Vecna: Eve of Ruin for my Group

 I now have the module, Vecna: Eve of Ruin, and have been skimming through it.  I want to share some of what I have learned as essentially a pre-session 0 info dump to set expectations and hope that it will appeal to all of us.

Overview

The module is 11 chapters, most of them set in different worlds drawn from the history of D&D.  A bunch of NPCs from D&D past adventures (not necessarily our adventures) are included which strikes me as an appropriate choice for a 50th anniversary adventure.

The game starts at nominally 10th level.  Each chapter grants a level at a milestone which takes the adventure to level 20!  That is pretty much amazing for a module.  I only know of one other module that reaches level 20 (Dungeon of the Mad Mage) which offered a simple(ish), though very lengthy dungeon crawl.  

Vecna is the advertised big bad who must be stopped.  That's a classic choice. 

Railroad Style

RAW the campaign relies heavily on a railroad style.  The players are largely expected to perform the required tasks in order (and successfully) to play through the material.  While content skips are possible, the DM would need to add alternative content or simple hand-wave level ups to provide the PCs with the appropriate abilities to take on the Big Bad. 

While railroading is controversial and I think something to minimize when possible, it does strike me as necessary for a module that spans 10 levels of high level play and dips into so many different worlds and is intended to be completed in finite time.  Without rails, I have a hard time imagining how the plot end point(s) could be reasonably reached.  

Map Style

I've seen a number of people complain about the simple style of the provided maps.  They are essentially line drawings in two colors.  I've gotten used to seeing beautiful (or at least colorful) maps in published adventures, heck I've made more than a few of the fancy maps myself.  I felt a touch of disappointment when I saw the plain maps.  Those disappointing maps totally remind me of maps I used to use in published modules, such as I6 Ravenloft, back in the early days of D&D.  

People are already busily crafting fancy maps that can be used in place of the pencil drawn maps offered in the module.  I'm sure those will help many enjoy the module and make it fit better in VTT environments where the map is crucial. This is a good thing. 

For me I like the old time style in a 50th anniversary campaign. 

VTT Suitability

I think the campaign is poorly suited to a VTT implementation, at least as provided in the module.  The boring maps being one issue and the expansive settings that might be dipped into another.  If this thing is played old-school, maybe even with a player acting as a mapper, I feel that I as DM can more easily let the game dip into unintended areas that are created on the spot.  Encounters can be resolved on the table top with miniatures and physical dice -- old school style.  I think this is a recipe for fun and for my group a huge change from the heavily automated online style of our last campaign.

Fast Leveling

One chapter per level, less than 19 pages of material per level, is a fast pace for a module. This might be 2 to 3 sessions per chapter/level for my group.  That's not a lot of time for players to use shiny new toys before they acquire the next batch of shinies. That could be disappointing, not allowing those abilities to be used more than a very few times.  

Still, if a chapter take about 2.5 sessions on average, the campaign will run 28 sessions.  Since my group typically plays ever other week, we'll need a year to play through this.  That would be fast for us. We have taken closer to three years to plow through Curse of Strahd (with quite a few content additions).

Overall

I think this module looks like a great fit for my group, even though it missed my expectations to some degree. The opportunity to dip into so many classic sessions and progress a group from 10 to 20 in perhaps a year of game play.  Sign me up!