Review: Journeys Through The Radiant Citadel

tl;dr: some pretty good adventures, standard 5e structures better for a tour-the-world than plane-hopping.

I got to put a handful of these adventures to the test so I feel fit to review this one now. Originally picked up with some keeness in anticipation of a planar adventure anthology - something that was going to deliver adventures in places that felt different. The premise was we get a bunch of adventures that happen in different cultures. In-world these are different realms that are connected to the central Radiant Citadel but the adventures and their settings could be accessed in other ways.

I like that this anthology gave us some interesting new options - both places and stand alone adventures that can be dropped into a planehopping campaign. I like the potential in the book for these adventures to break up other adventure arcs or to offer settings to arrive in that feel a bit different. General reception from among the games group I play at has been positive enough; it does not have the gold star reputation of Candlekeep but there are good adventures in here.

We get good variety of different places that could be encountered in one book - the next nearest alternative that I can think of would be to scour a whole bunch of different settings and pull an adventure out for them. If your players are embarking on an old school Sliders-style world-a-week campaign then this is a great resource to meet that 'what is different about this place' demand without killing yourself assimilating setting books.

I grabbed it when it came out because I was really pepped for cool, transplanar travel to places that are genuinely different and a breath of fresh air. I liked the pitch WotC gave of "we've tapped a bunch of people who are coming from different cultural backgrounds, to give you something different" - I thought, cool something unusual, I'm here for that.

Draconic ancestries and noble lines (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from Forsaken Garden has the topic of Haves & Have Nots - so I was inspired to write about the dragonblooded noble houses of my home campaign - inspired by Dragon Kings of Atlas Games 2004 "Seven Civilizations".

My home campaign has 'dragonbloods' the long descended, much diluted ancestors of dragons as a significant chunk of the nobility - PC's included. Dropping 'dragons' in on top of the usual human noble house too-ing and fro-ing has lead to some interesting effects. 'Rule by sword-right' is pretty close to the surface at the edges - this interacts with long-life because dragonbloods live for a long time and in folk memory (grandpa's stories to people alive today) there have been significant turnover in lands and titles because folk memory is centuries long.

The continent most of the adventures are set on was once conquered by elves with their own notions of what makes a suitable elf until they left and everyone else got to pick up the pieces. This institutional overhang of 'elven civilization', even if only in the warped memory of most, has lead to a strong affinity for elven-court like behaviours in public, even when these are a badly-fitting mask over red-clawed conquest.

Shiny TTRPG links #200

A notable milestone in these compilations of links from about the interwebs! For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Goblin Punch goes on a tear with Monster Checklist, The Monstrome, Angelmen (+ Monstrome v2), Tower in the Wasteland v2, Pennetra (New Combat System),

Break!! gives us Setting: Outer World Holidays

The Graverobber's Guide shares Rough Terrain Cards

Rise Up Comus gives us Running a Tolkien Game that Does Not Exist

Necromolds shares Mold, Squish, and Roll Initiative: Necromolds Brings its Playful Dough Minis to D&D 5e

Runehammer gives us Runehammer D&D 5.5 rules mods

The Geekerati Newsletter writes on The Beauty of the "Non-House" Role Playing Game Magazine

I Cast Light! gives us PRACTICAL MAGIC: Or what to do now that your 1st level Magic-User has cast their one spell

The Githyanki Main

Given the fore-grounding of the githyanki presence on the Astral over the past couple of editions and in Baldurs Gate 3 - and given the new structure of the multiverse with all material plane systems floating as bubbles in the Astral, this makes them the 'universal' power - omnipresent but not omnipotent.

Going with 'Activities on the Astral' from 2e 'A Guide to the Astral Plane' we have explorers kicking about and hunting expeditions, essence mining on some select few dead gods and lots of attention to military patrols and campaigns. The primary foes for all this military activity are the githzerai and the illithids.

I thought a good model for this would be the Spanish in the Age of Piracy, an empire where reach has exceeded grasp - claiming all the astral but being a finite, if mighty, power. For inspiration, see the Spanish as portrayed in Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides. They seem like a decent model - relatively competent, fanatical, directed on religious grounds by a distant leader acting through devoted agents, lots of resources where they bring them to bear - a fearsome enough threat.

If we run with this analogy - mostly to get a sense of what the 'pulse' of the Empire is when things are just ticking along then we have a few parallels and a few differences.

Parallels
Treasure galleons - with Vlaakith on her throne serving as the draw for essence from scattered dead gods or booty from raids and conquests by her faithful - use all your treasure fleet tropes - incredibly valuable, very well guarded
Lost treasures - psychic storms, astral dreadnaughts, all these are hazards that could wreck an astral skiff and then roaming colour pools could see it cast somewhere odd on the planes
Treasure maps - grizzled githyanki survivors clawing their way back from being stranded on some Vlaakith-forsaken prime with a map of where their ship went down
A few big hammers - become enough of a nuisance and you will have nightmarish resources sent after you but conversely power is highly centralised and there are mostly bigger fish to fry
Not enough hands - For my own Spelljammer campaign I had my party set up with Letters of Marque to patrol/investigate various doings in the far flung reaches of the astral - from the Githyanki point of view they have regions of the astral that are not of critical interest to Vlaakith and so lightly held, where the local commanders need to draw on mercenary crews or wandering adventurers to keep tabs on things.
Hot and cold politics - depending on whether an envoy from the crown is present, those present in whatever far-flung outpost will indulge in less back stabbing for personal gain, plenty of 'more righteous than thou' front stabbing perceived weakness in the face of Vlaakiths will. Should an envoy with direct instructions from the lich queen arrive, people will fall in line

Differences
Hunting (astral-whaling) - long haul hunting voyages are a couple of centuries later strictly, but they are still age of sail so they work
Conquest of the locals - most sources talking about the githyanki make no mention of non-githyanki; implying they wipe out or drive off anyone they run into when they take new territories

The Lords Funeral (RPG Blog Carnival)

This months blog carnival from Forsaken Garden has the topic of Haves & Have Nots - so I was inspired to write about an old lords funeral some family witnessed not so long ago. This is offered up in the spirit of being closer to the kind of country customs most of our adventurers might encounter as opposed to the high pomp and ceremony of British Royal funerals which would the most obvious point of reference otherwise.

The local grand old landholder died recently and his funeral was well attended; a relatively rare glimpse into that old world. Use this for the more traditional, smaller scale events than the grand paegantry we all witnessed for Elizabeth II.

Groups in attendance, in order of social standing, were:
The Family - including the new lord, potentially also including others of the blood family returned from far afield.
The County - the old lords peers, the local nobility and other major land-holders.
Our Friends - the non-noble members of the lairds community, be that co-religionists, or in something more fantasy could be same-species or other affinity group.
Our Betters - important members of local society - non-landed nobility, significant clergy of other religions, community leaders, and so on.
The Neighbours - local farmers and landholders, including the tenants of the laird and other commonfolk who had some sort of connection to the laird through their activities - i.e. they would have been recognised by the laird.
The sixth, unnamed group, are everyone else who has come along, the local peasantry, tradesfolk, passing travellers, others who wish to pay respects. This group will probably be similar in numbers to all the others if not more.

Boiling that down into a table, because after all this is a gaming blog: d100 - who are you meeting at this local nobles funeral
1-2 Family - children, cousins, aged siblings or cousins
3-8 Peers - other local noblility; could be the nobles themselves could be various representatives, minor family members and so on
9-22 Faithful - people who shared some notable commonality with the deceased; in our fantasy games that could be religion, it could be plane of origin, it could be species.
23-43 Respectables - regional notables, not quite nobles, nor sharing the notable trait of the deceased, but the 'leaders of the community' who would need to be seen attending
44-50 Known Commoners - local dwellers, could be tenant farmers, old hirelings, homunculi, craftsfolk - those who would have actually worked with and for the deceased - the most likely to both know useful things and share them with strangers come to town (such as adventurers)
51-100 Masses - everyone else; while plenty happy to talk about the deceased, "facts" discussed may be wildly unreliable.

While the demographic split above is reasonable, attitudes and atmosphere can vary wildly, from the tension of an heirless throne to the fond celebration of life for a respected and long-lived lord. Tensions between those of the 'notable trait' and everyone else can also be played upon - appearing in particular between the Peers and the Respectables, the Faithful and the Massses. Depending on what exactly the old lord liked to do with his time, the Family may or may not be happy to see the Known Commoners present and/or to see them talk with outsiders.

Lots of social potential to be had at a funeral, in particular because lots of folk who would normally quarrel, possibly violently, will hold themselves in check for this occassion only out of respect.

Shiny TTRPG links #199

Links from about the interwebs - feeds, sidebars and discord conversations mostly. For more, see the previous list found here or you can check the RPG Blog Carnival or on Third Kingdom Games news roundup. Originally inspired by weaver.skepti.ch End of Week links.

Prismatic Weekly gives us They’re Eating the Blogs

Gorgon Bones shares Roleplaying Games are Wargames

Evan Torner on Rascal writes Combat in Dungeons & Dragons

Grumpy Wizard gives us How I Use Published Adventures In A Homebrew Sandbox

Seth Louis Game development writes How I Started a Cairn Open Table

Daily Illuminator shares The Reality Of Tariffs In Tabletop Gaming

House of the New Zodiac asks Are popular bloggers actually good DMs?

Save vs Total Party Kill gives us Negative Space Reprise

Fae Errant gives us In Defence of Mediocre Content

Deep Time Monster Groups - Adversary design notes from Hexcrawloween

Background to the hexcrawloween region that I cooked up was twists on classic monsters - taking the 'niche' of certain monsters and imagining their equivalents for other species and times.

I had a notion of what this patch of the world was - Land of the Dead, ruled by Theocracy of Kirianshalee, currently being invaded by dragon-blooded orcs from the north. After using the Wilderness Generator from Izirions Enchirdion of the West Marches to put some finer texture over that I got a patch of reality where clearly the veil had worn thin - lots of planar, fey and afterlife bleed through - souls not going where they ought to one way or another.

All this following on from the 'epochs' reading I had been doing for GLoGtober got me thinking of how this is the age of humans - or human-like things - but certainly there have been other ages dominated by other beings - and thus there must have been an ecosystem of predators, mimics and suchlike for those other times.