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 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.

D&D 5E - Here's Radiant Citadel's press release

Dropped in my inbox a short while ago, if you want the official announcement. It's the same info as in the news article on the front page. Dungeons & Dragons Invites You to Explore the Radiant Citadel Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is a new collection of short adventures set in wondrous...

www.enworld.org

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."

Regular cover by Even Fong

Alternate Cover by Sija Hong​

 

[BookTenTiger]

That line of reasoning will quickly become dangerous if you apply it to medieval European fantasy.

I am, vehemently, against the idea that creatives can or should be told what they can or can't do/write about/etc. For the record. If people want to make offensive things, by all means let them, and the 'market place of ideas' can sort out the rest.

Creatives have always been told what to do and what not to do. It's called an audience. It's called patronage. It's called publishing.

Literally the only difference with this product is that it's celebrating and amplifying creatives who are People of Color.

Can you clarify at all what your comments have to do with Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel?

 

[Umbran]

I think this is a real missed opportunity. They could easily have used this to showcase lots of classic and new settings. The book would have been a lot more interesting if each adventure was written by an author from a different country who could have worked some of the local folklore into their adventure rather than a non-white mandate

Mod Note:
To say, "Well, this is worse because they chose people of color, instead of the people I'd have chosen," is... not a good look. It looks like you are passing judgement on the content, sight unseen, based on the color of the skin of the creators. If that wasn't your intent, you probably ought to rethink how this came out. If that was your intent - please leave EN World, and don't come back.

There are many ways to be diverse. No one product can be all of them at one time. So, we should celebrate it when it happens, in whatever form it takes for a given product.

 

[Jer]

My post was going off topic so let me replace it with - anything that increases the diversity of people in the D&D product process is in my mind a great thing. Everyone brings different cultural influences to the table and that potentially leads to adventures and settings that are actually new and approaches to the game that might also be new.

Seeing some truly new approaches to fantasy settings in D&D is fairly exciting to me. I can't wait to see what they come up with.

 

[Waller]

That line of reasoning will quickly become dangerous if you apply it to medieval European fantasy.

Your concept of danger is very different to mine! Also, D&D isn't medieval European fantasy. Tolkien is, but D&D is not.

I am, vehemently, against the idea that creatives can or should be told what they can or can't do/write about/etc.

How do you commission work without telling somebody what to write about?

 

[Umbran]

There is Dark Sun nostalgia to be juiced for money!

This thread is not about Dark Sun. Please take Dark Sun to its own discussion. Thanks.

 

[ersatzphil]

Assuming that this is the product that contains what Winninger described a nod to an already published 5e setting, which world do people think we're going back to? Ajit George did already contribute to Ravenloft, but that seems unlikely to me.

 

[MichaelSomething]

For those of you looking a darker and gritter tone for your TTRPGs, there is a Dark Souls TTRPG coming out and I bet they would love to have you as a customer!

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

Assuming that this is the product that contains what Winninger described a nod to an already published 5e setting, which world do people think we're going back to? Ajit George did already contribute to Ravenloft, but that seems unlikely to me.

If I recall, the "revisited setting" is scheduled for 2024, alongside the 5.5e core rulebook update. My guess is that it's a proper Forgotten Realms setting book.

More likely, this is the "classic setting cameo" that we were told to expect for this year - it may not be Planescape proper, but it is definitely Planescape adjacent.

 

[OblivionDrive]

Maybe the "never before seen format" will be a paper booklet with punch-out's to assemble your own Spelljammer ships. Something like this:

View attachment 153967

View attachment 153969

One can dream!

I’m not gonna lie, I did wonder it the “new format” for SJ was gonna have some kind of minis element to it. Maybe somehow tying in to the new skirmish minis game they just announced, or at least cross compatible with it?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

"The lore of the titular city itself is key to the book’s mechanical function. The Citadel is a previously-abandoned city which has been resurrected by fifteen separate cultures. The original founders of the Citadel came from 27 cultures, 12 of which were “lost,” or have been forgotten. When any culture finds its way into the city, they get a concord jewel set in the orbit around the Citadel, which serves as a portal to that culture’s roots in the material plane. It’s through these portals that each of the adventures takes place."

So the city has 27 founding cultures, not 15, and 12 of them have been lost. It originally sounded like there were 15 civilizations, with 12 of the 15 lost, but it's actually 27 civilizations, with 12 lost LEAVING 15 civilizations, 13 of which are represented by the adventures, 2 represented by some kind of Gazeteers instead, and that leaves the 15th which if I had to guess would a pre-existing setting which most likely would be either Ajit's Ravenloft settings OR one of the Civilizations of the Forgotten Realms such Turmish or Chult.

Perhaps they decided they needed one strong tie to a pre-existing setting, not just possible ancient forgotten links, but a current influencial connection.