - the settings are not used in any way) while one particular Ravenloft-themed adventure is just bizarre and seems out of place.
* Conclusion seems very unsatisfying because the players never come into contact with Vecna (he doesn't even seem to be aware that the players are trying to stop him!) until the very end. As a villain, Vecna really falls short because the players never really learn what Vecna is trying to do and why, and never really get to hate Vecna personally (which is what made Strahd such a great villain). This is the same problem as the Tomb of Annihilation module and the Shadow of the Dragon Queen module: the main villains don't show up until the very end and players are left puzzled by their appearance.

I will say though that this book is absolutely gorgeous, the maps and many locations are really good on their own and can be easily looted and repurposed for other adventures. This book is maybe worth buying on a deep sale (I'm sure it will be on sale on Amazon soon).

[Jonah Hawthorne · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I got to play through this book. There are some quests that are fun and let you pave your own way through completing them. However each chapter in this book is very easy to break at high levels. My party had two players with true polymorph so which meant they could permanently turn everyone in the party into things such as ancient dragons, powerful giants, angels, and so on. I appreciate what the game was attempting to do but 5e isn’t designed super well to balance out overpowered high level characters and this adventure showcases that problem.

[Pádraic]

Took me ages to even skim through this allegedly epic adventure because it's such a slog. I admit my dislike for the cosmic D&D stuff, but this planehopping stuff is pure nonsense even by my low expectations. Every now and then they'll stumble across an arresting image, but ultimately it's a straight road with only tedious sights along the way.

The "secrets" mechanic is the germ of a good idea, but all the individual secrets feel so toothless, and the mechanical implementation is underwhelming. The grab-bag of figures from D&D lore are (a) poorly implemented and (b) not interesting in themselves. The point of the medium is to build something collaboratively out of the sand, not to be shown around a museum of glass sculptures you're not allowed to touch. Real MCU energy over here, which, to be clear, is one of the worst insults I can give.

[Courtney Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't wait to TPK my players *evil laugh* But in all seriousness, I'm excited to run this! Having DMd 4/5 of these multiverses, I'm excited to see how my players will interact with these PCs and places, especially at level 20. And for once, I don't have to actually homebrew the campaign book to be higher level, which is a lot of work, haha!

[Lasse Carlsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly a bit dissapointed. Lots of cool stuff to maybe grab and put in other campaigns and I like that there are some sections that require resolution through other means than combat. As a fan of the DnD cosmology, a multiversal roadtrip is also very appealing. But really needs a stronger connection with the main villain and a lot of tweaking would be required should I ever want to run it (NO WAY Strahd is letting the heroes of the hook on a DC15 Charisma check!)

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

After 2 years of hype the Avengers: Endgame module for 5e is out. ....and it needs a LOT of help. The module definitely looks like they tried to do a lot with not a lot of substance. As a DM for more than a couple decades I am used to prepping and altering published adventures to better flush out or align material closer to what my players' views of the world(s). Having said that, the art is fantastic and the locations were well conceived. But that's where it ends... Vecna is hardly mentioned and his Endgame appearance is quite nerfed for a party of 20th level characters.

So alterations were made and lore taken from 2e and other 5e WoTC publications. The latter because one of the mysteries in all of 5e were to obelisks....go YouTube "Vecna Obelisks" and you will see what I mean. They are missing in this module. And it's incredible that they are...

But there are a couple chapters you can run as written, but the beginning levels 1-10 you need to work at it and to help inform the PCs what's going on and why it matters...you need the Lore from other sources.

Given the page number restraints placed on this module, I believe we could have gotten what we wanted with WoTC not publishing the Giants book and perhaps Infinite Staircase, and dedicate those resources to Vecna. So DMs....you have your work cut out for ya.

[Francisco Becerra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good skeleton, a very nice Bandai/Games Workshop toy to cut the pieces, sand, paint, and assemble. To make this adventure work a good DM needs to follow the crumbs inside it, look for lore in other books in other editions and flesh out events and characters. The dungeons are uneven: some are the worst examples of railroading, other are very good sandboxes. The motivations and tales of some NPCs are illogical, and the text in the boxes are mostly fine examples of lazy writing. Wish is to Disney's 100 year celebration, as this thing is to 50 to D&D. Could have been better? By a lot. Is this garbage? No, But it needs A LOT of work to be properly fleshed out.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a rarity in official D&D fifth edition adventures, Eve of Ruin is an adventure for high level characters, taking your party from levels 10 to 20. Level 20 characters are nearly gods, which is a good thing as you have to fight Vecna who is trying to become a god himself.

As a celebration of the 50 years of D&D this book is also a tour of the multiverse in which D&D exists, with the McGuffin of the Rod of Seven Parts which the party needs to reconstruct to stop Vecna, you get to travel to seven different universes or planes of existence to retrieve the pieces.

In terms of story this is an adventure that works best with a group of players that are quite deeply into D&D's history, if the names Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Mordenkeinen, Tasha or Kas mean nothing to your players, much of the fun and love put behind the adventure will be kind of lost... although this might be a good opportunity for a DM to put on their historian's hat and bore the players to death with minutiae about the last 50 years of publication history of the game. Therefore, your mileage may vary, but I'm just the right kind of nerd for this.

[Jeff Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly epic multiverse-spanning adventure. Many of my favorite settings and worlds from WotC, with some iconic characters. Seems fitted to high-level characters though each chapter feels only somewhat loosely tied together. I'd maybe run it as an end to a Planescape or Spelljammer campaign, though it seems hard to have a committed crew of players to do something like that. I think I've preferred the collections of shorter adventures in Candlekeep, Golden Citadel and Radient Citadel.

[Kurt Vosper · Rating 5 out of 5]

To those of us that started our D&D playing in the World of Greyhawk, Vecna has always been one of the big villains of the game. This adventure book takes a group of players through an adventure to stop Vecna's plans to take over and remake the Universe. Great read and I would imagine a great adventure to play.

[Logan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Vecna is Thanos now, and you must stop him from assembling the Infinity Gauntlet. I don’t know what’s going on with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, but they fumbled this one hard. If you’re playing 5e and using adventures written by the Wizards team, I’d stick with ones with a proven track record like Curse of Strahd or Rime of the Frost Maiden.

[Alexa Benhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for a fun ride through the multiverse. It isn’t a 5e adventure unless I’m looking up fan made additions to fill in the gaps…still, was an enjoyable read and a fun base for an adventure!

[Philip Najar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let’s play!!!

[Adam Graves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Muchas ideas buenísimas, pero ejecutadas de forma un poco pobre. Al DM le toca trabajarlas bien si quiere cumplir la promesa que esta campaña intentó hacer.

[Ramón · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un tanto decepcionante.

[Xenofon Spanoudis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everyone will say a "YES" for a travel to the multiverse. PCs will travel to each plane (Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Spelljammer, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk, meet and encounter heroes and villains for each one of those planes.
As a DM, you can add a lot of things to each plane that the heroes will visit (if you have access to the 5th ed. books or even better to the old editions of the books).
The text that you read to players is the only "down", each one is 1-2max sentences. An experienced DM can easily fix that and improvise on the spot.
For conclusion, I believe Even of Ruin is the best adventure that 5th ed. can offer. Players have the opportunity to play characters above lvl 10+, offers them access to a list of countless spells and abilities that they can use.