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​

 

[Ixal]

It's hardly a focus. The setting is not deeply detailed in any respect, and the descriptors of the economics barely rate a couple of paragraphs, if that. Yes, it's true, there is no mention of regulation of the movements of travellers and cargo using the jewels. You seem to take that to mean that there is no regulation, which leads to implausibilities that you describe. Don't assume that there is no regulation of travel, and you'll eliminate a large part of what your objecting to.

With only a few pages spend on the Citadel several paragraphs is a focus.
And with how much the culture of the Citadel is painted as utopian and egalitarian its rather implausible that they then have egoistical restrictions on movement without them at least be mentioned.

 

[Irlo]

With only a few pages spend on the Citadel several paragraphs is a focus.
And with how much the culture of the Citadel is painted as utopian and egalitarian its rather implausible that they then have egoistical restrictions on movement without them at least be mentioned.

I'm not sure what you mean by egotistical in this context. They exile people who repeatedly circumvent the toll gate into the Citadel by flying or teleporting.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Except the mind reading guards turn you away when they think you do not pay enough. Huge difference.

And you simply assume that the Radiant Citadel is a well visited trade hub without offering an explanation why. Trade hubs encouraged trade, the Citadel discourage it. And because of the way the notportals work the next big city in another realm is just 1 mile or less away. Would Venice have been a trade hub if Rome would have been just 1 mile next to it and Venice had high taxes? No it would not have been.

Is it mentionned that you don't pay the taxes when offboarding one of the jewels? What makes you think that you can ferry your goods out of the Jewel you took to reach the Radiant Citadel dock? What makes you think you can move from one jewel to another without paying the import tax? If it is written that you can and that's a deal-breaker with your group, I'd suggest saying that taxes are collected as you offload your entry jewel. It is said they all dock near the Passage of Respite (not at, near) and anyone not entering the city by goign through the passage of respite face heavy fines. I'd say the passage of respite is the place where the import tax custom office stands, and you must cross it to wander from one jewel to another.

Sure, merchants could choose to not sell goods through the radiant Citadel, but surely the cost of moving cargo through the Deep Ethereal, locate the home world of the civilizations that connect to the Citadel and hire guards and supply for such an extensive caravan would be less than paying the tax to transit through the RC. They could Teleport from one jewel to another to bypass the citadel completely, I guess, provided there is no unmentionned magical protections, the trader is able to cast 7th level spells and it's worth taking this risk (because you are basically breaking into the concord jewel as a stowaway) to move what can be carried by 8 medium sized humans.

They could also choose not to access the market of whole civilizations, but if you're dealing in things that are simply not found in other worlds, even a cheap ressource at home could sell well on another plane, making it worth selling your goods to another planes's royalty even with an import tax.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

?
They land in front of the entrance/passage, you get off, you wait till the next jewel arrives and you go on again?

Oh if you do that that requires entering the Radiant Citadel and getting your goods taxed.

The Jewels all dock at different areas. Like all I see happening with your scenario is merchant comes on Jewel offloads goods, refuses to pay the tax, is asked to wait until the Jewel they came on returns and go home.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Because the book presents them as a super peaceful and egalitarian society which highly values freedom.
If the book would not put so much emphasis on that then of course the first assumption would be that no trade would be allowed to pass through the Citadel and instead had to be sold to and bought from local traders.

I don't think they'd force to use local traders as intermediaries. They could simply just collect the import taxes and let the same traders export their goods. It would work as a toll along the road, based on the value of goods transported. I don't think any of that goes against egalitarian (everyone pays the tax when entering the city) and valuing freedom.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I don't think they'd force to use local traders as intermediaries. They could simply just collect the import taxes and let the same traders export their goods. It would work as a toll along the road, based on the value of goods transported. I don't think any of that goes against egalitarian (everyone pays the tax when entering the city) and valuing freedom.

Yeah like they would just have the tax collectors around the docking area of each Jewel ready to collect on arrivals. Everyone is supposed to enter via the Jewels so that's where they would collect.

 

[Incenjucar]

At a bare minimum the place is going to act as a toll booth. You don't build a city around a resource without exerting some control over that resource. Otherwise people would be using it to transport horrible, horrible things willy nilly.

 

[Irlo]

There will be controls on the non-Citadel side at the Jewel arrival/departure point also. No world would want to allow unfettered access of travelers, commodities, or armies. Hence the diplomacy and the agreements in place to use the Citadel as the meeting places.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't know of any D&D setting that survives the kind of economic analysis that the Radiant Citadel is being subject to. Many, if not most D&D cities are too populous for their agricultural hinterland. Many D&D polities cannot secure their borders against marauders or their internal lines of communication and commerce.
There are many threads here and elsewhere pointing out that castles in a D&D environment would not look like classic High Medieval European castles.
Many classic D&D dungeons really ought to be flooded normally and their floorplans have neither the pumping infrastructure nor the ventilation structure to make them viable.
A lot of this is thinking too hard about D&D backgrounds, ok, there is nothing wrong with trying to piece together a really coherent world building for a D&D game that takes the implications of the game system and sees where that leads but none of the official material (that I am aware of) has ever done so.

The biggest issue I have with the Radiant Citadel, is that, I bought and read (not deeply) and now some months later I have no real impression of the adventures. I have a stronger impression of the Candlekeep adventures.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't know of any D&D setting that survives the kind of economic analysis that the Radiant Citadel is being subject to. Many, if not most D&D cities are too populous for their agricultural hinterland. Many D&D polities cannot secure their borders against marauders or their internal lines of communication and commerce.
There are many threads here and elsewhere pointing out that castles in a D&D environment would not look like classic High Medieval European castles.
Many classic D&D dungeons really ought to be flooded normally and their floorplans have neither the pumping infrastructure nor the ventilation structure to make them viable.
A lot of this is thinking too hard about D&D backgrounds, ok, there is nothing wrong with trying to piece together a really coherent world building for a D&D game that takes the implications of the game system and sees where that leads but none of the official material (that I am aware of) has ever done so.

The biggest issue I have with the Radiant Citadel, is that, I bought and read (not deeply) and now some months later I have no real impression of the adventures. I have a stronger impression of the Candlekeep adventures.

Nothing in 5e has done so. They used to put more effort in for previous editions, at least sometimes, but it seems WotC feels the majority of their fans no longer care.