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​

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, it looks pretty good. The Persian and Venezuelan-based adventures especially interest me. (But also, I mean--who doesn't like a good ghost story?)

I'm already thinking how the prior collections can be mixed with these to create a multidimensional sandbox.

 

[Greg Benage]

I agree. Planescape for me is all about the setting, not the various pre-made adventures in it. If the setting is compelling, I figure I can come up with something to homebrew in it. Radiant Citadel is especially encouraging to me because it populates the Deep Ethereal, and that's new territory for me.

I'd like to move it to the Astral and use it with Spelljammer, but I honestly have no real idea about planar geography at this point so I'm not sure how well it will work. I don't want to homebrew a bunch of stuff that will make my head hurt.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, if you ignore the ghosts and animated skeletons, it doesn't seem very "fantasy" at all.

For the record, while I'm usually part of the "anti-woke" brigade by the standards of this forum, this is exactly the kind of inclusive and diverse content I want. I'm not a fan of what @Lanefan calls the "sanitization" of D&D elsewhere, but I'm a big fan of this stuff right here.

Yeah. I think it's great that they are putting out a collection like this. My only issue is that I don't do plane hopping adventures and if these adventures are strongly tied to the various cultures, they aren't going to fit in my world which doesn't have those cultures in it. I'm hoping that they are just loosely tied to the various cultures, because I love anthology adventure books and would love to buy this.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I'd like to move it to the Astral and use it with Spelljammer, but I honestly have no real idea about planar geography at this point so I'm not sure how well it will work. I don't want to homebrew a bunch of stuff that will make my head hurt.

The planes are very weird and the question of how best to make sense of them brings headaches almost as soon as it's posed. One book that helped me a lot when I was writing is Dave Coulson's Codex of the Infinite Planes.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I'd like to move it to the Astral and use it with Spelljammer, but I honestly have no real idea about planar geography at this point so I'm not sure how well it will work. I don't want to homebrew a bunch of stuff that will make my head hurt.

If it helps, a very quick and easy run down as I understand it in 5e is to think of a Venn diagram with two large circles that partly overlap.

One of these circles is the Ethereal Plane - this is where the Inner Planes (the "Elemental" Planes) exist, as well as most Demiplanes.
The other circle is the Astral Plane - this is where the Outer Planes (Celestia, Baator, The Abyss, etc.) exist.
The region where the two overlap is where the Material Plane and its "echos", the Feywild and Shadowfell, exist.

 

[darjr]

The first adventure is being run by the Baldman games folks and WotC at their virtual D&D weekend!

 

[Magister Ludorum]

More than that: Crawford mad it clear that Tasha's ws the Psionic book: those were the Psionic options.

This is why I'm converting the 3.5 Psionics system for my group this summer. That's the one I liked best and since WotC won't do it, I will.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I wish we had gotten the Psychic Sorcerer and the Psi Die. But too many people were resistant to that cool idea.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The first adventure is being run by the Baldman games folks and WotC at their virtual D&D weekend!

That's a cute looking Kobold.

 

[Parmandur]

That's a cute looking Kobold.

The story seems to about a longstanding intergenerational rivalry between a family of Kobold chefs and another family of human chefs who work the same market town, with Yhai cultural milleu.