DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 31A: Kabel in Hiding

This is a trap. Head to Pythoness House, a manor house overlooking the King’s River Gorge in Oldtown. I will contact you there. Go now. They are coming.

Creative elements — characters, locations, actions, items, etc. — can manifest in a roleplaying game through:

• Introduction, when an element first appears.
• Repetition, when an element reappears.
• Reincorporation, when an element reappears in a new context and/or with connections to other pre-existing elements.

The distinction between repetition and reincorporation is a finicky one, and arguably often doesn’t have any practical effect. But the key thing we’re talking about here is setup and payoff.

It is narratively satisfying to our “evolved to deliver a dopamine hit whenever we identify cause-and-effect” brains when we recognize patterns and see the connections. We’re hardwired to fundamentally believe that the world makes sense, and that’s why we find deus ex machina so unsatisfying. (Plus, the payoff makes it clear we weren’t just wasting our time watching the first half of the film.)

There’s a whole gaggle of writing and improv techniques you’ll find clustered around this concept. You’ve got Chekhov’s Gun (if you make a big deal about something at the beginning of the story, it should have a payoff at the end) and the Rule of Three (you set it up, you remind the audience of what you set up, you get the big payoff by bringing it back a third time). All kinds of stuff.

Of course, the advantage a writer of a novel or movie has is that they can go back and revise the script to setup the stuff they need: If Jayhawk needs a gun in the final scene, for example, they can go back and hang it above the mantlepiece.

In a roleplaying game, though, you can’t go back and insert the gun. (Unless you’ve got a time machine. And if you have a time machine, please get in touch.) This is why it’s usually more useful to draw our inspiration from improv theater techniques, and think primarily in terms of:

• What has already been established in the fiction?
• How can I use those elements to fulfill my current creative needs?

(Unlike pure improv, though, the GM’s scenario design does afford some opportunity to plan ahead. So don’t discount that entirely.)

You can see this, for example, in the Principles of RPG Villainy, where simply asking, “Instead of a new villain, is there an existing villain I can use again?” can add great depth to your campaign.

Another way of thinking about this is that, each time you reuse an element of the campaign world, you are building up the players’ (and PCs’) relationship with that element. It’s kind of like applying lacquer. It’s all about the layering.

You’ll usually not even know what all those layers are adding up to. The mere act of adding the layers is enough. You’ll find the destination once you get there.

The flip side of this technique begins when you first introduce the element. A key trick here is making sure you drop enough specific detail so that you CAN reincorporate that element in the future. This doesn’t have to be a lot. In fact, to start out with, you may not need anything more than a label. For example, when the PCs go shopping for supplies, make a point of giving the shopkeep a name.

The name gives you handle that you can grab. If you don’t give the shopkeep a name, you won’t be able to easily refer to them as being the same shopkeep the next time the PCs go shopping.

Of course, giving the shopkeep a name doesn’t obligate you to reincorporate them in the future. There’ll probably be lots of random details that get scattered into your campaign that will never be revisited. That’s just fine.

WHEN PLAYERS REINCORPORATE

As you make a point of establishing these handles, though, you’ll likely discover that the players also start picking them up.

You can see a very large example of that in this session, as the PCs decide to offer Pythoness House — which they know to be long-abandoned — as a safehouse for Sir Kabel and his knights. But you’ll see it at every scale of interaction: They might choose to specifically go to that shopkeep you mentioned. Or hit up an NPC they met a half dozen sessions ago for a favor in solving their current problem.

Or it might even be a blink-and-you-miss-it reference in casual conversation.

If you’re a player reading this: Do more of this! You’re helping to make the campaign something more than the sum of its parts, gently tugging it into a comprehensive whole.

As a GM, when this happens, you’ve basically got two responsibilities:

First, get out of the way. For example, I had a different idea in mind for Sir Kabel’s plans. I could have easily had Sir Kabel say something like, “Thanks for the offer, but I have other plans!” But that would obviously be a terrible idea.

This is largely just another example of default to yes, but I find it to be particularly vital here. Reincorporation is a really important way of giving meaning to events. (Pythoness House is available to serve as a safehouse because you cleared it out.) It’s also a great way of demonstrating that the game world is persistent; that it continues to exist even when the PCs aren’t looking at it. (Pythoness House didn’t cease to exist the minute you looked away from it.) So unless you have a strong reason not to embrace reincorporation, you should try to avoid stripping your campaign of meaning and verisimilitude.

Second, lean into it. If a player cares enough about a past event, person, place, or thing to spontaneously attempt to re-engage with it, they’re sending a clear signal that it resonated with them. Maybe they like it. Maybe they hate it. Regardless, it mattered to them. It interests them. So take your cue and run with it:

• Drop that location into your campaign status document so that it can develop over time.
• Next time, have that NPC reach out and initiate contact with the PCs (instead of vice versa).
• Flesh out that shopkeep with a universal NPC roleplaying template or some sort of unique twist to their merchandise; or maybe use them as an adventure hook.

In the case of Pythoness House, I just needed to completely embrace Sir Kabel’s use of the location: Not just a safehouse for tonight and a meeting place for tomorrow, but the headquarters of the Imperial Church loyalists during their rebellion against Rehobath’s false-novarchy.

A one-and-done dungeon would now be a major centerpiece for the entire next phase of the campaign.

Thanks, players!

Campaign Journal: Session 31B – Running the Campaign: PC vs. PC Social Checks
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 31A: KABEL IN HIDING

November 9th, 2008
The 17th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After leaving the Banewarrens they went first to the Temple of Asche. There they had the wraiths’ malaise cleansed from their bodies. Then they crossed the Temple District to the Imperial Cathedral, hoping to claim Brother Heth Neferul’s promise of covering their expenses.

They were looking for healing resources – divine energy reservoired into wands or healing totems. Unfortunately, as Heth explain to them, such resources were not available in a limitless supply – not even from the Church. However, they were able to obtain three such wands for a minimal tithing.

From there they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. Tee took a brief detour to the Delvers’ Guild offices in the Undermarket to see if “Laurea” had received any messages from the cultists, but she had not.

When Tee joined them in Elestra’s room, Tor once again raised the idea of having Dominic assassinate Rehobath.

“We shouldn’t be saying that in front of everyone,” Tee said.

“We shouldn’t be saying that in front of each other,” Dominic said with a worried look.

Tor nodded. “You never know who might be listening.”

“That’s true,” Shim said, slipping through the wall. He looked at Tor. “Are you okay with me talking in front of them?”

Tor nodded. “Go ahead. Anything you can say to me you can say to them.”

“All right,” Shim said. “My man found Kabel. He’s at a place called Nadar’s Pub in Rivergate. It was tough. He was well hidden. In fact, the only reason we knew he was there was because Sir Gemmell knows where he is. The Order of the Dawn is assembling a posse out of the Godskeep to arrest him.”

Tor’s heart sunk. The letter from Sir Kabel had been real. He’d unwittingly betrayed him.

“Kabel sent you answer: ‘I am glad that the eyes of Vehthyl see clearly. Such sight will be needed in the morning light.’”

No one said anything for a long moment.

“Do you want me to do something more?” Shim asked.

Tor shook his head slightly, deep in thought. “I shouldn’t go there.”

“No,” Tee agreed.

“I could go,” Elestra said. “I could transform into a bird and fly there with a message.”

Shim took his cue and bowed out. “I shouldn’t be hearing this.” He slipped back into the wall and disappeared.

(“How do we know he’s not still listening to us?” Dominic asked. “We don’t,” said Tee.)

They eventually agreed that Tor should write a letter and have Elestra deliver it.

This is a trap. Head to Pythoness House, a manor house overlooking the King’s River Gorge in Oldtown. I will contact you there. Go now. They are coming.

“Should we tell him about the evil ghost?” Elestra asked.

“He’ll figure it out,” Agnarr said.

Elestra called upon the Spirit of the City, allowing it to flow into her body and transform it into the shape of a crow. When the transformation was complete, they tied Tor’s message securely to her leg and opened the window.

ESCAPE FROM NADAR’S PUB

Elestra flew straight to Nadar’s Pub, covering the distance to the Rivergate District quickly through the air. She took a moment to circle above it and then landed on the ledge outside the front window.

Peering inside she saw the barkeep tending to two customers. Clearly the mid-afternoon trade was slow.

There was no sign of Sir Kabel, but that made sense. It was unlikely that a hunted man would be supping openly in a public tavern.

Elestra flew around to the back. She found the kitchen window open and peeked in: There were several shelves packed with various foodstuffs, a modest cast iron stove, a pump for water, and a large fireplace for roasting. There was also a pair or large cellar doors set at an angle into the floor.

Elestra cautiously flew into the kitchen, tapped lightly on the cellar doors, and then flew back up to her kitchen window perch. She waited several minutes. There was no answer.

Elestra was still thinking over her next course of action (should she turn back into human form? but if she did that how would she get out again?) when the barkeep came into the kitchen to fill a pitcher of water.

She waited until he left and then flew back down to the cellar doors again. She tapped louder this time and then hopped up onto a nearby shelf to wait.

A few moments later, Elestra heard the cellar doors being unbarred from the far side. One of the doors was eased open and an armed woman looked out. (Elestra didn’t recognize her, but Tor later identified her as Sera Nara.)

Not immediately seeing anyone, Nara emerged cautiously into the kitchen. Elestra seized her opportunity: Swooping past Nara she flew down into the cellar. There she found Sir Kabel and two other knights sitting around a small, well-worn table.

Elestra landed in the center of the table and cocked her head towards Sir Kabel, trying to look as innocent and harmless as possible. Sera Nara came rushing back down the stairs. One of the other knights turned to Kabel with a quizzical look on his face. “Why would Killraven be contacting you?”

“I don’t think it’s one of hers,” Kabel said. “It’s too small to be a raven.”

Kabel reached out and untied the note from Elestra’s claw. He unrolled it and read it, his face drawing immediately into lines of concern. He looked up sharply. “Gather your things now. We have to go.”

As the others grabbed their weapons and several large packs, Kabel looked at Elestra. “Thank you, whoever you may be.”

Kabel and his knights headed up the stairs and out the kitchen door. Elestra flew up and watched them head south towards Oldtown, following them long enough to be certain of where they were heading. Then she turned back and circled high above the pub for about fifteen minutes, waiting to see if there would be any sign of covert pursuit or the like.

She saw nothing. Turning east she flew towards the Temple District. As she was passing over the bluffs she spotted them: Sir Gemmell leading a war party of twelve mounted knights up the Wash Street ramp.

Veering aside, she followed them from above. She watched as they surrounded Nadar’s Pub. Sir Gemmell rode forward and called out in a loud voice, demanding that Kabel surrender.

A few moments later the door of the pub swung open. The barkeep yelled out that no one by that name was in the pub. Sir Gemmell gave a sharp gesture and two his knights dismounted and entered the pub. Several minutes later they emerged with no result.

Gemmell and several more knights dismounted. Angry words began to be exchanged… and that’s when the watchmen arrived. From her height, Elestra couldn’t hear what was being said, but a few moments later Gemmell – clearly furious – mounted his horse and rode off, heading back towards the Temple District.

Elestra followed the knights long enough to be fairly certain that they were heading back to the Cathedral and then winged it back to the Ghostly Minstrel.

Returning to her room, where the others had been anxiously awaiting her, Elestra let the Spirit of the City depart her. Her body resumed its natural form.

She quickly explained what she had done and what she had seen. Tor embraced her at the news that they had (just in the knick of time) averted disaster. A weight of guilt had been lifted from his conscience.

Running the Campaign: When Players Reincorporate  – Campaign Journal: Session 31B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Part 1

SALTED LEGACY (Surena Marie) is set in the Dyn Singh Night Market, an “endlessly changing maze of stalls filled with incredible wares, enticing smells, and magical lights” that I mentioned earlier in the review. It’s an adventure for 1^st-level characters, and is designed for the PCs to level up twice (so that the next adventure in the book is for 3^rd-level characters).

There are two core concepts in “Salted Legacy.” First, the PCs will compete in a series of market games as part of a festival. Second, they’ll be asked to investigate a series of attacks aimed to sabotage local businesses. The scenario’s primary problem is that it’s structurally swapped the primacy of these two concepts.

Let’s start with the sabotage plot: Kasem Aroon and his twin borther Vi Aroon operate the Spice Brothers stall in the Night Market. Vi, however, is getting married and moving away. Kasem realizes he can’t run the stall by himself, so he concocts a “brilliant” plan! He’ll sabotage the other businesses in the Night Market so that one of them will sell their stall to him. That way he’ll own TWO businesses he can’t run by himself!

So, obviously, this entire premise doesn’t make any sense. (I’d suggest setting things up so that Vi getting married means that Kasem, as the younger son, will be pushed out of the Spice Brothers. Kasem’s plan to acquire another a business, therefore, would make sense. There’s even some evidence this may have been the original ending of the adventure, as the published conclusion includes the option for a happy ending in which Kasem gets adopted into another vendor’s family… which obviously only makes sense as a “solution” if Kasem was not, in fact, going to own the Spice Brothers stall.) But that’s not actually the primary problem.

Structurally, the PCs witness a feud between two of the oldest and most respected families in Night Market, which Kasem has enflamed by using wynlings, winged feys he’s bribing with persimmons, to frame each owner for sabotaging the others’ stall. Both stall owners hire the PCs to get proof that the other family is responsible for all the sabotage!

The double-hire is a clever twist on the hook, but then the PCs start investigating and the adventure says (paraphrasing): “Literally nothing they do works. Your job as the DM is to make sure they cannot solve this mystery. Investigation checks? Nothing. Questioning? Nope. Stake out? Absolutely not!”

The stonewalling is necessary because the ultimate goal is to force the PCs to participate in the Market Games: No one trusts outsiders (er… except the two highly respected families who hired the PCs), so the PCs need to earn their respect by competing in the games. The more respect they earn, the more information they can get.

The “need” to block all lines of investigation leads to all kinds of silliness. For example, the PCs may find persimmon peels at the sabotage sites (from the wynlings). Logically, they should be able to find out who’s selling persimmons and maybe learn that Kasem has suddenly started buying a lot more than usual.

But that’s not allowed, so: “A character who further investigates these fruit peels learns no stalls in the night market currently sell persimmons.”

Ironically, this will likely lead players to hyper-obsess on these persimmons: If they aren’t sold here and nobody eats them, where are they coming from?! (This is never actually answered.)

Anyway, the point here is that the adventure is framed to make the mystery the players’ primary goal, but the mystery is not actually the focus of the adventure: It’s the Market Games. The mystery is just the mechanism used to force the PCs to play the games.

It would make a lot more sense to just have an adventure premise that says “play in the Market Games,” rather than “do this other thing, but I’m going to arbitrarily stop you from doing it until you play in the Market Games.”

Partly because I hate mysteries designed to prevent eh PCs from solving them.

Mostly because it turns the Market Games into a chore that the PCs have to complete. And chores are not fun.

Which is a pity, because once we actually focus on the Market Games, they’re a lot of fun! My personal favorite is the cooking competition:

MC: Welcome to Iron Chef Dyn Singh!
PCs: Awesome!
MC: Your secret ingredient is… SHRIMP!
PCs: Cool, cool…
MC: Giant shrimp.
PCs: Hol’ up.
MC: You will need to kill it first.
PCs: oh shit

“Salted Legacy” is a delicious treat that has been wrapped in unnecessary frustration. But what I want to emphasize is that there’s a pretty solid core here that can make for a fun evening with your group: The Market Games are fun. The cast of characters in the mystery story is memorable and well-drawn.

All you really need to do to tease out these flavors is (a) refocus the hook on the Market Games, (b) have the investigation pop up as a B-plot, and (c) default to yes whenever the players investigate something.

For the scenario hook, you might do something like:

• The PCs have been selected as competition ambassadors, and have been sent to the Night Market specifically to compete; or
• There’s a prize for this year’s competition which [thing they want/need].

But since this is also likely the first adventure in your campaign, you could also just tell your players as part of character creation to explain why they’ve all decided to compete in the Market Games this year and use it as the This How You Met framing story for the group.

If you wanted to prepare a revelation list ahead of time, the two key revelations I’d focus on would be:

• Persimmons are associated with the mischief sites. (And you can then trace the persimmons to Kasem.)
• There’s some sort of invisible, flying blue monkeys. (And then you can catch and interrogate them or follow them to Kasem.)

Ironically, you can do this pretty easily by just reading through the adventure and, everywhere it says “if the PCs do X, they don’t find anything,” simply replace it with “if the PCs do X, they find [useful information].”

Run as written, I would give this adventure a C grade. Since such minimal effort would probably polish it up into a B or B+ at the actual table, I think I’ll reflect its true value with a C+.

Grade: C+

WRITTEN IN BLOOD (Erin Roberts) is an adventure so good I’d give my left arm to run it.

A local curse/haunting in the land of Godsbreath causes the hands of those who drown in the lake to come back as undead crawling claws. When enough of these horrors gather in one place, they form an amalgam entity called a soul shaker.

Like a rat-king, but much, much worse.

“Written in Blood” begins with the PCs heading to Godsbreath for a festival.

… wasn’t there a festival in the last adventure, too?

There was. And there will be in the next adventure and the adventure after that and several more. Honestly, your PCs are going to look back at Tier 1 and remember absolutely nothing, because they spent the whole time stoned out of their minds.

This particular festival is the Festival of Awakening. Its unique calling card is the Awakening Song, a huge oral tradition which records the entire history of Godsbreath. Proclaimers circle through the festival singing sections of the Song, with the crowd intermittently picking up favorite verses and singing along. Later, a Proclaimer will ask to accompany the PCs, believing they are caught up in important events and that their deeds should be woven into the Song’s ever-evolving form.

This is a great example of the rich texture Roberts weaves into the Godsbreath setting, and the quiet brilliance she displays in weaving that detail into the action of the adventure.

In fact, the only real drawback of “Written in Blood” is that it’s a prime example of limited word count hamstringing development. For example, “characters who spend an hour exploring the festival [listening to the Song] learn much about the history of the land.” But you can’t actually share that with the players.

If you really want to make this adventure sing (pun intended), then you’ll want to bear a wary eye for stuff that’s often literally begging you to flesh it out and seize the opportunity to do so before running this one.

And you’ll definitely want to run this one, because it’s a goddamn creepfest that will put your players on the edge of their seats and then rip their hearts out.

We begin with the land of Godsbreath itself, which is presented in a gazetteer which is simply exceptional (and probably the best one in the book).

The fertile lands of the region are deteriorating, forcing more and more farmers to migrate from the rich lands of the Ribbon into the Rattle, a fertile, but extremely dangerous region.

That, all by itself, is a brilliant premise for endless adventure.

And then Roberts drops this bomb:

Most people in Godsbreath worship one or more of the Covenant gods, who worked together to bring the first folk to this new land. Over long generations since, these deities have stood united as the guardians of Godsbreath. But of late, they have begun to work independently to recruit and reward their own followers.

Through recent prophecies known only to themselves, the members of the Covenant have learned the blood of a deity is needed to revitalize the soil of the Ribbon and stave off potential famine across Godsbreath. In response, the gods are becoming more active, shoring up their power to avoid becoming this necessary sacrifice.

The tension between the Ribbon and Rattle was already incredibly well done.

But to add this to it?

Competing plots of deicide. A religion dedicated to transmitting truth fracturing on its own secrets. A covenant of gods forced to betray one of their own.

It’s simply inspired. Adventure just boils out of it.

All right, so we have the cursed and dying Ribbon that’s forcing people into the strange and dangerous frontier of the Rattle. This is the essence of gothic horror, infused into both the darkest and most hopeful aspects of the modern Africa diaspora, then draped with the most disturbing visions of West African magical realism. It’s redolent with possibility.

And Roberts delivers. The adventure drips with the dry dust of the Ribbon and the eery edge of the Rattle.

Atmosphere is good, but the real meat of “Written in Blood” is the human story at its heart: Of a young girl who lost her friend to the crawling claws and the dark waters of the lake… and now her friend has come back.

When the PCs discover this truth — and the girl — crouching in the dark, everything comes together: The place. The imagery. The characters.

I don’t know what your players’ (or their characters’) reaction will be to this truth.

And that’s the beauty of it.

The terrible beauty.

Grade: A

THE FIEND OF HOLLOW MINE (Mario Ortegón) continues the transplanar pub crawl, with the PCs heading to the city of San Citlán to “enjoy the food, parades, and celebrations of the Night of the Remembered” festival.

I’ve seen some reactions and reviews to Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel express frustration that the specific cultural inspirations aren’t listed for each civilization/adventure. I understand this impulse, but I think it misses the point.

There are certainly cases where it might make it easier for me to, for example, do additional research on fashion so that I can make my NPC descriptions richer. But one of the things I really enjoy about Radiant Citadel is that it’s NOT “here’s fantasy Ethiopia with new labels that we can trademark,” which is a trap I’ve frequently seen projects like this fall into. Radiant Citadel’s authors are being truly inspired by their source material, using it to create something new and unique to their vision, and then blending it with the vast mythos of D&D.

So “Fiend of Hollow Mine,” for example, has clear Mexican inspirations. But there’s also a Mesopotamian-by-way-of-D&D demon lord. And Ortegón takes the Day of the Dead and interprets it through the metaphysics of D&D to create the Night of the Remembered, where the souls of the dead literally manifest.

And then he takes it one step further and asks, “But what would happen if a soul doesn’t cross over at its appointed time?”

The answer is: Simply persist.

And so San Citlán is studded with friendly undead. People who just… kept on “living” when death should have come instead. The olvidados are literally those “forgotten by death.” The result is such a cool and unique place that my only quibble is that, once again, I would have loved to see it fleshed out more.

(Pun intended.)

Okay, so the PCs are heading to San Citlán. They discover that there’s a deadly plague called sereno afflicting the region.

There are a couple of things I really love about sereno. First, it literally spreads via a “cursed wind” that blows at night. Germ theory is great, but in a fantastical land, I love diseases that are fantastical in nature.

Second, sunlight alleviates the illness. And, indeed, it can only be magically cured and only if the spell is cast in sunlight. This is mechanically simple, but gives a distinct and evocative flavor. It also makes the disease relevant to the PCs in a clever way: Although it doesn’t really factor into the adventure, you can imagine PCs contracting this disease deep in a dark dungeon or the Underdark and being unable to cure it (only triage it) until they can return to the surface.

The basic concept of the adventure is that, a generation ago, a warlock named Orencio was caught and executed. Before he died, however, he’d made a deal with the demon lord Pazuzu, trading the soul of his son for great power.

Orencio thought he’d pulled a fast one, but what he didn’t know is that his girlfriend (who was also the one who turned him into the authorities) was pregnant. Their son, Serapio, is approaching his twentieth birthday and, under Pazuzu’s influence, is turning into a tlacatecolo — an owl-demon which spreads pestilence. (In this case, sereno.)

The PCs are pointed in Serapio’s direction by a freedom fighter. Following his trail, they hopefully learn the truth of what’s happening to him and, eventually, bring him to bay.

The biggest problem with “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” is that it’s incredibly fragile. There is a very long sequence of hoops that the PCs need to jump through. Some of these hoops are surprisingly difficult to get through (although Ortegón usually provides some mechanism for the PCs to just keep making skill checks until they finally roll high enough). Other hoops are hidden, which is… fun.

There are a couple of saving graces, however.

First, the middle chunk of the adventure takes place in the small dungeon of Hollow Mine. The map design here is excellent:

For a small dungeon, this is deliciously xandered. And the key is equally good, with vivid imagery and meaty detail.

The second saving grace is the conclusion of the adventure. Ortegón does a great job framing it so that the PCs will have to decide whether to try to bring Serapio in quietly so that his curse can be removed, or simply kill the corrupted soul.

Grade: C+

Go to Part 4

Go to Part 1

ADVENTURE OVERVIEW

Each adventure in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is built on a common template:

• Background
• Setting the Adventure
• Character Hooks
• Starting the Adventure

Followed by, of course, the adventure itself and then the accompanying setting gazetteer.

Setting the Adventure suggests three options where each adventure could be set. One is “Through the Radiant Citadel,” which, as noted, indicates where the Concord Jewel is located. Another suggests where this civilization could be slipped into the Forgotten Realms. And the third does the same for some other official D&D campaign setting, either Eberron, Greyhawk, or, in one case, Mystara.

Character Hooks are interesting. Each scenario ostensibly includes multiple hooks (usually three, sometimes only two). There’s some variation here, of course, across the many adventures, but these “hooks” are generally just reasons the characters might be visiting the region. For example:

• The characters are going to a local festival.
• The characters are visiting a friend.
• The characters are hired as guards by someone visiting the area.

In a few cases the “you’re in the area to do X’ can at least loosely qualify as a surprising scenario hook (because it has at least some proximity to the scenario premise), but mostly it’s just, “You’re traveling through Y, and then…”

So the “hooks” are then followed by Starting the Adventure, which is almost always a random encounter that informs the PCs of the scenario’s existence. This random encounter is what I, personally, would consider the actual scenario hook.

The intention of having multiple scenario hooks is great: It would theoretically make it easier for DMs to incorporate these adventures into their campaigns and/or make hooking the PCs into the scenario far more robust (because if one hook failed, there would be additional opportunities). But because the actual hook is the random encounter, this can, unfortunately, lead to very fragile hooks in actual practice. For example, in “The Fiend of Hollow Mine” the PCs need to:

• Not detect and decide to skip the bounty hunter ambush.
• Not chase the bounty hunters who are scripted to flee.
• Accept a random barkeep’s invitation to have a drink, rather than continuing on to their actual goal.
• Get approached by Paloma the Outlaw and decide NOT to capture her for the bounty they’ve just been informed she has on her head.
• Finally, accept the job offer from Paloma.

That sequence of events probably happens more often than not when running “Fiend,” but it’s A LOT of potential points of failure to navigate through before the adventure has technically even started.

One more decision I really don’t like in this book is that no clear credit is given to the writer of each adventure. This was done in both Tales from the Yawning Portal and Candlekeep Mysteries, and its absence from Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel feels particularly grody given how much of the marketing campaign for the book was, rightfully, focused on the phenomenal writing talent that made it possible. I should not have to use Google to figure out which author wrote which adventure, which is why I’ll be indicating authorship for each adventure below.

GAZETTEERS

Before we do that, however, let’s take a moment to consider the setting gazetteers that accompany each adventure. These include the usual list of locations (usually labeled on a map) and cultural information, but there are a few notable features I’d like to call special attention to.

Legends of X. This section presents a lovely blend of history and myth, while also typically grounding the setting into a unique fantasy metaphysic. It’s a nice way to neatly encapsulate the unique spin each setting gives to D&D.

Adventures in X, which gives four adventure seeds. These are pretty excellent throughout the entire book: They’re not generic ideas, instead being spiked with specific details that add value. Nor are they vague ideas. Too often I see seeds like this say stuff like, “There’s a weird glowing light, I wonder what it is?” In Radiant Citadel, the seeds reliably tell you exactly what that weird light is. Finally, the details provided generally give a clear direction for development.

Characters from X. If a player chooses to create a character from this civilization, this section includes three questions the DM can ask them to help ground the character into the specific context of the setting. For example, in Yeonido, these are:

• What is your social class and clan?
• Do you have a special role in the city’s hierarchy?
• How have gwishin [the ubiquitous ancestor spirits of the setting] affected you?

Each question is accompanied with a short guide and list of suggestions, perfect for guiding the conversation.

Names. Each gazetteer includes a list of sample names you can use for NPCs. I love having an NPC name list as a resource, and it’s particularly valuable here because the range of cultural inspiration drawn from for Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is so diverse that literally everyone using this book will almost certainly find that some majority of the cultures detailed are exotic to them (and, therefore, more difficult to improvise appropriate names off-the-cuff).

The only shortcoming here is that it would be great if the sample name list was longer. (Which is why I actually expanded the lists in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel: A List of Names.)

But this is actually the biggest shortcoming of the gazetteers in general: The practical realities of the book means that the really cool settings can only be sketched in with broad brush strokes. Sometimes this just means that you’re left hungry for more (a great problem to have), but in some cases the lack of detail can really cripple the settings and, in some cases, the adventures connected to them (a much less great problem to have).

For example, in the land of Godsbreath, the Proclaimers of the Covenant are charged by the gods to record the history of the Covenant’s chosen people.

Who are the Covenant?

They’re a pantheon which is “for you to define” (because I’ve hit my word count) “and might include gods appropriate to your campaign’s setting or deities unique to Godsbreath.”

… well, this is probably fine, because the gods are only <checks notes> the primary focus of the entire setting?

Oof.

The lack of detail also spills over and creates a lack of scale. For example, consider this excerpt of text describing Siabsungkoh:

Traders from Siabsungkoh’s scattered communities flock nightly to the Dyn Singh Night Market, an ever-changing, town-sized market…

The [Outer Edges] that border the wilderness … are overgrown with lush greenery and lau-pop flowers. Many of the scattered communities here and across the valley reject the bureaucracy and crowds of the market district, braving the dangers of the nearby wilderness to stay self-sufficient.

And now compare it to this map of the region:

There are no “scattered communities” and the “Outer Edges” are, in fact, only a half mile from the Night Market itself, so (a) you can probably see one from the other and (b) there’s no room for multiple communities, let alone communities in separate “districts.”

Plus, the whole “civilization” is just a half dozen miles wide. A pattern which repeats throughout the book: “empires” that consist of a couple of towns; bustling “metropolises” with only a couple dozen buildings; and so forth.

So what happened here?

Well, based on my experience, I think it’s almost certain that the cartographer accurately (and evocatively) presented everything that was likely on the design sketch they were given to work from. But because there’s only room to present the setting in the broadest strokes, there just wasn’t enough detail on the design sketch.

Even without the scale that locks it in on the final version, barrenness on a map is interpreted as tininess.

What I do love about the Siabsungkoh map is the inclusion of locations NOT described in the limited text, including Monkey Mask Farm, Silver Carp Farm, and so forth. I’m a big believer in RPG maps inviting the user — including the DM — to explore the world. To ask, “What’s this?”

Is Monkey Mask Farm run by awakened monkeys?

Does it literally grow monkey masks on magically enhanced teak trees?

Do the farms of Siabsungkoh hang masks above their gate, representing the patron animal who protects their crops? (Are some of these masks possessed/enchanted?)

Tabula rasa is the scraped tablet. The empty spaces on the map. Those spaces can be fun to fill. But rasa is the fundamental flavor or essence of creation, and offering just a hint of it can often by even more powerful than the blank spaces.

So my bottom line on the setting gazetteers is this: What’s here seems consistently good-to-great. But issues with limited word count seem to consistently choke out their potential.

As a final note, I will suggest that the book could have done itself a lot of favors by presenting the setting gazetteers before each adventure, instead of after.

First, because the adventure comes first, the writers feel obligated to include a whole bunch of explanatory detail in the adventure that more logically belongs in the gazetteer (i.e., cultural information).

And then, second, many of the writers fall prey to the trap of using the limited space in their gazetteer to repeat descriptions of locations that are already amply detailed in the adventure itself. Yes, it’s easy to think, “This list of ‘Noteworthy Sites’ is supposed to include all the locations in the setting, so it logically must include all the places we visited in the adventure.” But, particularly when you’re fighting word count, this can really hurt the utility of your work.

If the gazetteers came first, both the temptation and necessity of repeating information would’ve been drastically reduced, freeing and encouraging the writers to pack more value into the book.

Go to Part 3

SPOILERS FOR JOURNEYS THROUGH THE RADIANT CITADEL

If you go way, way back to the earliest days of D&D, one of the coolest things is just how much of a kitchen sink it was: Read something cool in a fantasy book on Tuesday, get a crazy idea on Thursday, dump ‘em into your game on Sunday.

Over time, the lore of D&D has tended — as the lore of such things often does — to ossify. But the game is still at its best, in my opinion, when the taps are open and the sink is overflowing.

This, of course, brings us to Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, an anthology of thirteen adventures for 5^th Edition D&D, which foregoes the taps and opens the floodgates.

The concept here is that there’s a magical city floating within the Deep Ethereal. A set of giant gemstones-slash-transport vehicles orbit the city and connect it to fifteen civilizations across multiple realities. Each adventure in the anthology takes the PCs to one of these civilizations, effectively slamming open the doors, taking the wildest, most amazing fantasy visions available, and pouring them into a fantasy crossroads where they can all swirl and mix together into a beautiful smorgasbord of the fantastic.

AMONGST THE CONCORD JEWELS

The Radiant Citadel is a “fossil” that’s wrapped around a gargantuan gemstone called the Auroral Diamond. And the 15-page gazetteer describing the Citadel is, if you’ll pardon the pun, the jewel of this book.

Right off the bat, I’m immediately tantalized by the Citadel’s mysteries. (A fossil of what I’d love to have an answer to!) I also love the three-dimensional nature of the city’s spiral.

But here, unfortunately, we run into a bit of friction, because the spiral of the city means that Mike Schley’s map is rather flawed: Because the upper turns are blocking the lower turns, it appears that more than a third of the city is missing.

And, to be painfully honest, this will set something of a theme for the Citadel: What’s included in the gazetteer is fantastic. What’s missing, on the other hand, can undercut a lot of its strengths.

To start with, however, let’s focus on the positive.

Returning to the Auroral Diamond, this is the heart of the city, in more ways than one. It has life-giving powers which blanket the entire city, and it also glows with magical colors. Legend says that each color represents a civilization being born somewhere in the multiverse; and if the color repeats, that civilization has died.

Orbiting the Auroral Diamond are the Concord Jewels. Each jewel, as I mentioned above, is actually a magical transport vessel connected to a separate civilization on one of many worlds. There are twenty-seven jewels in total, each “capable of holding hundreds of people and tons of goods,” but at the moment only fifteen of them are active. At some point in the past, a catastrophe befell the Radiant Citadel and it was abandoned, severing its connection to the great civilizations which were once connected to it. Recently, however, the descendants of some of these civilizations have returned to the Citadel, and they hope that still others can be re-contacted.

The connection between the Citadel and these civilizations is more than just physical. Within the Auroral Diamond is the Preserve of the Ancestors, a liminal space that is one part civic center and one part mystic savannah. Notable here are the Incarnates, such as the obsidian eagle and the ruby pangolin.

Souls of those who die within civilizations linked to the Citadel have their spirits incarnated within gemstones, and these gemstones aggregate together into the Incarnates. Other entities from the civilizations, such as nature spirits, may also be incarnated within the gems. Each Incarnate, therefore, is a gestalt of a civilization’s souls, speaking with the wisdom of centuries, the insight of myriad points of view, and the authority of cultural hegemony.

The incarnates somehow manage to be simultaneously one of the most wholesome and one of the most metal-as-fuck things I’ve ever seen.

There are three major institutions in the Citadel:

• The House of Convalescence uses the Auroral Diamond’s healing properties to create a powerful center for magical healing.
• The Palace of Exiles takes advantage of the Citadel’s existence as a dimensional nexus to provide refuge to the desperate and downtrodden from multiple worlds.
• The Shieldbearers are a search-and-rescue organization that ventures from the Citadel into the many worlds on a wide variety of special ops.

The first two organizations serve as Great Attractors. You can use them to easily justify bringing PCs or adventure hooks to the Citadel. And once the PCs are there, you can hang a full campaign on the concept of being Shieldbearer agents without breaking a sweat.

This is phenomenally precise and insightful design, packing a ton of utility into minimal word count with laser-like precision. You can see similar design instincts being exercised with the NPCs included in the gazetteer. Space appears to be limited, so only a few are described, but they include:

Sholeh, the elder Speaker and brass dragon who’s such a nervous wreck that she neurotically “picks her scales in private as she tries to find relief.”

And also, Arayat, the leader of the shieldbearers. “He bristles against the rules of engagement imposed by the Speakers. He has cremated a hundred fallen comrades-in-arms and seen horrors few can comprehend. The toll has pushed him to his limits.”

This is really subtle worldbuilding and I love it.

Look at our utopia! Isn’t it beautiful and lovely and perfect?

Also, all of our leaders are nervous wrecks on the verge of cracking open like a rotten egg.

… interesting. Very interesting.

A PROMISE UNFULFILLED

In case I haven’t been clear, I really love the Radiant Citadel gazetteer. I love the concept of the setting. I love how much rich detail and flavor gets packed into its slim page count. This Gathering Place of Strangers and Stories is a pure delight. Stunningly evocative. Intensely creative. Packed with dynamic elements ready to explode across your campaign.

But, of course, it’s only a fraction of the content in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel. The other 200+ pages are dedicated to the thirteen adventures that will take the PCs through a grand tour of the civilizations linked through the Citadel. Each of these adventures consists of the adventure itself, plus a short gazetteer (usually accompanied by a map) that describes the civilization itself, opening it up for further exploration in your campaign.

Unfortunately, there’s a missed connection here. Or, rather, thirteen missed connections.

The Radiant Citadel, as described in its gazetteer, is a collaborative society jointly ruled by its member civilizations. It’s a major hub of trade, linking these civilizations together in a pandimensional society. There are diplomats and embassies. On the darker side, there are references to revolutionary groups using the Citadel as a staging ground for “incursions against their home governments.”

But when you flip over to the setting gazetteers, none of this is true.

There are no embassies. No indication of trade or travel between the civilizations. No suggestion that there is, in fact, any connection between these settings and the Radiant Citadel.

For example, consider the Concord Jewels. These are the vital arteries connecting these civilizations; they are the links through which all trade and travel occur. But although each adventure includes a “Through the Radiant Citadel” section describing where the civilization’s Jewel arrives, this is clearly an afterthought. It’s never depicted on the maps, is almost always located in the middle of nowhere (in many cases there’s not even a road!), and frequently is not even given a specific location (instead just being described as, for example, “within a few miles”).

This would be like arriving at O’Hare International Airport and having the GM describe it as, “Your plane lands in the middle of a small forest clearing. There is no road, but your flight attendant tells you that if you walk south for a few hours you should see some signs of civilization.”

The metaphysics don’t link up any better. For example, I mentioned that the Incarnates are made up of constituent spirits, including the souls of the dead from the founding civilizations. That seems like a pretty big deal, but it’s not reflected in the religious beliefs or customs of any of the civilizations, many of which have completely different (and, in my opinion, incompatible) cosmologies for their afterlife.

Even on the structural level, I’m surprised by the disconnect between the Citadel gazetteer and the setting gazetteers. For example, the Shieldbearers are clearly set up to serve as a campaign frame: Join the Shieldbearers, travel to extradimensional civilizations, meet interesting and exciting people, and save them!

So where are the Shieldbearer scenario hooks? Each adventure includes three different hooks (more on those later), but only one of the thirteen adventures includes one for members of the Shieldbearers.

Obviously what happened here is that the whole book was written at the same time, and there either wasn’t time or a development process (or both) to harmonize everything into a coherent vision. It would be fascinating to see what the original spec sheet for the freelancers looked like: Did the concept of the Radiant Citadel already exist, and simply wasn’t detailed enough for the writers to sync their material to it? Or was the original pitch just focused on the mini-settings and the Radiant Citadel was added later as a bridging device, but without the ability to fully revamp the adventures accordingly?

Regardless, as much as I love the setting presented in the Radiant Citadel gazetteer, the “O’Hare in a forest” problem rather badly undercuts it in actual practice. The easiest solution (recharacterizing the Citadel as a motley assembly of refugees without strong political or economic ties to the individual civilizations) unfortunately moves the Citadel away from a lot of the stuff that, in my opinion, makes it so cool. Going the other direction and keeping the vision of the Citadel intact, on the other hand, would require rather extensive modifications to more than a dozen individual settings.

Go to Part 2