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​

 

[Micah Sweet]

Huh. I thought the prevailing attitude was that settings like Forgotten Realms was lore heavy, dense and cluttered with minutiae that stifles a DMs ability to tell stories while keeping within the lore and timeline. By contrast, "light sketch" settings like the '84 Greyhawk or Nerath were lauded as giving DMs a starting point rather than burdening them with overdevelopment and allowed the DM to make the world their own.

I guess I was wrong...

That certainly isn't my opinion. Lore-heavy all the way!

 

[dave2008]

Huh. I thought the prevailing attitude was that settings like Forgotten Realms was lore heavy, dense and cluttered with minutiae that stifles a DMs ability to tell stories while keeping within the lore and timeline. By contrast, "light sketch" settings like the '84 Greyhawk or Nerath were lauded as giving DMs a starting point rather than burdening them with overdevelopment and allowed the DM to make the world their own.

I guess I was wrong...

To be fair, different people want/like different things. Though I prefer just a sketch of a setting, I don't have any issue with people who want more lore.

Personally, I think 5e basically achieves both by having the sketches in the setting guides + adventure and letting DMs Guild fill in missing lore through either "official" old lore (from previous editions), or updated lore from 3PP. I accept that some people want an "official" update to the lore, but I can't really understand that perspective. It is just to far from my own I guess for me to truly understand. I hate to admit that, but it is true I think.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I don't have any issue with people who want more lore.

I have a problem with it when it wastes time, effort, and page space on taxes when it could be used to make the adventures better.

 

[dave2008]

That certainly isn't my opinion. Lore-heavy all the way!

I enjoy reading old lore, but I much prefer the current edition being lore light or lore neutral. That way I can bring forward what I like and leave the rest behind.

I like a lot of the 1e lore I grew up with, but not much of the 2e & 3e lore I skipped. With 4e and 5e both being pretty neutral and squinting at the old lore I found myself embracing the idea of weaving in ideas from all the previous editions. I felt put off by the 2e & 3e lore, but came to understand it in a new light with the freedom of 4e & 5e (either real or implied).

 

[dave2008]

I have a problem with it when it wastes time, effort, and page space on taxes when it could be used to make the adventures better.

I said I didn't have any issue with people who want more lore. I personally don't want much lore in the products I want, but understand if others want more.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I enjoy reading old lore, but I much prefer the current edition being lore light or lore neutral. That way I can bring forward what I like and leave the rest behind.

I like a lot of the 1e lore I grew up with, but not much of the 2e & 3e lore I skipped. With 4e and 5e both being pretty neutral and squinting at the old lore I found myself embracing the idea of weaving in ideas from all the previous editions. I felt put of by the 2e & 3e lore, but came to understand it in a new light with the freedom of 4e & 5e (either real or implied).

2e lore forms the basis of my understanding of all settings (from 2e, of course). Everything that has come later is weighed against the old lore for me. 5e in general hasn't given me much to work with in that department. Good thing the rules are decent!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My reading of this is that DM is the one that determines the money and would have the guards tell the players the appropriate amount, not that the players would be playing the Price is Right with the guards.

Yeah and I hope that's intention, but why the hell would this specific bit of text be there if it is?!

Those with big pockets and big hearts give more according to their conscience rather than risk the rebuke of the city’s guards.

Like yo what does that even mean expect "if you don't tip big enough the guards will either not let you in, wasting everyone's time, or let you in, but think you're a cheap wanker and give you a hard time". Absolute nightmare. I know @Whizbang Dustyboots thinks it's funny but I can't think of a better way to get a panic attack than screwing up tipping, personally. And I don't normally do panic attacks.

no DM that knows their players have issues with that kind of thing would force them to randomly guess the price.

How are you going to know that though? The DM can't be expected to be psychic. I guess if you operated with incredibly strong rules on player support and X cards and so on you might learn it, but even I didn't truly realize how alarming that kind of stuff was to me until this conversation. I guess this is perhaps the first time I've seen how an X card would benefit me about something that I genuinely might bump into in a game (normally people center the discussion of them on stuff no DM I know would ever allow, like sexual assault in a game).

Huh. I thought the prevailing attitude was that settings like Forgotten Realms was lore heavy, dense and cluttered with minutiae that stifles a DMs ability to tell stories while keeping within the lore and timeline. By contrast, "light sketch" settings like the '84 Greyhawk or Nerath were lauded as giving DMs a starting point rather than burdening them with overdevelopment and allowed the DM to make the world their own.

Not really?

That's not really the "prevailing attitude". It never has been. It's just a flip comment/meme that was kind of popular for a while. The reality has always been that people want a variety of heaviness of setting, as evidenced by the fact that, for example, the FR in 3E sold a ton of copies as did supplements (with 2E TSR was so nuts it was hard to tell), but 5E has not really provided that well (is there even a "detailed" setting for 5E? All the big earlier 5E ones I can think of are so broad they're relatively shallow), and at this point, seems to only be providing increasingly lightweight/outright vague settings.

"Our players are taking up arms in order to not pay taxes they agree with" is political by any definition of the word. As you might recall, it was brought up as a major complaint back in 1776.

So this is an amusing point.

The whole tax thing in the US revolution was largely a ruse/propaganda point rather than real issue (this is not a particularly bold statement to anyone who has studied it in depth, I'd suggest). The British actually lowered taxes before the Boston Tea Party, and the people who organised the Tea Party were all smugglers - y'know organised crime - mafiosi, if you will - who sent their hired thugs/goons to cause a scene. They weren't ideologues, despite their later declarations. But as usual a bunch of wealthy criminals managed to trigger a larger social issue, and then rode it to glory and even more wealth. Soz America.

(Re: Luskan, aren't they the explicitly racist organised crime city? So yeah them not having a fixed value makes 100% sense. My problem is when supposed "good guys" are rolling similarly to Luskan lol.)

The issue with PCs that makes it a little more complicated is that they're not usually members of society in question. So this would be more akin to say, er, the British refusing to pay the taxes Imperial China wanted, or America's gunboat diplomacy against Japan... er... wait... this isn't making adventurers look good... let me get my notes!

But my point is it's more like an "international incident". And the PCs aren't a country, usually. They're hobos. Even the nicest PCs are usually hobos these days. So they're more akin to a non-national group, like, a bunch of pirates. Pirates without a letter of marque. I think a lot of PCs also sort of think, on some unconscious level, that they have diplomatic immunity, too.

It's not even like they're trying to stand up for other people. It's just them who they don't want taxed, because they don't live there. They're just passing through - they are not part of society. Unlike The Joker, they do not "live in a society" lol.

I think it may be too late at night lol.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Huh. I thought the prevailing attitude was that settings like Forgotten Realms was lore heavy, dense and cluttered with minutiae that stifles a DMs ability to tell stories while keeping within the lore and timeline. By contrast, "light sketch" settings like the '84 Greyhawk or Nerath were lauded as giving DMs a starting point rather than burdening them with overdevelopment and allowed the DM to make the world their own.

I guess I was wrong...

I think it's different people talking in each case.

In any case, I don't think adding "10g" meaningfully adds to character count.

On the other hand, I'm extremely comfortable improvising at the table, which I know isn't true of everyone.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know @Whizbang Dustyboots thinks it's funny but I can't think of a better way to get a panic attack than screwing up tipping, personally. And I don't normally do panic attacks.

I don't think that's funny. Everyone's got their stuff.

This is something that's a trigger for you and it isn't for me. I assure you I have my own.

 

[Hussar]

There's a fee for individuals to enter the hub. Absolutely demented. Almost entirely without historical precedence.

I take it you've never been to church before.