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​

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I fully intend to move it to the Astral and mash it up with Spelljammer to run a bootleg DS9/Bab5 campaign.

If the original Shemeska still lurked here, I'm sure I would hear how this is a bad idea, but I think we probably have one more transitive plane than we really need. I think we could easily just make the Astral and Ethereal different regions of the same plane, with multiple ways of accessing it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If the original Shemeska still lurked here, I'm sure I would hear how this is a bad idea, but I think we probably have one more transitive plane than we really need. I think we could easily just make the Astral and Ethereal different regions of the same plane, with multiple ways of accessing it.

When I first heard the term, I assumed the Deep Astral was the new Ethereal.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In other news, I was just looking at DMs Guild and there's now a pretty robust set of Radiant Citadel PDFs available.

The day one Journeys Beyond the Radiant Citadel PDF is great (huge upgrades to San Citlan, which was already one of the most compelling of the settings, IMO), but there's ones that cover life and adventures on the citadel itself, among others.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So you're saying the tax code takes inspiration from the USA?

I dunno if there's another country in the West that handles tax as appallingly as the USA.

It is truly insane compared to tax schemes I've seen for other countries.

Like, in the UK, most years, guess how many tax forms I have to fill out? Zero is the answer. Because of PAYE your tax on your main income is auto-deducted and generous tax-free allowances on various stuff mean you have to either be doing pretty damn good or be self-employed to even have to fill stuff in. And the self-employed forms are drastically more straightforward than US tax forms.

I've no idea why the US of all places, home of freedom, hater of bureaucracy has the Maximum Kafka approach to taxes, but there we are.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The cost to get into the Radient Citadel is, “well, how much you got?”. It‘s a negotiation and the supplied ethics and motivations of the people the PCs must negotiate the fees with are to hit rich people harder than poor people. How could it be any more clear?

Every easily.

Giving any kind of baseline at all would be clearer. Like are they expecting 0.1% of your wealth, 1%, or like 40%? All those would be valid reads from what they've said.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Have people never been to a Pay What You Want sale? Seen an ad for 'Or Best Offer'?

It is so weird that people think this is so weird.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Heh, this discussion reminds me of a player I had who absolutely lost his poop when he learned that in Waterdeep, self defense is not a justification for killing a citizen. There are no legal defenses in Waterdeep for killing a citizen, full stop. Your punishment might change due to circumstances, but, if you kill a Waterdhavian citizen, and get caught for it, you will be punished, regardless of circumstance.

He absolutely lost his poop over this. Couldn't even imagine a society where that could possibly be true. When it was pointed out that there are numerous societies where this actually is true - to varying degrees - he still couldn't wrap his head around it.

This is the same thing. Gift societies exist. They really do and they function. I made a comment way upthread about going to church. Let's see you skip the collection plate a couple of times at service and see what happens. Absolutely not against the law, but, guess what, no one does it. Or, at least, no one does it twice.

Having lived in a gift giving culture for years now, it's still astonishing to me the lengths people will go to to give gifts. You cannot travel anywhere in Japan without coming back with boxes of gifts for everyone. My students constantly are giving me little boxes of cookies or whatnot every time they go away pretty much anywhere and come back. And I'd be in deep doo doo if I didn't do the same.

Not everyone is American. There are other cultures in the world. Heck, even in the States, where you have tipping culture. Let's see you regularly go to the same restaurant and not tip. People might bitch about tipping, but, guess what, they do it. Because, that's what's done.

There's a huge problem with this, though.

None of these examples expect to psychically intuit how much you're supposed to give. Rather it comes from cultural norms of a culture you're part of, and if you don't know them, people are helpful! Not vague nor likely to "rebuke" you.

When you go to church, first off, in the UK, at least at Anglican churches, yeah nobody expects anyone but regular church-goers to give, so assuming your experience applies worldwide is pretty funny given you're criticising people for being insufficiently cosmopolitan. More importantly, you can see what other people give, and outside of Roman Catholics, it has absolutely no real relationship to their wealth. Some people are cheap, some people aren't, and people who are earn 10x what the next guy does don't usually give 10x as much (again, in RC churches this is different given you're supposed to tithe - i.e. give 10% - a fixed value I note). Anyway, you watch what others give, and it is easy for you to learn what's appropriate, if you're not outright told by a friend - it's part of assimilating into the culture of that church.

US tipping culture specifically exists because the US refuses to pay staff properly. It's a specific US phenomenon. And guidebooks and the like explain it and give the expected values. You're not stopped by the TSA on entering the US and asked for a "guess a number" amount of money. Can you imagine? The TSA are bad enough as it is.

Gift culture are not the same thing as this, and it seems like tangent to even bring them up. Again, only the least cosmopolitan and most ignorant members of those societies are going to be offended or "rebuke" foreigners who don't immediately "get" the need to give gifts (I'm sure there's no shortage of people like that, but it doesn't make them big or clever).

There are dysfunctional and corrupt cultures where you are indeed expected to bribe everyone and yeah you don't know how much unless you have some local with you who knows the expected values, but that's not a good thing, and it harms the function of those cultures severely.

This whole thing would be completely different if, instead of you being expected to "give at the door", you were ushered in, and perhaps taken aside and it explained that it's expect that you pay to help the upkeep of the society, and they like suggest some amount as appropriate (y'know, like a tithe!).

Heh, this discussion reminds me of a player I had who absolutely lost his poop when he learned that in Waterdeep, self defense is not a justification for killing a citizen. There are no legal defenses in Waterdeep for killing a citizen, full stop. Your punishment might change due to circumstances, but, if you kill a Waterdhavian citizen, and get caught for it, you will be punished, regardless of circumstance.

Sure, but what he's really reacting to is an issue the FR has in a number of places.

Societies are presented as just/reasonable and modern-Western-like (like the lack of sexism/racism, no caste structures, etc.), but they actually have laws that are so profoundly at odds with the "common law" sense of justice and right/wrong that is deeply built into most English-speaking cultures that it's absolutely shocking when that comes out.

The problem is that Waterdeep is presented as basically "New York" or the like, "The Big City". But Waterdeep is actually more like Singapore. A bizarre fascist dictatorship (in this case the fascists are a council, but they're still a dictatorship) masquerading as a normal society, and with insane punishments and insane laws that you're just not going to see coming if you're from a country with an entirely different approach to justice and law-breaking.

If societies like Waterdeep were presented better as what they are (and I'm Ed Greenwood or whoever did a good job in his own campaign), instead of this being dropped on Very Surprised players, who are used to the more typical common law approaches to justice of much of western Faerun, we'd have less of an issue.

Myself, I remember noticing that Waterdeep had completely insane laws and was a fascist dictatorship (or whatever euphemism one prefers for that) when I was reading the boxed set, luckily before the PCs in my FR campaign ever went there, and I was able to present as deeply creepy and messed-up as it should be presented, so they didn't expecting resembling "justice" from the laws there.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've no idea why the US of all places, home of freedom, hater of bureaucracy has the Maximum Kafka approach to taxes, but there we are.

Oh, I think you can guess. (It rhymes with "schmorporate schmeed.")

Here is an astonishing ProPublica article on the issue, which explains why Americans can't just have the IRS calculate everyone's taxes automatically, like their counterparts do in many countries: How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing

(ProPublica, for those outside the US, is a truly wonderful investigative non-profit that stands shoulder to shoulder with the best investigative newsrooms in the world.)

EDIT: Better link. ProPublica has been covering this issue a lot over the years, and if you want to get good and angry, there's a lot of stories on their site to click through.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

A bizarre fascist dictatorship (in this case the fascists are a council, but they're still a dictatorship) masquerading as a normal society, and with insane punishments and insane laws that you're just not going to see coming if you're from a country with an entirely different approach to justice and law-breaking.

Just a small note: fascism is specifically a far right nationalist autocracy or oligarchy that focuses on “us vs them” social politics, favoritist capitalism (ie handing entire industries to the people whose money you get the juiciest portion of), and supremecist theory wrt to some combination of ethnicity, gender, and ability/disability.

Waterdeep is definitely not that. It is an oligarchy, just not a fascist one.

 

[Umbran]

Waterdeep is definitely not that. It is an oligarchy, just not a fascist one.

That said, deep debate on exactly how to classify Waterdeep's government is apt to run up against the board rules quickly, so this is probably a far as it should go.