D&D 5E Here's A Look At 3 Adventures from the Radiant Citadel

Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel features 13 adventures, all written by people of colour. Here's a quick peek at three of them, as details start to emerge across the internet!

• Salted Legacy (1st level, Surena Marie). Rival merchant families are at war in the Night Market. Various challenges such as a timed cooking challenge.
• Written in Blood (3rd level, Erin Roberts). Based on the black experience in the Southern US, features a haunted farm and commoners who becoming violent; the adventurers need to figure out why without harming them.
• Shadow of the Sun (11th level, Justice Arman). Persian-themed, factions in a city ruled by a celestial being are in conflict.

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

The full list of adventures is:

• 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

 

[Dioltach]

As someone who was on the WotC forums, there was absolutely no value in any of those discussions.

All I remember of the Wizards forums was the Castle of Fun. (Was that really twenty-ish years ago?)

 

[jgsugden]

And yet...they haven't engaged with forums in years and years.

But they post on social media and engage with the very same folks.

 

[Parmandur]

But they post on social media and engage with the very same folks.

Sometimes the same folks...but not in the same way, and not on forums. They doneness on Social Media like they did 4 years ago, either.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Already knew this from piecing it together, but here's the names of the adventures;

 

[Hussar]

But they post on social media and engage with the very same folks.

While, at the same time engaging with a MUCH larger audience as well. Let's be honest here and think that a Crawford (just to pick a name) tweet will likely reach more eyeballs than a post on the WotC message boards or here either. Just the nature of the medium.

And, since it's twitter, it generally doesn't work so well for conversation. Which means there's far less back and forth and more just the Dev dropping a tweet and then walking away.

 

[Monayuris]

This was true for editions before 5e. 5e actually tones it down and makes it much easier for players to come up with non-violent solutions to problems in ways that previous editions the rules often discouraged. 3e tried but the skill system just didn't work, 4e tried with skill challenges and flattening out the differences in skills across levels but that often clashed with the cool powers and stunts that made combat the most fun choice for that edition.

Older editions, going back to the original edition and revisions in the 80s (basic sets) actively discouraged violence, by rules as written.

The primary source of experience rewards came from acquiring treasure (an order of magnitude more than violence). Many monsters granted very little treasure or XP, making most situations to be better handled by avoiding violence and finding creative ways to solve problems / get treasure.

 

[Monayuris]

Not really my style of adventures, though. But good for those who would find it interesting.

 

[Jer]

Older editions, going back to the original edition and revisions in the 80s (basic sets) actively discouraged violence, by rules as written.

The primary source of experience rewards came from acquiring treasure (an order of magnitude more than violence). Many monsters granted very little treasure or XP, making most situations to be better handled by avoiding violence and finding creative ways to solve problems / get treasure.

That's RAW - not Rules As Experienced. At least not by me or the groups I played in when I first started playing in the early 80s when the point of going into a dungeon was to fight monsters and take their stuff.

 

[Monayuris]

That's RAW - not Rules As Experienced. At least not by me or the groups I played in when I first started playing in the early 80s when the point of going into a dungeon was to fight monsters and take their stuff.

Well people play in whatever style they wanted to.

Doesn’t change that the rules actively discouraged it.

 

[Jer]

Well people play in whatever style they wanted to.

Doesn’t change that the rules actively discouraged it.

The rules didn't actively discourage it tho - the advice for how to play the game optimally actively discouraged it, and you might figure it out on your won if you sat down and analyzed how to play optimally, but there was nothing in the rules that gave you the feeling you should be trying to sneak around the orcs instead of clobbering them to take their pie. The rules of clobbering were fun to engage with and the rules for sneaking gave you low probabilities of success compared to bursting into the room and just taking their pies. So the game's emergent play tended to encourage folks to fight instead of sneak or parley because absent a good DM that's where all the fun in the rules was.

With a good DM of course any of those approaches would be fun, but that's not the rules so much as it is having a trained DM who knew what they were doing. With a bad DM even the combat might not be fun.