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​

 

[Mort]

As an eternal fan of grimdark, I'm curious at the multiple mentions of it.

Nothing D&D in recent memory, is remotely grimdark. Why is that term seemingly living rent free in people's minds?

As to the contrasting with 'hopepunk'...sure. I'd say it's more a contrast with cyberpunk in that case, but when was the last cyberpunk D&D work?

I haven't seen it in D&D but it's starting to creep into EVERYTHING (even Star Trek, where I believe it's wholly misplaced) and I really don't want it getting into D&D!

 

[darjr]

People really just need to come to the enlightened point that them not changing Planescape (and they would) is literally the best scenario.

Changing Planescape at all would be “THE END” just like it was when they introduced it!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Whats your alternative? What could be more intuitive than just not participating or interacting with content you don't like?

Look, I'm not wasting my time "debating" racists in the "marketplace of ideas." It aint my job to convince people.

Everyone's got the right to free speech. Someone wants to say racist doo-doo, fine. But free speech also gives me the right to call them ****heads too, and that doesn't invalidate their free speech. Shaming, embarrassing, and yes, de-platforming are also rights that individuals and businesses are well entitled to use to police their own social communities, and I fully intend to use them to call out pricks when I see them.

 

[Scribe]

I haven't seen it in D&D but it's starting to creep into EVERYTHING (even Star Trek, where I believe it's wholly misplaced) and I really don't want it getting into D&D!

I think there's some ebb and flow in these things, but looking at everything recent from Wizards, and the market they certainly appear to be courting, you don't have to worry.

Just look at the art. Nothing really says grimdark in tone, no text I've read reinforces it.

I look too, because I am a self proclaimed worshiper at the altar of grim darkness.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I did not like Candlekeep Mysteries (though I went in expecting to like it), and I am surprised it's so well liked. I will note most reviews which are highly positive or highly negative speak a lot about theories and ideas which the book represents to them and very little about what they thought PLAYING or RUNNING the darn thing. Those few reviews I found which talk about actually playing in the adventure often talk about some of the issues I had, and a LOT of the reviews about running the adventure complain about many of the issues I have.

My opinion has zero to do with anything political or messaging or theories, nor do I have any issue with any authors. I think the authors did a good job, and I suspect more than one author is bugged by the editing job on what they turned in. I found much of it was edited poorly, and organized poorly by WOTC staff. It was all bit of a mess, and I think most of the issues are that it seems WOTC cut the page count on some level, or added more adventures than originally intended and cut everything to fit the page count they needed.

1. No index. Finding monsters and items was difficult.
2. Inconsistent adventure summaries.
3. Removing alignment was done poorly. It's not that removing alignment in itself is a bad idea - it's that removing it after the authors already turned it in with alignment made for a very poor choice lacking editing putting something else back in its place. With the lack of an index and inadequate cross-referencing, if your players happened to adventure into an area you as the DM had not prepped very recently, your ability to quickly discern things like "this creature is actually intended to be a good guy/ally, despite the physical description implying something else" was missing. Authors would have made sure that message had been better conveyed in the material they wrote had they known WOTC was going to remove that information from the adventure.
4. Huge swaths of details for individual adventures had obviously been removed. Numerous encounters simply didn't make as much sense or were less compelling, because background information had been edited out for that adventure which was important context for some encounters.
5. Lack of a theme made each adventure feel disconnected from the others.
6. Many adventures were simply not memorable (exacerbated from the lack of a theme, which meant you never reinforced or built on ideas).
7. There are not that many mysteries, in a book titled Mysteries.
8. Bad maps. Lacking details, shrunk down too much, and some seemed missing at times.
9. Almost all adventures are railroads. This, again, may be due to editing out other areas to explore and cutting each adventure to essentially a single path.

If Candlekeep is the model they're going to use for this new set of adventures, I probably won't like it unless they really improve their editing job and give the authors more room for their adventures. I will say I like what they've said so far about this, but then I liked what they said about Candlekeep before I saw the actual book as well.

I actually ran most of the adventures (stopped at the end of the Scrivener's Tale), so I can give my thoughts on running them.

1. Never thought an index was necessary here. Yes, most of the adventures are mysteries, so if you aren't well-prepped you can easily lose track of info. But the monsters and info was never to hard to find for me, as they are usually placed either at the end of the adventure, or in the exact place where the monster shows up (statblock next to the room's description that the monster is in).
2. True... but they're very different adventures, so this isn't really surprising.
3. Ugh who cares about alignment. Had no effect on my running the games, it's pretty obvious which NPCs/monsters are evil and what are not in the descriptions.
4. This is true, some adventures definitely suffer from cutting and it's pretty clear. I can pick out the ones where this is the case if necessary.
5. Also true, but this is kind of by design? The adventures are first intended to be dropped into already-running campaigns. I did run them all as a episodic-style campaign, and it's kind of the DM's (with player buy-in) of making that work... the players should all want to be living/working around Candlekeep for some reason. The book does provide enough info to do this, it just needs player buy-in.
6. Yup, some adventures are worse than others.
7. Also true, some aren't really mysteries. Don't really care much personally, but I guess the title is misleading.
8. Some of the maps are un-intuitive, but most of them I was able to use just fine. Overall, I would call the makes pretty good though.
9. I quibble on the definition of railroads (everyone seems to think it means something different). I'd say that some have linear pacing, others are more free-form. I can pick which ones played out more linearly and which did not if necessary.

Overall, Candlekeep turned out to be one of the most fun (and successful) campaigns I've ever run, so I'm excited about this book.

 

[Mythos Enthusiast]

Look, I'm not wasting my time "debating" racists in the "marketplace of ideas." It aint my job to convince people.

Everyone's got the right to free speech. Someone wants to say racist doo-doo, fine. But free speech also gives me the right to call them ****heads too, and that doesn't invalidate their free speech. Shaming, embarrassing, and yes, de-platforming are also rights that individuals and businesses are well entitled to use to police their own social communities, and I fully intend to use them to call out pricks when I see them.

So you agree entirely with the concept of the market place of ideas, then? Because that is 100% what you are describing.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

So you agree entirely with the concept of the market place of ideas, then? Because that is 100% what you are describing.

Then I guess I do. But normally, when people say "marketplace of ideas," they're complaining about being ridiculed or ostracised for saying bigoted things. See the New York Times' recent editorial that essentially called public shaming the same as government's restriction of free speech (which aren't the same, at all).

Opinion | America Has a Free Speech Problem

A new poll finds Americans very anxious about the state of free speech.

www.nytimes.com

My actual opinion on the subject, well-written by Salon; What the New York Times doesn't get about free speech and "cancel culture"

 

[Scribe]

See the New York Times' recent editorial that essentially called public shaming the same as government's restriction of free speech (which aren't the same, at all).

Its certainly not American Constitutional 'Free Speech' but there is an issue with how speech is being controlled in governments around the world.

But!

We all know thats out of bounds.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

For those who want to look at the art, Sage Advice has compiled it all here; Sneaky peek at the incredible ART of 'Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel' !

My favorite piece is this below. I assume this is China-inspired, but whatever it is really intrigues me about these new worlds!

 

[Malmuria]

I hate all this cute, silly art that wotc is putting on their covers. Check out this book I found. It's like they made it for kids. There's even a unicorn! What is this, lisa frank dnd??!1?