I’ve had a chance to read through some of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, the new campaign adventure from Wizards of the Coast that takes characters from levels 10 through to level 20.

My initial impressions are cautiously positive. I’m going to refrain from spoilers here for the most part, except for a few things that I believe are generally known. If you want to be entirely unspoilt, here’s your chance to stop reading!

I intend to start DMing this adventure next Monday.

Structurally, this is a linear adventure. For the most part, each chapter takes you to a new plane where you need to get the next thing for your quest. This allows the party to visit many of the most popular settings for this edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It does not, however, include any of the Magic: the Gathering settings.

The success at evoking each of these settings vary. It will surprise few that I consider their treatment of Dragonlance to be absolute garbage. Let’s make it all about something that Dragonlance has never been known for, and sideline about everything Dragonlance is known for. This part of the adventure isn’t that bad, but it’s in the wrong fucking setting.

However, despite all my misgivings about where they were setting the Ravenloft component, they came up with an absolutely brilliant idea for it. No idea how it will run, but it looks promising and I look forward to seeing my players’ reactions.

Eberron also seems to be handled well.

The overall storyline works for me. It is fraught with failure points, however. The most impressive failure point comes with the adventure’s solution being “Just level the characters up to level 18 (from 11) and continue from a later part of the adventure.” Otherwise being “skip most of the adventure”. I think there are other ways around this situation, so I’ll do something different if the worst case occurs, but that so-called solution is hilariously bad.

Of note, the much-hyped Obelisks do not even rate a mention in this adventure. Guess The Shattered Obelisk, that underwhelming experience, was their high point. What a disappointment!

As I said, these are my first impressions of a partial readthrough of the adventure. I’ve read the summary, the first couple of chapters, and then bounced around to particular stuff that interests me. I’m cautiously optimistic that it will play well, though I’ll probably have to be on my toes as a DM! Thankfully, I have agreeable players who are unlikely to sabotage the experience!