Plane hopping adventures? Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel Review (D&D5e)
Not everyone is a fan of the "collections of smaller adventures" books that Wizards of the Coast has put out. The idea was intriguing when Tales from the Yawning Portal came out, as throwing dungeons into campaigns can be pretty easy to do so. Ghosts of Saltmarsh was the next one, and while each individual adventure was written well, the theme of the adventures made the book feel like you were supposed to run the adventures one after another. Candlekeep Mysteries, which is still one of my favorite 5e books, was the best version of this. In that book we had a bunch of adventures that had similar vibes and themes, but were distinct enough that it didn't feel like they were that connected to each other. This gave DMs the ability to pluck out single adventures to take their players down.
The latest D&D book, Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel, feels a lot like Candlekeep Mysteries in this regard. The book contains 13 new standalone adventures. The titular "Radiant Citadel" is a hub that DMs can use to get their players to each of these adventures. The Radiant Citadel is a city floating out in the "Ethereal Plane", basically outside of all the normal realms that exist in D&D. Fifteen different communities are linked with the Radiant Citadel, coexisting with each other in the city. Outside the city, crystals can phase people back to the homelands of those different civilizations. This sets the stage for the different adventures in the book.
Not the same-old same-old
"Journeys" also achieves something else, something that I've been wanting from D&D5e for quite a while now: new things to experience. Up until this point, most of the adventure books of D&D have taken some facet of previously established D&D lore and expanded beyond it. That, or the adventure has taken place in the same coastline of the Sword Coast/Forgotten Realms. I know nostalgia is huge, but I've been wanting to see some new places, some new creations in the official books.
To do this, Wizards reached out to people with different cultural backgrounds and hired them to create the new various settings that take place in "Journeys". Each civilization isn't just a bunch of cultural stereotypes, but civilizations that take aspects from real-world settings and combine it with fiction to become new fleshed-out worlds for players to experience. Aides are available in the adventures to help out the DMs as well - like a pronunciation guide to help say prominent words correctly. After the adventures, there is a couple of pages to detail out important aspects to each land. DMs can use this to extend adventures into a new campaign, or to make the NPCs more distinct and believable.
A few bumps in the road
I really enjoyed this book, but it is not a slam-dunk perfect book. First of all, each adventure has a new type of creature in it that is referenced at the end of each section. This was very annoying to me, as the adventure just keeps referring to said creature while keeping the information/stats of the creature at the very end. To understand what is going on, you have to flip to the back of the adventure and see what the creature is, then go back to the adventure. Ideally, this information should just be in the middle of the adventure, after the creature is mentioned the first time.
Secondly, while the early adventures and later adventures have a lot of variety to them, a few of the mid-level adventures were a bit off. Some of them were a bit formulaic, as if they had been given the same notes and were sticking closer to the script than everyone else. If you are only using one to throw into your adventures, this isn't a problem. However, if you end up using more than one in your campaigns, your players might become a bit disinterested.
The last problem is only a problem because of the world building in this book. The book does a great job describing the Radiant Citadel and providing a lot of potential plot hooks that DMs could use to set their games in the city. Yet, there is not a single adventure set in the city! I would have liked to have seen at least one adventure that shows players the uniqueness of the Radiant Citadel given in the first section of the book.
Conclusion
This book is great. Lots of new locations and stories if you need to break your campaign free from some of the standard D&D stereotypes. I think the first adventure might be my favorite, as there are "Market Games" that players can take part in, and in my experience these types of encounters can result in some of the funniest roleplaying moments.
These "adventure collection" books are great for plucking adventures to show people D&D. When my daughter and her best friend were curious about D&D, I let them pick a campaign based on the descriptions of all the books. Yet they have busy schedules and by the time they want to play again, they will have forgotten everything that we did in that first adventure. This way, each time they play they get a self-contained adventure.
How long before we get a "best of" collection, where someone makes a campaign weaving together the best adventures from all these various collections into a (somewhat) cohesive story?
Note: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. Or let me know on Twitter or Facebook. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.