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D&D 5E The Next D&D Book is JOURNEYS THROUGH THE RADIANT CITADEL

We peered, poked, squinted, flipped, and enhanced the teaser image that WotC put out last week, and it turns out we got it right -- the next book is, indeed, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. Wraparound cover art by Evyn Fong Through the mists of the Ethereal Plane shines the Radiant Citadel. Travelers from across the multiverse flock to this mysterious bastion to share their...

We peered, poked, squinted, flipped, and enhanced the teaser image that WotC put out last week, and it turns out we got it right -- the next book is, indeed, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

journey_citadel.jpg

Wraparound cover art by Evyn Fong

Through the mists of the Ethereal Plane shines the Radiant Citadel. Travelers from across the multiverse flock to this mysterious bastion to share their traditions, stories, and calls for heroes. A crossroads of wonders and adventures, the Radiant Citadel is the first step on the path to legend. Where will your journeys take you?

Journeys through the Radiant Citadel is a collection of thirteen short, stand-alone D&D adventures featuring challenges for character levels 1–14. Each adventure has ties to the Radiant Citadel, a magical city with connections to lands rich with excitement and danger, and each can be run by itself or as part of an ongoing campaign. Explore this rich and varied collection of adventures in magical lands.
  • Thirteen new stand-alone adventures spanning levels 1 to 14, each with its own set of maps
  • Introduces the Radiant Citadel, a new location on the Ethereal Plane that connects adventurers to richly detailed and distinct corners of the D&D multiverse
  • Each adventure can be set in any existing D&D campaign setting or on worlds of your own design
  • Introduces eleven new D&D monsters
  • There’s a story for every adventuring party, from whimsical and light to dark and foreboding and everything in between


Slated for June 21st (update - I just got a press release which says it's June 21st "in North American stores"; I'm not sure what that means for the rest of us!), it's a 224-page adventure anthology featuring a floating city called the Radiant Citadel. The book is written entirely by people of colour, including Ajit George, who was the first person of Indian heritage to write Indian-inspired material for D&D (in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). Around 50 POC writers were involved in total in various ways.

The Radiant Citadel is on the ethereal plane and is carved from the giant fossil of an unknown monster. A massive gemstone called the Royal Diamond sits at the core, surrounded by a bunch of smaller Concord Jewels, which are gateways to the Citadel's founding civilizations. DMs can link any world to the citadel by placing a Concord Jewel there.

The Citadel, unlike many D&D locations, is more of a sanctuary than a place of danger. The book's alternate cover features a Dawn Incarnate, a creature which is the embodiment of stories and cultures.


The adventures are as follows:
  • Salted Legacy
  • Written In Blood
  • The Fiend of Hollow Mine
  • Wages of Vice
  • Sins of Our Elders
  • Gold for Fools and Princes
  • Trail of Destruction
  • In the Mists of Manivarsha
  • Between Tangled Roots
  • Shadow of the Sun
  • The Nightsea’s Succor
  • Buried Dynasty
  • Orchids of the Invisible Mountain
UPDATE -- the press release contains a list of some of the contributors: "Justice Ramin Arman, Dominique Dickey, Ajit A. George, Basheer Ghouse, Alastor Guzman, D. Fox Harrell, T.K. Johnson, Felice Tzehuei Kuan, Surena Marie, Mimi Mondal, Mario Ortegón, Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Pam Punzalan, Erin Roberts, Terry H. Romero, Stephanie Yoon, and many more."

citadel_cover.jpg

Regular cover by Even Fong

citadel_alt.jpg

Alternate Cover by Sija Hong
 

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Li Shenron

Legend
Looks very inspiring! Better to have some novelty planar lore than an underwhelming update to Planescape which is already perfect.

Also, I think it's a good idea to overall alternate releases of big adventures spanning ~10 levels with collections of shorter adventures like this one.
 

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Faolyn

(she/her)
That is certainly one way of looking at it, and some of the text can be interpreted that way. My issue is that this basically makes PC action meaningless, since neither the enemies nor their victims are real. Also, it completely invalidates the idea of PCs being native to the Demiplane, as exemplified by Domains of Dread in 2e and the entire 3e line. I just hate everything about that idea.
Literally every domain in VGR has a section on play a character who is native to the domain.

And what's real? Even if (almost) every individual in the setting is a creation of the Mists, they still think and feel. That's real enough for me, at any rate.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
Literally every domain in VGR has a section on play a character who is native to the domain.

And what's real? Even if (almost) every individual in the setting is a creation of the Mists, they still think and feel. That's real enough for me, at any rate.
I think the Gazeteer material from Ravenloft is similar to what we can expect here, structurally.
 

In fairness to @Paul Farquhar's point - at least in my memory of Planescape - the central tension of the setting was less alignment, and more "what does it mean to be an alive person who lives in the afterlife?"
Yep, plus it's interesting that Planescape is a setting where the geography is literally shaped by alignment, yet the setting products actually de-emphasize alignment by showing how morality is really a lot more complicated and open to multiple interpretations than that.

And on the practical side they didn't want to completely throw out Gygax's "Outer Planes = Alignments" model that was firm D&D canon but they didn't want anything that simplistic as the guiding theme of the setting. So, on the one hand, alignment is a defining feature of the setting while also showing how alignment is not a satisfactory defining feature of a setting on it's own.
 

Jer

Legend
Supporter
But we've seen boxed sets before. These are new formats we haven't seen.
I'm still trying to figure out what that could possibly mean in a print product.

Adventures in picture book format? A setting book in the form of a graphic novel? A book with all of the art printed in 3d so we need special glasses to view it? The mind boggles...
 

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