Oh, hey, Vecna. I find it strange how the arch-lich looms so large in the history of D&D. His artifacts — hand, eye — first appeared in Eldritch Wizardry, the creation of Brian Blume. His first real appearance in the game was in this, WGA4: Vecna Lives (1990). It’s interesting.

It is very much in the mode of ’90s, focusing on the story unfurled through a series of interconnected, predetermined Events. There’s some dungeoning and city exploration, but the scenario is far more focused on investigation and explosive narrative happenings. It is not connected to the Falcon modules, though it builds on their use of the City of Greyhawk. Nor does it meaningfully connect to the imminent shake-up of the setting’s status quo that plays out in Wars andFrom the Ashes (though if the players fail to defeat the lich, the note on the resulting horrors of Vecna’s rule do seem to anticipate what actually happens to the world after Iuz triumphs).

I’m not sure in sum the adventure is worth the squeeze, though there are interesting bits. For starters, players take the roles of high level pregens: members of the sorcerous Circle of Eight and their associates. Vecna’s key henchmen are pretty fantastically weird — a humanoid with an eye for a head, and another with a hand-head. That it’s kind of…obvious and cartoonish, maybe, but then Ken Frank’s illustrations really sell the concept for me. They’re great and horrible and I would totally use them elsewhere. Third, I really like this Greyhawk that is full of standing stones and dangerous myths. Gygax tends to get all the credit for making Greyhawk an interesting place, but I don’t think it actually becomes interesting until around now, and I think it is ironic that Zeb Cook, who many at the time viewed as a great Gygax betrayer, was instrumental in this. Oh, and Easley’s cover is pretty great, too.

Vecna, defeated, at least in “canon,” winds up it Ravenloft for a while, and gets a big adventure at the end of that line’s lifespan, Vecna Reborn, but I’ve never read it. Nor have I read Die, Vecna, Die!, which ushered in the transition from 2E to 3E, much the same way as Eve of Ruin did for 5E (I guess that parallel depends on whether you think D&D Forever or whatever they are calling it is a new edition or not).

I don’t really understand where this idea that Vecna is one of the great D&D villains came from, though. He achieves far less than Iuz and even Acererak seems more accomplished. He keeps popping up in sourcebooks across 3E and 4E, but he only really amounts to anything in a Critical Role storyline (is that canon?) and as the source of a nickname for a villain in Stranger Things? I dunno, gimme Strahd any day.