D&D 5E Ajit George Talks About Radiant Citadel's Creators

Project Lead Ajit George shared a post on social media about the development of and creators of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

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...

www.enworld.org

Hi all,
I'm so unbelievably excited and proud to tell you that I have conceived and co-led the first book written entirely by people of color in Dungeons & Dragons’ 49-year history: Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel!

In June of 2020, I pitched the idea to Jeremy Crawford and Wes Schneider at the D&D Studio for a book written by Black and brown writers. The idea was to create new places and lands based on our cultures, histories, myths, and lived experiences. To my surprise and joy, they agreed and asked me to co-lead it with Wes Schneider!
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is an anthology of 13 compelling adventures that introduces 16 new locations, along with characters and monsters. The first location, the titular Radiant Citadel, was created and written by myself. You have never seen anything like it in D&D before.

There is so much we've accomplished with this unbelievable book:

• I am the first-ever PoC Project Lead for a D&D book.
• This is the first D&D book conceived, created, and written entirely by PoCs: Sixteen writers in total.
• This is the first D&D book where the cover art and alt-cover art were both created by women of color: Evyn Fong and Sija Hong.
• The co-Art Director is a woman of color: Emi Tanji.
• The Marketing Lead is a woman of color: Sara Chan.
• Two of the rules developers are PoCs: Makenzie De Armas and Taymoor Rehman.
• One of the editors is a PoC: Jessica Ross.
• Three cultural consultants are women of color: Nivair H. Gabriel, Jaymee Goh, and Carmen Maria Marin.
• Almost two-thirds of the artists were PoCs and they created more than two-thirds of the art for the book.
• One of our narrative design consultants (and also my wife), is a woman of color: Whitney Strix Beltrán. She was with me from the very first day to the very last. I am eternally grateful for all she's done.
• Additionally, half of the writers are women and several writers come from the LGBTQIA+ community.

More than 50 Black and brown people came together to work on this book and support its creation. I am overwhelmed by the scope of our accomplishments.

The sixteen writers for the book are: Justice Ramin Arman, Dominique Dickey, Basheer Ghouse, Alastor Guzman, D. Fox Harrell, T.K. Johnson, Felice Tzehuei, Surena Marie, Monidipa Mondal, Mario Ortegón, Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Pam Punzalan, Erin Roberts, Terry Romero, Stephanie Yoon and myself.

I am also grateful to everyone in the D&D Studio who made this book possible including Ray Winninger, Jeremy Crawford, Chris Perkins, Steve Scott, Amanda Hamon, James Wyatt, and of course my partner through it all, Wes Schneider.

And to friends who helped with so many different ways, especially John Stavropoulos (who was the system and narrative design consultant) and Jess Ross (who was one of the editors). Both were there from the start in leadership meetings and helped with so many parts in the first several months.

Finally, I want to thank my talented and capable wife Whitney Beltrán. I juggled my full-time job and leading this project and she supported me every day. She was also my narrative design consultant and weighed in or saw everything I did. This book is brilliant in part because of her.

I genuinely believe Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is one of the finest books ever to bear the D&D logo. It is a layered book that hits upon complex and powerful themes. You can play it at the surface and have a lot of fun, or you can delve deeper with the questions it asks of you. Either way, it will offer hundreds of hours of incredible gameplay and new stories.

I can’t wait for it to be released on June 21st and to share it with the world!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

In the end "written by PoC" has 0 effect on the quality. One side automatically assumes it lowers quality because reasons, the other assumes it raises quality (and uses it for marketing).
In the end "written by PoC" is about as meaningful as "written by green-eyed people".

On the contrary, there is some belief that due to POC sometimes having to jump through more hoops to be successful than non-POC, they produce better qualities of work than your average creator. Essentially, they had to do more to get where they are than folks who didn't have to fight against institutions that (intentionally or not) benefit the historical status-quo.

I won't say this is universally true (because I don't think it is), but it's worth thinking about.

 

[Ixal]

The two main reasons that this book is being marketed as being written completely by BIPOC are:

1. This is the first official D&D book to ever do this in its almost 50-year history. This is a milestone worth noting and helps market the product to people of similar heritages that would like to see content more connected to their cultures and backgrounds.
2. This is one of the first official D&D products about other cultures written entirely by people that belong to/are descended from those cultures. It's like Oriental Adventures or Al-Qadim where the people writing it do not belong to and are not descended from the cultures they're writing about and being inspired by for their works.

#1 matters because BIPOC have historically been underrepresented from the TTRPG publishing industry, especially for major products like this. It not only helps market to people that might not have been interested in D&D before, but also helps show that Wizards of the Coast is making a change to how they handle topics like this to allow for both a more diverse audience to be able to connect with one of their products as well as give representation to the historically underrepresented groups of people in the industry.

#2 matters because one of the major rules of writing is "Write what you know" and someone that is descended from/a member of a certain culture will almost definitely know the content they're writing about better than an outside observer. A person with better connections to that culture from their own history is almost guaranteed to be able to be able to represent the culture more accurately and unoffensively than a pasty white guy like me would be able to.

It is not about "tokenism," or "filling a quota," it is about accurately and respectfully representing a more diverse array of cultures while actually doing the work this time to get people who actually know what they're writing about to make the book's content. Anyone complaining about the quality of the book (which hasn't even been released yet) because of this is either judging the book extremely harshly due to its cover or just dogwhistling their racism to try and avoid punishment by this site's moderation team.

Why do you think that because someone is not white that they have experience with a culture besides American?
As I said, the ones I looked up and could find information about all lived in the US since at least their college years and quite possibly were born there. We also can't assume that their parents came from a different culture either instead of also being born and raised in America. And even if they grew up in a different culture we don't know how much of that was transferred to their children.

I have seen the assumption that PoC = different/additional culture than American before in various cultural appropriation discussions but I do not think you can make that assumption.

 

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

The two main reasons that this book is being marketed as being written completely by BIPOC are:

1. This is the first official D&D book to ever do this in its almost 50-year history. This is a milestone worth noting and helps market the product to people of similar heritages that would like to see content more connected to their cultures and backgrounds.
2. This is one of the first official D&D products about other cultures written entirely by people that belong to/are descended from those cultures. It's like Oriental Adventures or Al-Qadim where the people writing it do not belong to and are not descended from the cultures they're writing about and being inspired by for their works.

#1 matters because BIPOC have historically been underrepresented from the TTRPG publishing industry, especially for major products like this. It not only helps market to people that might not have been interested in D&D before, but also helps show that Wizards of the Coast is making a change to how they handle topics like this to allow for both a more diverse audience to be able to connect with one of their products as well as give representation to the historically underrepresented groups of people in the industry.

#2 matters because one of the major rules of writing is "Write what you know" and someone that is descended from/a member of a certain culture will almost definitely know the content they're writing about better than an outside observer. A person with better connections to that culture from their own history is almost guaranteed to be able to be able to represent the culture more accurately and unoffensively than a pasty white guy like me would be able to.

An acceptable, even if a bit optimistic way of interpret facts.

It is not about "tokenism," or "filling a quota," it is about accurately and respectfully representing a more diverse array of cultures while actually doing the work this time to get people who actually know what they're writing about to make the book's content. Anyone complaining about the quality of the book (which hasn't even been released yet) because of this is either judging the book extremely harshly due to its cover or just dogwhistling their racism to try and avoid punishment by this site's moderation team.

unfortunately you screwed up on the ending

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Why do you think that because someone is not white that they have experience with a culture besides American?

Not sure about him, but the US is huge and it is not a monoculture. Depending on how tightly you want to break things down, the US may have 10 or 20 or 50 (for 50 states) different cultures. At the bare minimum, the different regions are different cultures. You try to tell a black person from New Orleans that their culture is the same as the black person in the Bronx or in Compton. Same for white people and Hispanic and Asian.

Also, since this is an international site, to some (many) people outside the US, American may mean all of the Americas and not just the US.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Why do you think that because someone is not white that they have experience with a culture besides American?
As I said, the ones I looked up and could find information about all lived in the US since at least their college years and quite possibly were born there. We also can't assume that their parents came from a different culture either instead of also being born and raised in America. And even if they grew up in a different culture we don't know how much of that was transferred to their children.

I have seen the assumption that PoC = different/additional culture than American before in various cultural appropriation discussions but I do not think you can make that assumption.

There is no single "American culture". There are a ton of different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and locations in the USA. The USA as a whole does not have a single, unified "American culture". The cultures of people from certain backgrounds and ethnicities are very different from others.

"American culture" is not a thing. It is several different things with many different aspects and nuances influenced by your race, ethnicity, religion, location in the USA, how long you and your family have lived in the USA, your occupation and the occupations of your parents (and grandparents), the schools and colleges that you and your family went to, and dozens of other factors.

Your basic premise of them somehow not being able to accurately depict the cultures that they are descended from or are members of is inherently ridiculous. I am descended from Scandinavian immigrants to the USA on my father's side, and so my grandparents taught me a lot about our ancestors in Sweden and Norway, about the Vikings and how they came to visit and inhabit different lands, the mythology of the Norse, and made foods from our cultural background (I still gag whenever I think of lutefisk).

I'm a pasty white boy that grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the USA and has never visited any Scandinavian country, but I know from my heritage enough about the cultures and peoples that I'm descended from that I would be comfortable making a D&D product about it. My father's side of the family has not lived in Scandinavia in over a hundred years, but I still know a ton about the cultures that I'm descended from, and would be capable of accurately representing them in a work of fiction just from memory.

I see absolutely no reason why people from other cultures and heritages, especially ones that emigrated to America more recently than my family did, would be capable of doing the same for their own cultures and backgrounds.

A single, unified "American Monoculture" is a myth, and there is absolutely no reason why people descended from these cultures that grew up in the USA would not be more capable than the average person/game-designer of accurately representing those cultures.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Not sure about him, but the US is huge and it is not a monoculture. Depending on how tightly you want to break things down, the US may have 10 or 20 or 50 (for 50 states) different cultures. At the bare minimum, the different regions are different cultures. You try to tell a black person from New Orleans that their culture is the same as the black person in the Bronx or in Compton. Same for white people and Hispanic and Asian.

Also, since this is an international site, to some (many) people outside the US, American may mean all of the Americas and not just the US.

Heck, I would say someone who grew up in Harlem has a different perspective than someone from Staten Island, and they're the same city!

 

[BookTenTiger]

Why do you think that because someone is not white that they have experience with a culture besides American?
As I said, the ones I looked up and could find information about all lived in the US since at least their college years and quite possibly were born there. We also can't assume that their parents came from a different culture either instead of also being born and raised in America. And even if they grew up in a different culture we don't know how much of that was transferred to their children.

I have seen the assumption that PoC = different/additional culture than American before in various cultural appropriation discussions but I do not think you can make that assumption.

I guess you would have to trust the writers! Who do you think knows more about the writers' cultures? You or them?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

An acceptable, even if a bit optimistic way of interpret facts.

I'm a pessimistic nihilist that believes humanity is ultimately doomed to destroy itself through our own most childish flaws, but even I am not cynical enough to be able to see literally any other interpretation of their statements and what little we have seen of the book so far. I don't see the point of getting upset by a book that we barely know anything about and won't be released for 3 months.

unfortunately you screwed up on the ending

Oh, pray tell, what other possible interpretations could there be for this scenario? Because this book is immediately getting more negative feedback than any of the other recent releases. So, it's either motivated by the little we've seen of the book (which is mostly the art), or due to the fact that the book is written entirely by people of color.

The other criticisms of "it's replacing Spelljammer/Planescape" have been debunked, and people are still complaining about this product, so . . . it's either about the art or the skin color of the people who made it. The former is petty and ridiculous, as we haven't actually read the book yet, while the latter makes sense when you consider the mindset of people that typically crap on milestones like this one.

 

[Scribe]

I'm a pessimistic nihilist that believes humanity is ultimately doomed to destroy itself by our own most childish flaws...

So, it's either motivated by the little we've seen of the book (which is mostly the art), or due to the fact that the book is written entirely by people of color.

A third option.

People recoil from corporate marketing, and view anything coming from such a corporation cynically at best.

If Wizards had not mentioned the authors, I continue to believe, most wouldnt even be aware of who authored these adventures.

 

[BookTenTiger]

A third option.

People recoil from corporate marketing, and view anything coming from such a corporation cynically at best.

If Wizards had not mentioned the authors, I continue to believe, most wouldnt even be aware of who authored these adventures.

But if this is your attitude, then there's literally nothing WotC could do that wouldn't be viewed with suspicion. So they might as well do the right thing, and celebrate and amplify creators of color.

I mean, would it really be better if you didn't know that these creators all used their family histories, cultural connections, and personal stories to create the adventures?

I don't know if this is your intention, but it feels like you are using the excuse of WotC being a "corporation" to try and dismiss the cultures of the writers of Radiant Citadel. The fact that the writers got to use their cultures as inspiration obviously means a lot to them (based on their Tweets). Purposefully dismissing that is erasure.