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...

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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​

 

[Marandahir]

FYI, the Deep Ethereal is a BIG part of my homebrew setting, so I'm really looking forward to getting official lore on it and what they imagine a city afloat in that ghostly misty plane might be like.

 

[Parmandur]

Where's the link to that, I can't seem to find it? Have they mentioned what the other gazeteer is?

On the author's Twitter, he mentions that his worl is part of the Epilogue, "Beyond the Radiant Citadel" the other author is an open question (a couple seem not to have social media presences).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Part of my knee-jerk reaction against this is that I don't like comedy or whimsy put in my sci-fi/fantasy. Growing up when I did, it was hard enough for my hobby and interests to be taken seriously.

Can people please stop pretending that comedy and whimsy in fantasy are new things? Or that they are bad for the genre?

Tolkien certainly didn't think that having comedy and whimsy in fantasy was a bad thing. Tom Bombadil proves this. Gygax and other early creators of D&D certainly didn't think that comedy or whimsy in the game were bad things. Gygax created Castle Greyhawk, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, the Beholder, the Gelatinous Cube, Displacer Beasts, and Owlbears. The Dragonlance books had Kender, Tinker Gnomes, and Fizban. Spelljammer and Planescape were both incredibly comedic and whimsy settings. Even Ravenloft and Dark Sun had their share of wacky creatures, Domains of Dread, and takes on standard D&D races (cannibal Halflings, psychic antfolk, and assassin-bards, anyone?).

I could go on and on. Alice in Wonderland, the Chronicles of Narnia, the Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, tons of fairy tales and mythologies, the Princess Bride, and so on, and so on.

Comedy and whimsy in fantasy have been a part of it for as long as it has existed in the mainstream (thank you, Tolkien), it's absolutely not a bad thing that it's a part of the hobby, and the fact that you grew up being ridiculed for liking fantasy does not justify you ridiculing a D&D book for having more comedic/whimsical aspects of it (especially because we still know almost nothing about what it's actually like).

 

[Parmandur]

Can people please stop pretending that comedy and whimsy in fantasy are new things? Or that they are bad for the genre?

Tolkien certainly didn't think that comedy and whimsy in fantasy was a bad thing. Tom Bombadil proves this. Gygax and other early creators of D&D certainly didn't think that comedy or whimsy in the game were bad things. Gygax created Castle Greyhawk, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, the Beholder, the Gelatinous Cube, Displacer Beasts, and Owlbears. The Dragonlance books had Kender, Tinker Gnomes, and Fizban. Spelljammer and Planescape were both incredibly comedic and whimsy settings. Even Ravenloft has its share of wacky creatures and Domains of Dread.

Comedy and whimsy in fantasy have been a part of it for as long as it has existed in the mainstream (thank you, Tolkien), it's absolutely not a bad thing that it's a part of the hobby, and the fact that you grew up being ridiculed for liking fantasy does not justify ridiculing a D&D book for having more comedic/whimsical aspects of it.

Throw in Lewis' Narnia or especially T. H. White's Camelot...talk about whimsy! Appendix N material is full of that.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't think that is a fair characterization of anything he has written. Perhaps you have made some assumptions?

Read these posts (#1 and #2). It is absolutely a fair reading of their posts.

(i.e. "Only thing has been said is that all are POC. I'd prefer to buy products written by talented writers." - this heavily implies that they think that the book will be of poor quality due to the fact that its writers are all BIPOC.)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

FYI, the Deep Ethereal is a BIG part of my homebrew setting, so I'm really looking forward to getting official lore on it and what they imagine a city afloat in that ghostly misty plane might be like.

Same. In my world, the Deep Ethereal is really important to how the afterlife works (an entity that is the combined vestiges of hundreds of dead gods lives in the Deep Ethereal and acts as the setting's psychopomp). There's never been a ton of information about the Deep Ethereal and creatures that live there, so I'm always happy to have more.

 

[Maxperson]

Disappointing. Yet another meh publication from WoC. It feels this product lacks material depth.

For me the issue is that these sound like they will be too cultural and won't fit into my campaign world because of that. I'll have to see how inspired by the various cultures these are before I will buy it.

 

[SkidAce]

Wesley Schneider said in the YouTube interview that D&D has literally never had a location actually in the Deep Ethereal before, more of a pure DM blank space. Genuinely new.

That's my only gripe, they are intruding on my space.

Might be able to integrate it, might not, still I like the idea and probably will purchase.

 

[Parmandur]

@Henadic Theologian it seems the structure is:

- introduction with Radiant Citadel Gazeeter

- 13 Adventure chapters, each with a Gazeeter, arranged by Level

- An epilogue titles "Beyond the Radiant Citadel with further campaign ideas and seeds, including two whole mini-Gazatters.

Worth noting thst Vandlekeep did not have q Monster Appendox just put Star blocks in the middle of the module, might repeat here.

 

[Malmuria]

As I said in the other thread, the "Radient Citadel" thing strikes me as just a framing device to superficially "connect" the adventures together, similar to the use of the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep library. They seemed to have wanted one outside of the FR for more versatility. It's relevant that it's in the Ethereal plane, in that the adventures are supposed to take place in the prime material plane somewhere.

In terms of the Great Wheel, here is what Monte Cook had to say about it with regards to his time on the Planescape team:

Monte: I felt very limited by the traditional D&D alignments and their corresponding planes. I was much more interested in the weird new places we could go and kind of bored with whatever was going on on Mount Olympus or some other more traditional realms. I had dreams of expanding the cosmology beyond the Great Wheel, which I liked for its elegance but didn’t like for its boundaries. I have memories of pushing for the introduction of an entirely new plane that’s just been discovered. (Ironically, the place where that actually happened was in Bruce Cordell’s Gates of Firestorm Peak where he added the Far Realm without any reference to Planescape or the Great Wheel at all, mostly because he was a brand new designer at the time and literally didn’t know any better. And the Far Realm became a big deal over the years—because of course it did, it was really cool and new.)

I bolded the "brand new designer" comment because it goes to show that sometimes new voices, even those that "literally didn't know any better," can inject a lot of new creativity to the game. Similarly, Colin McCombs notes that he was somewhat randomly hired straight out of college and yet turned out to be incredibly productive in the PS line.

Planescape: an interview with Monte Cook, Ray Vallese, and Colin McComb

I just found this fantastic interviews with some of the main creators of Planescape https://www.expositionbreak.com/a-walk-through-the-planes-an-interview-with-monte-cook-ray-vallese-and-colin-mccomb/ The whole blog post is worth checking out, but some interesting tidbits: Monte: I think a...

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