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​

 

[Irlo]

@Ixal Think of it this way. The tarrifs are the price the merchants pay for access to a universe of goods that are simply unavailable or vanishingly rare on their own worlds. And it's the price they pay for security.

Have you read the passage from the book?

EDIT:

A few weeks without any delivery of food or firewood and things will get ugly in the Citadel.

This comment would indicate that you haven't read it. The Citadel grows its food in the greenspaces. Presumably that includes the habenero and saffron that spice their yams.

The high tariffs are meant to be a barrier to individual sellers and producers. Trade is facilitated for cities, nations, and major trading companies.

 

[Ixal]

I'm only replying to a couple of bits, to illustrate our points of disagreement.
Yes, it's a progressive transaction tax. There are plenty of real-world economist who advocate these, though often on a consumption rather than border-crossing basis. Wealthy traders presumably also gain more benefit from the trade they participate in (hence their wealth) and so can afford these fees as a price of getting access to the intermediation opportunities that the Citadel provides.

Someone upthread described the city as being run on "collectivist" principles, with a universal basic income. Which implies that import taxes are being used to establish a common fund that is then distributed directly to the citizenry.

There are many countries in the real world that have high consumption taxes and use these to (partly) fund social services. One could even call this the "EU model".

Is consumption in the Citadel depressed by higher prices, or increased by widespread spending capacity (due to distribution of tax revenue to citizens)? Real-world economist disagree on the answer to this sort of question despite the reams of data and working examples they have ready-to-hand. No one can claim to know the "true" answer for an imaginary city in the Deep Ethereal.

3. Because of how the notportals work its trivially easy for merchants to bypass the Citadel and instead go to a trade hub in a different realm and sell there where they not only have better conditions, but also can buy local products reliably and thus, with a bit of planning, make a profit on their way back. When selling to the Citadel its always a gamble what is available and thanks to high prices thanks to import takes every good purchased there has a lower profit margin.

Presumably they staff border posts, run hospitality venues, and provide financial services; and then provide the other services that any urban population needs. This is how some real-world urban economies work.

The guessing fee is no transaction tax, that is in addition to the transaction tax which makes any goods extra expensive.

And no nation is having a universal basic income because of the high expenses. So high in fact that no amount of transactional tax can fund them. Especially as with transactional taxes the amount of money you need to pay out rises by the same rate of how much money to earn.

Someone wants to sell your child a candy bar for 1 dollar. You step in and say in order to sell your child something he has to give you 5 dollar first. You then give your child those 5 dollar as welfare. But now the candy bar costs 6 dollar. Where does your child get the dollar in the first place?

For this to work another income stream is needed. But the Citadel is unattractive as a trade hub because of high taxes and the entry fee and is not competitive to produce things on their own thanks to a lack of raw resources and high taxes.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

One thing I would note is that the Radiant Citadel is pretty much right next to a massive ether cyclone that the Citadel's powers-that-be are implied to be only barely able to hold at bay, and that if they were to falter the Citadel could easily be destroyed, along with access to the various civilizations it links to via its concord jewels.

It's entirely possible that at least some of the city's import taxes are quite literally necessary to keep it from being wiped off the face of the multiverse. If the options are a trade nexus with somewhat high trade duties or every trade route connected to that nexus being irrevocably severed all at once, that might incline traders to be a bit more willing to grin and bear the extra costs.

 

[Ixal]

@Ixal Think of it this way. The tarrifs are the price the merchants pay for access to a universe of goods that are simply unavailable or vanishingly rare on their own worlds. And it's the price they pay for security.

Have you read the passage from the book?

EDIT:


This comment would indicate that you haven't read it. The Citadel grows its food in the greenspaces. Presumably that includes the habenero and saffron that spice their yams.

The high tariffs are meant to be a barrier to individual sellers and producers. Trade is facilitated for cities, nations, and major trading companies.

Again, unless the incarnates refuse to transport merchants to other realms there is no need for them to do business in the Citadel.
And if the incarnates do then the trade will be limited to luxury goods reducing the amount of trade the Citadel further. Not to mention the Citadel being less utopian than originally represented (not necessarily a bad thing)

The Citadel grows some food on their very limited greenspaces. The book is pretty clear about them being a big bottleneck, so much so that there is not even room for animal husbandry. And now you want to waste space on spices, especially saffron which needs huge farms to produce meaningful yields?

High tarrifs are to protect domestic production from cheap imports and make no sense for a city with no domestic industry which relies on imports.

 

[Irlo]

Again, unless the incarnates refuse to transport merchants to other realms there is no need for them to do business in the Citadel.

Since those who bypass the official point of entry into the Citadel can be banished as a result, it wouldn't seem out of character for the powers-that-be to refuse to transport a merchant's goods to another world.

 

[Vaalingrade]

We're seriously talking economics in the game where a spell knows the current market value of the diamonds you're carrying.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

We're seriously talking economics in the game where a spell knows the current market value of the diamonds you're carrying.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE ECONOMIST BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!

 

[Incenjucar]

We're seriously talking economics in the game where a spell knows the current market value of the diamonds you're carrying.

Also Goodberry exists.
While I think it might be interesting to figure out what some folks might find a more believable way to reach the same basic concept, D&D is probably part of why video game economies are so nonsensical, and using real world economic models for it is pretty spurious.
Also yes plenty of trade hubs will force you to trade if you pass through them even if you just want to get to the better spot elsewhere. "You can trade here or you can leave your goods here and we'll maybe let you keep enough food to get home, your choice" is not unknown.

 

[Hussar]

That was more-or-less Hong Kong's economic model for some time.

You'd almost think that places like Venice, Florence, Hue or various other major trading hubs never existed.

The book says the entrance fee is paid according to the person's conscience. So, basically, how virtually every charitable organization works. And funnily enough, there are charitable organizations out there that are bringing in rather large sums of money.

It's hardly an unusual way to do things. Churches have been operating this way for centuries. It's not like you must pay to sit in church. Yet, funnily enough, as I pass through the cities of Europe and now Japan, I can see big, beautiful churches and temples, all built and paid for through willing donations.

I fail to see how this is all that unusual. And, frankly, it's a rather refreshing change from the typical anachronistic capitalistic societies that D&D typically pumps out where we use cash for everything.

We're actually arguing about the economic system of a rock that is powered by a giant magical crystal hanging in an extra-planar void? Seriously?

It's like arguing about time travel based on Doctor Who.

 

[pemerton]

@Hussar, fully agreed re both real world trade hubs and various modes of collecting public funds other than via official coercion.

And once we allow that we're talking about a fantasy world, and hence that handwaving can cover a multitude of implausibilities, the objections seem even less persuasive.