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​

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Heh, maybe you are coming to grips with what happens when D&D becomes popular and diverse people start to play it?

Sometimes D&D can be "manly". Sometimes D&D can be "girly".

D&D is an adventure whose only limit is ones imagination.

There is nothing unmanly about cuddly kittens!

 

[DarkCrisis]

D&D is serious business and it must have serious art to be taken seriously.

View attachment 153987

A picture from the AD&D Player's Handbook. One of the earliest and most brutal versions of the game.

To be fair the image (and other like it) are supposed to be funny.

And weren’t they small and at the bottom of pages and not really primary art?

Context is key and all that

 

[Yaarel]

There is nothing unmanly about cuddly kittens!

I am totally on board with the name "scamper".

 

[LizardWizard]

None are comedy

Especially the one about crazy goblins launching a Candlekeep tower into space.

However, I do agree that "too comedic" is a weird choice of criticism for CM. There are many, many much more glaring flaws there, something you would never learn from the absurdly positive reviews.

 

[DarkCrisis]

If we didn’t already know the authors, I would think Matt Mercer was behind this book. This setting seems to fit well in the tone of his world/Crit Role.

That’s not a complaint fyi.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

If we didn’t already know the authors, I would think Matt Mercer was behind this book. This setting seems to fit well in the tone of his world/Crit Role.

That’s not a complaint fyi.

On this we can agree. The alternate cover art does seem pretty similar to the overall art styles of Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and Netherdeep. I know that one of the people that wrote and adventure for this book had previously worked for Critical Role (I can't remember their name), so that could be a link between them.

 

[Remathilis]

There's an adventure in an angel-ruled city, I believe. If you don't have one of those in your campaign setting, it will be less than useful. There's one adventure which is, to quote the author 'questions that arise from a nation finding its feet after liberating itself and becoming an independent nation'. Same.

This is a book, as far as i know, in which PoC writers have specifically tried to incorporate aspects of their ancestral cultures into the material they've put forward. The adventures seem to be intended to be ABOUT culture, or with culture as a central theme. And I am entirely 100% on side with that. But it does inevitably makes them less easily transportable to other settings, because the cultural assumptions may not fit. And the reverse is also true. Many D&D adventures are easily transportable from Greyhawk to FR to wherever simply because they share a lot of the same old bog-standard quasi-European setting assumptions. A Forgotten Realms adventure will probably be less likely to translate directly to the Mughal or Mesoamerican-inspired settings in this book too, for the same reason..

It's a feature, not a bug. But it does make the book perhaps less functionally useful to someone whose group plays in an old D&D world or homebrew which lacks places where its setting assumptions don't have a place to be.

Agreed. It's the downside to a bunch of diverse campaign settings vs a single setting; there are more choices, but you also increase the likelihood that a specific option isn't right for you. I like Theros for example, but aside from the two subclasses, there isn't a lot I need from it for my Ravenloft game. Ditto with Strixhaven. And that's ok, I don't need every book catered to me.

My original thought when I heard about this was "hmmm... Not for me." But the dollops of lore on the different adventures have begun to move me towards "maybe, depends on the exact contents."

 

[Warpiglet-7]

More "cute and fluffy D&D?"
I dislike the aesthetic of D&D these days - displacer beast kittens, flying lemurs, etc. It makes it look childish. Couple that with "talking through problems with the bad guys" from recent campaigns, and I'm not interested at all.
It could've been Planescape.

My thoughts exactly. I love modules a la yawning portal but with some level of fantasy grit.

I know some people say “you were a kid once! They are trying to appeal!”

sorry, it would not have been what I wanted then either. I liked the implied mystery and danger then too. Sneaking to watch Excalibur and Conan on cable probably warped me.

but I am done with this aesthetic for certain. I will buy another anthology however if it’s got the right feel. I have not given up entirely.

 

[Umbran]

My thoughts exactly. I love modules a la yawning portal but with some level of fantasy grit.

Sure, and that's fine. Folks should be allowed to like what the like.

However...

Does the adage, "Don't judge a book by its cover," ring a bell? Maybe, I dunno, wait until there's more solid information about the content before you decide you will or will not partake of that content?

 

[Mournblade94]

Considering that the Kinder (ugh) are now in playtesting; I think Dragonlance is pretty much assured. I'd like it if Dark Sun got a new book but they've got to finish the 5e Psion first.

Darksun is a nightmare in this current political environment. You'd absolutely have to advance the time line to free all the slaves, and play in the post slavery Dark Sun. We all know how well 4e Forgotten Realms was received by fans for the time jump.