D&D 5E (2014) 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

 

[Mournblade94]

No you're not freestyling in 5e. You're interacting with the skill system, which is the best version of the skill system that D&D has had since they added it to the game in 2e. With the skill system in 5e you can do social and investigation adventures and it works much better IME than the skill system in 3e or 4e did.

The Skill system in 5e is much less robust than PF or 3rd edition. Its one of the reasons I run more games in PF than I do 5e. I find that 5e is very limited on skills. I can't see how 5e can do investifation adventures better especially with the available feats in PF or 3.5

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This book and Witchlight are providing the tools to play without combat.

You don't need tools to play without combat. You just have to say "today I will not hit the goblin with the sword."

 

[Jer]

The Skill system in 5e is much less robust than PF or 3rd edition. Its one of the reasons I run more games in PF than I do 5e. I find that 5e is very limited on skills. I can't see how 5e can do investifation adventures better especially with the available feats in PF or 3.5

The skill system in 5e is boiled down to the essentials and you rarely run into the situation where players don't have the right combination of the skills. 3e was a disaster in that sense because it was very easy for players to either misallocate their points and be completely ineffective or correctly allocate their points to be effective but not be able to cover the skills in the game.

5e hits the sweet spot where it had a set of broad skills that cover any situation that you need in a game and also there aren't so many of them that you end up with players who don't have some skill that can cover. And even when you do, players generally aren't "DC'd out" of trying to accomplish something with their raw ability bonuses the way they were in 3e.

 

[SteveC]

This will be something really interesting to look at and it may spark a fork in D&D design that can go in a different direction for, quite honestly, the first time.

I think that D&D has the tools to do this, but at the same time it isn't really designed to do so. A game tells you what it's about by what it spends its page count on, and D&D spends the vast majority of its pages on things related to combat.

There are so many games and systems out there that would do this particular style of play better, but ... they aren't D&D. They don't have the mass appeal and market share that D&D does.

I'll definitely take a look at this when it comes out, but I'd also suggest that people who are saying "uh, this isn't playing to D&D's strengths..." are right. That's why this is an interesting product because D&D could do this, but it will need some changes from a design perspective to have this be a strength.

 

[Mournblade94]

The skill system in 5e is boiled down to the essentials and you rarely run into the situation where players don't have the right combination of the skills. 3e was a disaster in that sense because it was very easy for players to either misallocate their points and be completely ineffective or correctly allocate their points to be effective but not be able to cover the skills in the game.

5e hits the sweet spot where it had a set of broad skills that cover any situation that you need in a game and also there aren't so many of them that you end up with players who don't have some skill that can cover. And even when you do, players generally aren't "DC'd out" of trying to accomplish something with their raw ability bonuses the way they were in 3e.

Yes I can see that.

THe problem with 3.5 is when DM's don't know the players ranges. Before I do any kind of skill based session I am going to know the ranges of skills so I can set difficulty properly. I think many DMs did not do that. In that case you can totally DC block. Also you can make it so tension suffers if they can just take 10 or 20 anything.

I like the various skills though because I like the simulation. I think the part of 5e skills that bugged me was they were just to broad.

 

[bedir than]

This will be something really interesting to look at and it may spark a fork in D&D design that can go in a different direction for, quite honestly, the first time.

I think that D&D has the tools to do this, but at the same time it isn't really designed to do so. A game tells you what it's about by what it spends its page count on, and D&D spends the vast majority of its pages on things related to combat.

There are so many games and systems out there that would do this particular style of play better, but ... they aren't D&D. They don't have the mass appeal and market share that D&D does.

I'll definitely take a look at this when it comes out, but I'd also suggest that people who are saying "uh, this isn't playing to D&D's strengths..." are right. That's why this is an interesting product because D&D could do this, but it will need some changes from a design perspective to have this be a strength.

It's one of the three adventures that's been revealed.

 

[Jer]

I like the various skills though because I like the simulation. I think the part of 5e skills that bugged me was they were just to broad.

Ah see my favorite skill system is probably still the original Star Frontiers skill system where the skills are very broad. Torg is probably my second favorite and the skills are fairly broad there too. The more detailed a skill list becomes, the less useful in game it feels to me (I'm much less of a simulation sort of person - I'm much more of a genre emulation gamer than a simulation one).

 

[sevenbastard]

Then you need to stop playing D&D as it is all about violence. The rules, the characters, the equipment, etc. All designed to maximize combat power.

I didn't say I wanted no combat, I said I wanted it to be the last resort. And when it does happen it should be deadly and hard and the player should know they might loose so they try and avoid it.

I want less throw away D&D combats and stick to one or two meaningful chalanges with real stakes.

 

[Ixal]

I didn't say I wanted no combat, I said I wanted it to be the last resort. And when it does happen it should be deadly and hard and the player should know they might loose so they try and avoid it.

I want less throw away D&D combats and stick to one or two meaningful chalanges with real stakes.

Then you really need to look at Warhammer or Shadowrun.
D&D is build around the assumption that PCs go through multiple combats easily and that there are no lasting mechanical reprecussions.

As for the skill system 3E had the problem that skills are still tied to your murder ability (=level) and that because of the high ranges of numbers is quickly became a all or nothing game.
Still, I think it was better than 5E on the account of at least having skills and to give players at least in theory a lot of freedom on how to skill their characters while not being completely forced by their class into certain skills (only nudged).

 

[Vaalingrade]

God, just let people play the non-combat D&D game.

It is not hurting anyone and it is the literal purpose of the product in question.