Wizards of the Coast is a number of months away from some huge adjustments to the Dungeons & Dragons Participant Handbook, however earlier than that occurs, the group is releasing a marketing campaign aimed toward giving veteran gamers a singular and thrilling problem. The place many D&D books launched within the final two years have gone out of their method to verify anybody can simply soar in and begin enjoying, Vecna: Eve of Spoil is clearly constructed for gamers and DMs with a good bit of expertise underneath their collective belts. And after my first full playthrough, I really hope extra campaigns like this are on the best way.
The announcement for Vecna: Eve of Spoil made it clear it is a huge marketing campaign with huge fights and larger personalities. Along with preventing Vecna himself, simply probably the most harmful ever villains in D&D, this marketing campaign promised to take gamers throughout the multiverse in an effort to put it aside. Essential and historic D&D places like Sigil, Krynn, Loss of life Home and even an enormous floating head in deep area present up on this marketing campaign. There are additionally stat blocks for interacting with epic characters like Tasha and Strahd. It is rather a lot; this paragraph solely scratches the floor. That is why I heard the identical factor from virtually each participant I described this marketing campaign to earlier than enjoying: “That ebook should be large.”
In case you have the chance to seize the alternate cowl model of this marketing campaign ebook, you need to completely achieve this.Â
The reality is, Vecna: Eve of Spoil is simply 25 pages longer than the typical marketing campaign Wizards of the Coast has launched within the final two years. And whereas it is technically doable to play by this marketing campaign with out utilizing books from the entire totally different locations your get together travels to, doing so could be a big disservice to these items of D&D historical past. Vecna: Eve or Spoil is an enormous fetch quest at its core, with every space containing a chunk of the software you want to beat Vecna. So the sport may be performed as a collection of smash-and-grabs the place your get together runs in and fights and strikes on to the following a part of the puzzle, however what a disgrace that may be. You possibly can, and completely ought to, increase on each chapter on this ebook utilizing different books.Â
The one place within the marketing campaign that feels the least fleshed out is, in my view, probably the most necessary. Wizards of the Coast made a variety of followers pleased with the restoration of Dragonlance to fashionable gameplay guidelines. Not like many different D&D worlds, the Dragonlance world of Krynn has a wildly totally different algorithm which govern it. Krynn is its personal planet in its personal time and there are vital variations in how most issues work on this world. It is robust to cram all of that in to a bit of the marketing campaign you are more than likely to solely expertise for 3 to 4 hours, so this ebook solely skims the floor. You possibly can simply complement this with ideas from Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, however if you’re accustomed to solely needing the marketing campaign ebook to run a marketing campaign it is seemingly the Krynn a part of the story will really feel fairly slim.
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The best power to Vecna: Eve of Spoil is how little the ebook tries to carry your hand by a lot of something. Gone are the useful little blocks with issues like “it is a good place to your get together to relaxation” such as you would discover in Phandelver and Beneath: The Shattered Obelisk. There is a basic expectation that each DM and participant have sufficient expertise to take a number of strains of textual content and run with it, which is nice. In every part you will discover huge fights with some actually tough monsters, full with a couple of well-written twist to make sure your gamers are paying consideration. Gamers will develop from stage 10 to stage 20 on this marketing campaign, and the fights scale to match nicely, proper as much as the massive showdown on the finish.
When you’re a DM and also you go into Vecna: Eve of Spoil ready to do some extra prep work every session than you have wanted to do with different marketing campaign books in latest reminiscence, that is an unimaginable marketing campaign to play. And for my part, D&D (and all TTRPGs) want marketing campaign books like this, designed for extra skilled gamers who’re a little bit extra excited a few collection of more and more difficult fights than they’re an emotional story arc with a concentrate on character growth. That steadiness is difficult to strike in one of the best of circumstances, however in my view this marketing campaign will get nearer to that aim than the rest I’ve performed within the final couple of years. I would fortunately advocate this to of us who love struggle.