Dungeons & Dragons Has Done Away With the Adventuring Day

Adventuring days are no more, at least not in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. The new 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide contains a streamlined guide to combat encounter planning, with a simplified set of instructions on how to build an appropriate encounter for any set of characters. The new rules are pretty basic - the DM determines an XP budget based on the difficulty level they're aiming for (with choices of low, moderate, or high, which is a change from the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide) and the level of the characters in a party. They then spend that budget on creatures to actually craft the encounter. Missing from the 2024 encounter building is applying an encounter multiplier based on the number of creatures and the number of party members, although the book still warns that more creatures adds the potential for more complications as an encounter is playing out.

What's really interesting about the new encounter building rules in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is that there's no longer any mention of the "adventuring day," nor is there any recommendation about how many encounters players should have in between long rests. The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide contained a recommendation that players should have 6 to 8 medium or hard encounters per adventuring day. The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide instead opts to discuss encounter pace and how to balance player desire to take frequent Short Rests with ratcheting up tension within the adventure.

The 6-8 encounters per day guideline was always controversial and at least in my experience rarely followed even in official D&D adventures. The new 2024 encounter building guidelines are not only more streamlined, but they also seem to embrace a more common sense approach to DM prep and planning.

The 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide for Dungeons & Dragons will be released on November 12th.

 

[Parmandur]

For a while, sure, but then they get annoyed by it when it repeats time and time again.

No, not really...?

 

[Oofta]

No, not really...?

Probably the major reason I use gritty rest rules is that it stretches out the time clock. People understand that taking a week off to recuperate is a major commitment.

On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine that if you just kicked down the door to [the dungeon, the mob bosses base, the haunted house exit only to realize that you ended up back where you started] that things are not static. That and unlike practically every video game I've ever played, events aren't triggered on you entering the room. Things are going to happen whether or not you do something to stop it.

 

[abirdcall]

This reminds me of my favourite series, The Wandering Inn.

Being an adventurer is a job and often involves dungeon delving.

In lower level dungeons if you retreat then you are leaving it open for another team to get the treasure.

High level adventurer teams tend to work on the honour system. There are few of them and it wouldn't be good to be in conflict. If they do end up poaching they will usually split the treasure in some way. Sometimes they even directly team up for particularly difficult parts.

But, the mana in high level dungeons often regenerates the magical monsters within. And the swarm monsters tend to just breed back to their original numbers quickly unless their nests are wiped out - but those usually number in the 10s of thousands so isn't realistic.

Sometimes even the layout shifts around and so they still need to deal with traps and the like on each expedition.

So they really try to get some treasure before retreating. Often they don't get far enough and that just means they end up empty handed.

There is even the possibility of stirring up the dungeon and the monsters coming out to attack villages and such.

So even when the dungeon is just sitting there and there are no plot driven time constraints it still behooves the adventurers to get as far as they can in a day.

 

[Oofta]

This reminds me of my favourite series, The Wandering Inn.

Being an adventurer is a job and often involves dungeon delving.

In lower level dungeons if you retreat then you are leaving it open for another team to get the treasure.

High level adventurer teams tend to work on the honour system. There are few of them and it wouldn't be good to be in conflict. If they do end up poaching they will usually split the treasure in some way. Sometimes they even directly team up for particularly difficult parts.

But, the manager in high level dungeons often regenerates the magical monsters within. And the swarm monsters tend to just breed back to their original numbers quickly unless their nests are wiped out - but those usually number in the 10s of thousands so isn't realistic.

Sometimes even the layout shifts around and so they still need to deal with traps and the like on each expedition.

So they really try to get some treasure before retreating. Often they don't get far enough and that just means they end up empty handed.

There is even the possibility of stirring up the dungeon and the monsters coming out to attack villages and such.

So even when the dungeon is just sitting there and there are no plot driven time constraints it still behooves the adventurers to get as far as they can in a day.

Even if you aren't using the dungeon model reinforcements are summoned, defenses are rebuilt and strengthened, the enemy is now on high alert for danger. Sometimes the local big bad just grabs the McGuffin and heads for the hills, leaving behind a trap to take out the invaders. Losing the element of surprise can have major consequences.

The whole idea that you could just do a rope trick or tiny hut to get some time to recuperate after you've already kicked the proverbial hornet's nest simply doesn't work very well in my games.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Sometimes the local big bad just grabs the McGuffin and heads for the hills, leaving behind a trap to take out the invaders. Losing the element of surprise can have major consequences.

The whole idea that you could just do a rope trick or tiny hut to get some time to recuperate after you've already kicked the proverbial hornet's nest simply doesn't work very well in my games.

Exactly. Retreating in order to Long Rest should typically mean that you "Lose" the scenario.

 

[Minigiant]

In lower level dungeons if you retreat then you are leaving it open for another team to get the treasure

The problem isn't time clocks itself.

The issue is people keep using the same time clocks.

Villains
Rivals
Remedies
Fleeting info
Decaying clues
Courtdates
Special events

Gotta mix them up.

My favorite adventure type to run as a DM is fantasy government investigator.

The time clock is both natural and expected during cases.
And criminal hideouts make very good dungeons.
And you get to make stereotypical gang member and organized crime accents of various types. And random cussing in other languages.

 

[mamba]

He says there are Encounter budgets and pacing suggestions. Given that WotC has not changed how they build Adventures in the past 12 months nor how PCs or Monsters are built, I have zero doubt what the result of following the budgeting and pacing suggestions bear out, i.e., basically the same, even if the phrase "Adventure Day" and "6-8 Encounters" isn't used specifically.

but instead of the book telling us that, each DM now has to arrive there through trial and error. Not sure how that is an improvement

 

[MichaelSomething]

but instead of the book telling us that, each DM now has to arrive there through trial and error. Not sure how that is an improvement

It's an improvement because books can't teach people how to DM so they're saving text space. A true DM learns by doing. A few TPKs are a small price to pay to enpower the DM!

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's an improvement because books can't teach people how to DM so they're saving text space. A true DM learns by doing. A few TPKs are a small price to pay to enpower the DM!

Isn't a significant portion of the new book about teaching people how to DM?

 

[Vaalingrade]

but instead of the book telling us that, each DM now has to arrive there through trial and error. Not sure how that is an improvement

A lot of people feel that giving no advice is better than giving what they feel is actively bad advice.