D&D 5E (2014) 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​

 

[Parmandur]

I only buy adventure compendiums, preferring to drop an adventure into the campaign that I'm running every so often. The exception to that was the 5e Undermountain campaign, and I'm ripping those dungeon levels apart and scattering them into my game as single dungeons with no connection to Halaster.

Well, honestly, all of the more campaign oriented books allow for that easily enough: Dragon Heist is probably better if you look at it as an Urban Adventure Compilation and don't sorry about the "plot."

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Now he’ll have an endless supply of his own source of joy and food

He would anyway, since they don’t need souls to make babies, and the blood drinks just as much from one as from the other.

But he is still trapped and without any source of joy. Feeding doesn’t give him any pleasure he just has to do it and sometimes it relieves the boredom a little.

 

[darjr]

He would anyway, since they don’t need souls to make babies, and the blood drinks just as much from one as from the other.

But he is still trapped and without any source of joy. Feeding doesn’t give him any pleasure he just has to do it and sometimes it relieves the boredom a little.

No, the soulless he cannot feed off of. That’s one of the main points of the souless, it’s also why he “invites” new souls into the realm.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We have had at least three doom-and-gloom products: Ravenloft, Descent, Frostmaiden, plus now Netherdeep.

Really, no. In Grimdark, no matter what you do you can't make things better. You can run Ravenloft like that (although you don't have to), but in Frostmaiden heroic PCs can defeat evil and save the region, if that's what they want to do (mine did), and in Netherdeep you can win by redeeming a lost soul. And frankly, if the players ignore the plot nothing particularly bad happens. Really, they can be as light or dark as the players choose to make them.

Witchlight, on the other hand, can get quite dark.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

City=10 000 people. A fairly small town by todays standards.

In the UK, "city status" is completely disconnected from population. St. Davids has a population of around 2000. I see no reason the Radiant Citadel needs to support much population, and the suggestion that crime rates are low to negligible goes with a low population.

 

[Hussar]

In the UK, "city status" is completely disconnected from population. St. Davids has a population of around 2000. I see no reason the Radiant Citadel needs to support much population, and the suggestion that crime rates are low to negligible goes with a low population.

Neat. Learned something new today.

But the point I was making was that a city doesn’t have to be the size of Waterdeep to be a city.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Neat. Learned something new today.

But the point I was making was that a city doesn’t have to be the size of Waterdeep to be a city.

Indeed, I agree. And the Radiant Citadel is more like a trading post or space station: much of the population are transient, the permanent population would be very low. Looking at the maps, its closer in size (of the populated area) to Deep Space Nine than Babylon 5, which is much larger.

Which makes it more useful for it's purpose - a place to pass though on the way to adventure, not the location of the adventure itself. Which was a problem with the design of Planescape. Sigil was so big and busy that it completely dominated everything, and there was no need to go anywhere else for adventure. It should really have been called Sigilscape.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In my game the little retcon is the Radiant Citadel is linked to a demiplane, or a cluster of demiplanes, and secret planar gates to some zones in the Feywild or the material plane. It would be like the VIP zone for rich people, or powerfuld spellcasters who can spend a lot of gold to create a demiplane. Other point is the "copies" created as new domains of delight.

 

[Yaarel]

Really, no. In Grimdark, no matter what you do you can't make things better. You can run Ravenloft like that (although you don't have to), but in Frostmaiden heroic PCs can defeat evil and save the region, if that's what they want to do (mine did), and in Netherdeep you can win by redeeming a lost soul. And frankly, if the players ignore the plot nothing particularly bad happens. Really, they can be as light or dark as the players choose to make them.

Witchlight, on the other hand, can get quite dark.

I didnt say "grimdark", because to me the term connotes graphic violence or even "esthetic gore", and D&D has rarely ever been that in its images.

But doom-and-gloom feels accurate enough, connoting despair, undefeatable evil, being forced to commit evil acts, and gratuitous blood and skulls.

Witchight can get "dark" like nursery rhymes and fairy tales can. But is often unrealized because of the overall whimsical and playful context.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I didnt say "grimdark", because to me the term connotes graphic violence or even "esthetic gore", and D&D has rarely ever been that in its images.

But doom-and-gloom feels accurate enough, connoting despair, undefeatable evil, being forced to commit evil acts, and gratuitous blood and skulls.

Witchight can get "dark" like nursery rhymes and fairy tales can. But is often unrealized because of the overall whimsical and playful context.

RotFM isn't all all that gloomy, and the evil is far from undefeatable. Bit of a walkover really. And have you read Call of the Netherdeep? It's not particularly dark at all. I would describe them as having an average balance of light and dark.