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​

 

[pemerton]

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.

How can a FRPG product by "too cultural"?

I mean, even if we accept the (contentious) idea that urban industrial societies don't have cultures in the way that "pre-modern" ones do, FRPGs are set in imaginary pre-modern societies!

 

[pemerton]

I gotta admit. Way back someone said that all the kvetching was encouraging them to buy the book. I think I’d second that thought. Given the arguments I’ve seen here for why this is a bad book makes me more likely to buy it.

I've got no intention of buying the book, but some of the comments in this thread seem a bit off . . .

 

[humble minion]

How can a FRPG product by "too cultural"?

My interpretation of that was 'too closely tied to the specific culture of the place in which they're set to be easily transferrable into a different setting', which is probably a legitimate query.

 

[pemerton]

My interpretation of that was 'too closely tied to the specific culture of the place in which they're set to be easily transferrable into a different setting', which is probably a legitimate query.

Unlike every other D&D scenario with stone castles, European clothing styles in its illustrations, knights and barons, etc, etc, etc?

 

[humble minion]

Unlike every other D&D scenario with stone castles, European clothing styles in its illustrations, knights and barons, etc, etc, etc?

There's an adventure in an angel-ruled city, I believe. If you don't have one of those in your campaign setting, it will be less than useful. There's one adventure which is, to quote the author 'questions that arise from a nation finding its feet after liberating itself and becoming an independent nation'. Same.

This is a book, as far as i know, in which PoC writers have specifically tried to incorporate aspects of their ancestral cultures into the material they've put forward. The adventures seem to be intended to be ABOUT culture, or with culture as a central theme. And I am entirely 100% on side with that. But it does inevitably makes them less easily transportable to other settings, because the cultural assumptions may not fit. And the reverse is also true. Many D&D adventures are easily transportable from Greyhawk to FR to wherever simply because they share a lot of the same old bog-standard quasi-European setting assumptions. A Forgotten Realms adventure will probably be less likely to translate directly to the Mughal or Mesoamerican-inspired settings in this book too, for the same reason..

It's a feature, not a bug. But it does make the book perhaps less functionally useful to someone whose group plays in an old D&D world or homebrew which lacks places where its setting assumptions don't have a place to be.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There's an adventure in an angel-ruled city, I believe. If you don't have one of those in your campaign setting, it will be less than useful.

Which is reached by planer travel via the Radiant Citadel. None of these adventures are set in "your campaign setting". They are set on other worlds.

 

[humble minion]

Which is reached by planer travel via the Radiant Citadel. None of these adventures are set in "your campaign setting". They are set on other worlds.

... but I'm talking about to what degree the individual adventures are adaptable to other campaign worlds, or usable to drop into homebrew campaigns that are NOT using the Radiant Citadel.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

... but I'm talking about to what degree the individual adventures are adaptable to other campaign worlds, or usable to drop into homebrew campaigns that are NOT using the Radiant Citadel.

How good is a spanner for knocking in a nail?

You can't complain about a product for not being good for doing something it was never designed to do.

If you want to use these adventures, you drop a portal to the Radiant Citadel into your home campaign. It even has "blank" portals specifically for that purpose.

 

[humble minion]

How good is a spanner for knocking in a nail?

You can't complain about a product for not being good for doing something it was never designed to do.

And as i said, I'm not complaining about it. I specifically said that the diverse and (for D&D) unconventional settings are a feature, not a bug. Personally they make me MORE likely to buy the book compared to a similar adventure compilation like Candlekeep. But it may make the book less useful to some people.

 

[Hussar]

I've not read the 30 odd pages following this post as it pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.

I'm all for hope and optimism in games and fiction, heck knows we need it right now, however hope and optimism does not equate to cutesy and fluffy. LoTR is one of the most uplifting stories written and is not covered in rainbows and cutesy creatures.

This book could be awesome, I'll reserve judgement once a few reviews are in and I've had chance to peruse it myself, however the initial asthetic for me falls too far into the cutesy spectrum and not something that initially appeals to me

LotR is uplifting? Really? Completely depressing ending where magic dies, elves leave, The Shire is in ruins and Frodo, our Ringbearer, is so destroyed by the ordeal that he can't ever go home again.

Your definition of uplifting is different from mine.