Is that confirmed? I don't recall that being the case.
D&D (2024) What Should A New Core Setting Look Like?
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
Hiring a Japanese team of artists to create a manga-style setting shouldn't be such a crazy idea. Of course we would need a lot of "negotations" because if this new setting is for Western market, then there are different preferences. It is as if you are in a family meeting, but different members would rather different ways to cooke the traditional recipe. I don't mean an update Kara-Tur or a WotC version of Rokugan/Legend of the five Rings but Japaneses creating a "western" D&D setting. Here the goal wouldn't be to sell books but making money with light novels, manga and later anime or even some videogame.
Some tropes from isekai may be wellcome but I don't like the abuse of the overpowered main character with a harem of monster girls. A new setting should avoid the handicap of Dragonlance where the main plot is too linked with a little group of heroes, as if the rest of the continent was a "boring" place.
A new setting shouldn't be a simple clone or rip-off of Warcraft or Warhammer. That could be done by fandome themself for their homemade campaigns. Each new setting needs its own mark of identity, to find its own style, to follow its own path.
And all the settings have to be designed to allow space for all possible new crunch: species, monsters, classes... If a setting banns certain classes or species, then it is a bad business.
* How would be a D&D otome (date simulation) game? Maybe the main character is a princess in Birthright, or a mystic (psionic manifester).
Some tropes from isekai may be wellcome but I don't like the abuse of the overpowered main character with a harem of monster girls. A new setting should avoid the handicap of Dragonlance where the main plot is too linked with a little group of heroes, as if the rest of the continent was a "boring" place.
A new setting shouldn't be a simple clone or rip-off of Warcraft or Warhammer. That could be done by fandome themself for their homemade campaigns. Each new setting needs its own mark of identity, to find its own style, to follow its own path.
And all the settings have to be designed to allow space for all possible new crunch: species, monsters, classes... If a setting banns certain classes or species, then it is a bad business.
* How would be a D&D otome (date simulation) game? Maybe the main character is a princess in Birthright, or a mystic (psionic manifester).
That's the vibe I get from the Radiant Citadel if it was turned up to 12, but I guess that's not a campaign setting, it's a big location.
W'rkncacnter
Hero
Frozen_Heart
Hero
A manga style setting would be an amazing idea as 'a' DnD setting.
It absolutely should not be the 'core' setting which the entire game is based around by default, as that would completely alienate a massive section of the playerbase.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
Let's rethink the situation from this point of view. Why should I spend my money in a new setting when I can read the fandom wiki of Warcraft, Game of Thrones or umpteen isekai mangas?
A new setting can't be simplely a compilation of places. To earn enough brand power it needs showing something to prove being special and unique.
* I am thinking about something like Ghostwalk, but the sentient creatures when die don't become the classical "undead spirits" but "elemental spirits" (even other types: shadow, wood, taint..).
* How would be the "wildspace" of Pelinore if this was full of "disks"? With a spelljammer the heroes could explore other disks ruled by all type of creatures: giants, dragons, feys, aliens..
A new setting can't be simplely a compilation of places. To earn enough brand power it needs showing something to prove being special and unique.
* I am thinking about something like Ghostwalk, but the sentient creatures when die don't become the classical "undead spirits" but "elemental spirits" (even other types: shadow, wood, taint..).
* How would be the "wildspace" of Pelinore if this was full of "disks"? With a spelljammer the heroes could explore other disks ruled by all type of creatures: giants, dragons, feys, aliens..
Shardstone
Hero
Radiant Citadel gets such an unfairly bad rep. There is a lot of conflict in Radiant Citadel, and that's something I think a lot of people have trouble groking due to the marketing the project had. But the conflict is intense, and the adventures themselves often present things like totalitarian celestial governments abusing their powers, incredibly creepy hauntings that terrorize entire realms, and straight up arcano-natural disasters threatening civilizations, and so on.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I think it does have an unfair bad rep, having glanced through it - but I think it's partly the marketing, and partly that the central setting is supposed to be a Star Trek-like utopia, but actually reads as a slightly creepy place, like Picard and crew would visit and initially it would seem really cool then something bad would happen to one or some of the crew because the violated some unmentioned but vital rule, then there'd have to be some odd and unfair trial and Picard would have to make a speech or whatever. But then I think people are a bit afraid to call it out as being slightly creepy, because it's supposed to multicultural and lovely, according to the marketing.
I guess I'd rate it as a bit less creepy than several supposedly "good guy" cities in the FR, which actually have some really messed-up laws that pretty much no-one actually plays them as having.
Several of the adventures themselves, as you say, deal with some fairly serious and alarming conflicts. A couple of them feel like they chicken out of the like, real conflict they seem to be about, but that's nothing unique to Radiant Citadel - it's common with American corporation-produced media (c.f. the MCU - I think that's part why they're so afraid to introduce the X-Men in a real way, a whole bunch of AAA videogames - though not all, absolutely every single book written by Brandon Sanderson, and so on).
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
Streets of Fire is amongst my all time favorite movies - its got retro-dieselpunk weirdness but not quite sci-fi. It might be adapted to a cool DnD setting too - combine it with the Chinese movie Nezha Reborn (set in 1920s Shanghai) for the fantasy visuals too.
Shardstone
Hero
My read is that the Radiant Citadel is supposed to have conflict within it in addition to without. It is a faux-utopia; a bundle of hope that is also slightly rotting. There is something eldritch about the ancestor spirits that run it and imo that is intentional.
