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​

 

[Vaalingrade]

Heh....does that even cost them anything to maintain? <Looks>

Where? It's not in the book. But... it is a GIANT CITY that basically imports everything. It needs money to exist.

You no pay? You no use. Simple.

You're paying for a hub zone with low conflict. If someone want to laugh in the face of the tax collectors? They can hoof it through the astral and become Dreadnaught feces, or get shot by British hippos. Have fun.

 

[Azenis]

Where? It's not in the book. But... it is a GIANT CITY that basically imports everything. It needs money to exist.

You no pay? You no use. Simple.

You're paying for a hub zone with low conflict. If someone want to laugh in the face of the tax collectors? They can hoof it through the astral and become Dreadnaught feces, or get shot by British hippos. Have fun.

Except they don't do that . They'll scan visitors telepathically for intention but they don't require you to pay taxes. Just give you an unhappy face

Edit- What the city does need to exist is traders to visit (and it is hardly huge). If traders are taxed heavily (as described in the book) and the profit margins after visiting are thin to nonexistent, why bother? Businesses are not charities, and only a few adventurers are (who have even less reason to stick around to solve other peoples problems if Players know they are going to get their booty fix week to week no matter where they are in the universe).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Some people from our world might want to live in Sigil, but I suspect many wouldn't after a relatively short period.

Perhaps, but definitely not for the reasons you appear to suggest.

The LoP's government of Sigil is far more laissez-faire than the government of Singapore, to the point where it's laughable to make the comparison, let alone to suggest Singapore is more free from a government perspective. The idea that the LoP's minions are going to be knocking on your door because you said the wrong thing, or caning you in public (both of which can happen in Singapore) is obviously laughable. It takes serious effort to piss of the LoP if we go by canon, rather than fanon. The LoP is definitely a totally undemocratic, unrepresentative, inflexible, and inhumane/uncaring leader, but she's not forcing people into an army, brain-washing people, pushing alleged drug dealers out of helicopters, systematically murdering protestors, enforcing apartheid, engaging in genocide, destroying the intellectual class, or really doing anything that an "oppressive" government normally does.

But that cuts both ways. And that's BAD.

The LoP also doesn't intefere when people are taking it upon themselves to be thugs and fascists within her city. The Mercykillers, for example, are allowed to operate in Sigil, and act as de facto police force, when they're in fact extremely violent, have very odd ideas about what constitutes justice, don't really respect any kind of rights or freedoms, and so on.

They're the sort of people who would mean 21st-century people wouldn't want to live there, not the LoP. The LoP is effectively enabling by not intefering. But she's not sending them to round up dissidents or the like. They're doing that by themselves, and even have been at odds with the LoP at times (I believe they were ultimately one of the factions banned from Sigil in Faction War).

The valuable trade hub going away due to lack of funding isn't a consequence?

It's exactly the kind of consequence most people ignore, very demonstrably through world history.

People don't voluntarily pay taxes unless they're getting a far more direct benefit that than. However, it's a balance - so long as you're getting something from the taxes - usually some kind of protection, whether that's against, violence, ill-health, theft, or whatever, then people are going to complain but will pay. The idea however that people will just pony up when they're effectively getting nothing, personally, is a laughable fantasy.

I agree re: post-apocalyptic writers being idiots, though. It's just the reasoning is equally weak on "people will voluntarily/happily pay taxes for largely abstract benefits". They won't. They'll pay them because they're effectively forced to (even if very little force is actually involved). They'll be happier if there's a non-abstract benefit.

And the ones where people shoot lightning out of their fingers at flying fire breathing lizards do?

You might want to look up "fantasy" in the dictionary.

This is an sadly low-quality argument.

The better kind of SF/speculative fiction/fantasy goes to great lengths to understand why and how alternative societies, ones that don't operate like our own, would work. That requires some actual thought, effort and maybe even research on the part of the author though, not mindless hand-waving.

Ursula K. LeGuin is the gold standard here. She's written many books about societies that don't work the way ours does, and whilst not everyone is going to like those societies, she does at least give them a real depth and makes sure they actually work in a logical way, and withstand some kind of analysis.

So implying it can't be done and is is dumb to try is both insulting and silly, frankly. It's easily disproven.

The issue with Citadel is indeed like the issue with early TNG - the society hasn't been thought through. The utopian vision is there, but there's little idea as to how it would work, particularly when people test the limits, which being humans, they will. Later TNG and DS9 did a vastly better job, and interestingly Strange New Worlds has done a good job here too (I would argue that Discovery has not, despite attempting it).

Moving on from that, though, what I think people are being really silly about though is one incredibly simple thing that I've never seen not be true:

Adventurers (and their players) absolutely loathe, detest and are enraged by being taxed.

Especially if they're taxed in some sort of flat way that doesn't reflect any benefits gained. It doesn't matter if the taxing entity is Cormyr, or the Radiant Citadel or wherever, it doesn't matter how nice the people are, adventurers loathe it. Further, the taxes and requirements levied tend to be extremely ill-conceived and not at all thought through, which exacerbates the issue.

Partly this is because adventurers tend to be nomads, or to put more cruelly, hobos, and further, adventurers don't typically get protected by the authorities, it's usually the authorities protecting people from them ("Are we the baddies?"). If you show adventurers what benefit the tax is giving them, and make it so the tax is proportional to that, and to their residence somewhere, then things improve, often drastically.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Except they don't do that . They'll scan visitors telepathically for intention but they don't require you to pay taxes. Just give you an unhappy face

What happens to the Citadel if it runs out of money?

Bet it's not a laughing emoji.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Where? It's not in the book. But... it is a GIANT CITY that basically imports everything. It needs money to exist.

You no pay? You no use. Simple.

You're paying for a hub zone with low conflict. If someone want to laugh in the face of the tax collectors? They can hoof it through the astral and become Dreadnaught feces, or get shot by British hippos. Have fun.

See that would make sense and that would be how a more realistic city of this nature might operate. It is not how this one operates.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What happens to the Citadel if it runs out of money?

Bet it's not a laughing emoji.

Sure, but when individuals are allowed to ignore a problem, and take advantage, and no-one makes them pay if they want to stay, a very large proportion aren't going to pay. Humans aren't evil, but they're not forward-thinkers in that way, for better or worse. This is why all real-world societies enforce tax. Even hunter-gatherer societies don't let someone who refuses to contribute to the society stick around - they might well let someone who cannot contribute stick around (especially if they previous did contribute), but if you can contribute and you refuse to? You're going to get exiled. Exactly as you suggest! They're not just going to frown mildly at you.

The only way the Citadel would work would be if they got so much money from the minority who would effectively "donate" to the city that it just didn't matter than a lot of people didn't donate.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Sure, but when individuals are allowed to ignore a problem, and take advantage, and no-one makes them pay if they want to stay, a very large proportion aren't going to pay. Humans aren't evil, but they're not forward-thinkers in that way, for better or worse.

Maybe D&D humans are less stupid?

WIS 10 seems pretty unrealistic as an 'average' for us.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Most D&D settings are vaguely medieval in structure.

Which makes no sense whatsoever in a world full of magic and monsters.

Well known,

I find most people are pretty ignorant about history, and even proper historians (of which I know we have a few here) can't agree on what life was really like.

Relatable in other words.

Why would it be relatable? I've never lived 500 years in the past, just as I've never lived on a crystal floating in the Ethereal plane.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I find most people are pretty ignorant about history, and even proper historians (of which I know we have a few here) can't agree on what life was really like.

Constant attacks from huge snails and 'roided up rabbits, as far as I can tell.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe D&D humans are less stupid?

WIS 10 seems pretty unrealistic as an 'average' for us.

You could definitely write a fantasy setting where were more sensible and forward-looking than they have been throughout human history (and currently showing that they very much still are basically short-sighted idiots, without discussing any specific politics, it's a worldwide issue), but D&D historically has not had any settings which reflect that.

The Radiant Citadel is closest. You could say maybe it calls out to people who have better hearts but then you're edging towards the "magical mind control" or even some kind of ideological quasi-eugenics (not quite eugenics, but like, eugenics of thought).