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​

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Generally, they are better than the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries, especially if you are interested in the mythology of other cultures.

Yeah, I picked up Candlekeep on D&D Beyond when I had a player cancel at the last minute and needed a decent adventure on the spot. While we liked the first adventure in the book, I was dismayed at how many of the subsequent adventures I have zero interest in running. (A bunch of drama with lamias, basically a mediocre Dungeon magazine adventure centered on wereravens, etc.)

In contrast, everything in Radiant Citadel seems to either work right out of the box and be compelling or need minimal elbow grease to get it there. (Some of the logic behind the first adventure is a bit shaky, but that's fixable.)

 

[Cadence]

Fair, but I stand by my belief that having the first adventure span two levels is a weird oversight, since all the rest of the adventures seem more or less tuned to advance characters a level each time (I'll be doing milestone leveling to begin with). The first adventure not doing that to me looks like something got cut, but they should have put it back in, IMO.

Is the first level just so quick (and the 2nd pretty quick) that any adventure that just did one of them couldn't go very far?

 

[Parmandur]

Is the first level just so quick (and the 2nd pretty quick) that any adventure that just did one of them couldn't go very far?

I mean, the Starter Set manages it...?

 

[Michael Linke]

Well that’s daft.

1. Maztica exists
2. It is of a Mesomerican culture

The rest is irrelevant. No ones asking you to bust out the Maztica boxes set and reenact the glorious adventures of Cordell’s legion, merely recognise that there’s a part of Toril where thematically this adventure really fits.

If it wasn’t done well in the past the first step to a better depiction is tying it up this material rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.

Yeah, I have to wonder whether Maztica, if rebuilt from the ground up with an eye toward sensitivity, would still be somehow bad just because it kept the name. But, it could just be that they don't have time to clean up or rehab the Maztica setting, and they don't want new players to read a reference to Maztica in this book, and get the wrong idea that all of Maztica's baggage is hanging in the background of the setting they've just learned about in what was supposed to be a culturally sensitive book written by a diverse set of authors.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah, I have to wonder whether Maztica, if rebuilt from the ground up with an eye toward sensitivity, would still be somehow bad just because it kept the name. But, it could just be that they don't have time to clean up or rehab the Maztica setting, and they don't want new players to read a reference to Maztica in this book, and get the wrong idea that all of Maztica's baggage is hanging in the background of the setting they've just learned about in what was supposed to be a culturally sensitive book written by a diverse set of authors.

I don't see the case for Maztica, myself.

Other than satisfying completists or folks with serious nostalgia for 2E, what would Maztica offer that the two Meso-American settings in Radiant Citadel do not, other than a colonialist storyline?

If WotC wanted to explore more of the Forgotten Realms, there's a huge chunk of the core setting waiting for that treatment, and if they want to visit new areas on the world, there's apparently an Australian-themed continent and -- ahem -- AN ISLAND OF FLYING MONKEYS.

 

[Cadence]

I mean, the Starter Set manages it...?

Do any other modules not explicitly designed for folks who never played before? (I have no idea!)

 

[Greg Benage]

I love the citadel and the mini settings—what we get, anyway. I don’t care if it’s woke, or insufficiently woke, or woke executed in a way that is itself problematic.

The adventures are ass. That may be unkind, but I think the blame can be widely distributed at least. In any case, ass. As D&D adventures, worst of the 5e era. Worse than Candlekeep.

We still need writers, designers and developers who know how to create good adventures. Coach them up, sure, but maybe some time proving it on DM’s Guild before you turn them loose on a book?

I don’t know. They’re bad in ways that were mostly fixable.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Do any other modules not explicitly designed for folks who never played before? (I have no idea!)

These days the general assumption seems to be that level 1 will last less than an hour of play.

 

[Parmandur]

These days the general assumption seems to be that level 1 will last less than an hour of play.

The rulebook assumption is one session, basically.

 

[pukunui]

I don’t know. They’re bad in ways that were mostly fixable.

I’ve been following Justin Alexander’s Let’s Read of this book on Twitter.

The only adventure he’s really disliked so far is the gold mine one. I’m curious to see what he makes of the later ones.