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.

 

[Vaalingrade]

i wonder how many less issues it would've caused if they'd just originally named it 'the adventuring week'

I know it wouldn't have made me hate it less if the Long Rest scale was annoyingly long like the Short Rest became annoyingly long after NEXT.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

i wonder how many less issues it would've caused if they'd just originally named it 'the adventuring week'

Well, I've been using gritty rests, and 'the adventuring week' works pretty decently. I think it should have been the default, it works much better with the pacing of the sort of CR like games people these days play.

 

[tetrasodium]

i wonder how many less issues it would've caused if they'd just originally named it 'the adventuring week'

Zero unless they also totally reworked the 5mwd slingshot rest and recovery mechanics in a way that raised the bar significantly on what/where a rest can be had or went back to linear recovery.

 

[Quickleaf]

@Parmandur I learned something that I thought might illuminate our earlier conversation. This is from YouTuber Ginny Di who had an advance copy of the 2024 DMG. I know I know, YouTubers aren’t the most reliable, but she got quite specific about encounter building differences between 2014 and 2024.

The truth seems to be somewhere between what I thought (radical change) and what you thought (same same).

Apparently the 2024 easy/medium/hard guidelines are the same as 2014 up until 5th level.

Then, in 2024 DMG between 5th level and 20th level, the encounter XP thresholds steadily increase to up to double their 2014 values by 20th level.

Thats really interesting.

 

[Parmandur]

@Parmandur I learned something that I thought might illuminate our earlier conversation. This is from YouTuber Ginny Di who had an advance copy of the 2024 DMG. I know I know, YouTubers aren’t the most reliable, but she got quite specific about encounter building differences between 2014 and 2024.

The truth seems to be somewhere between what I thought (radical change) and what you thought (same same).

Apparently the 2024 easy/medium/hard guidelines are the same as 2014 up until 5th level.

Then, in 2024 DMG between 5th level and 20th level, the encounter XP thresholds steadily increase to up to double their 2014 values by 20th level.

Thats really interesting.

Yeah, that is interesting: it is with higher level challenges that people reported having trouble with challenges so it tracks.

I am not saying there has not been any tweaking of Encounter design: but thst the overall pace of the game isn't likely to be changed, based on PC and Monster design, even if the term Adcenture Day is retired.

 

[MichaelSomething]

by that logic, why would I bother with the DMG at all

Exactly. All a DM needs is their judgement and instincts.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly. All a DM needs is their judgement and instincts.

You should join WotC's marketing team.

 

[Quickleaf]

Exactly. All a DM needs is their judgement and instincts.

What if my players have impaired my judgment and made me second guess my instincts by plying me with whiskey and subverting my expectations?

 

[Micah Sweet]

What if my players have impaired my judgment and made me second guess my instincts by plying me with whiskey and subverting my expectations?

Then I guess they've found a way to win D&D.

 

[SteveC]

I gather you're directly equating the at-table session with the adventuring day (or period between long rests), then?

If yes, why?

They are two different things, but they are related. The adventuring day is the period between long rests. It can be the same as a game session, but likely isn't. I would say handling encounters in this period is of primary importance to having a successful game.

But at the same time, pacing encounters for a game session is also incredibly important if you're gaming and don't have unlimited time to play. When I was back in school, you could have a couple of sessions where not much happened because I didn't have anything competing for my attention.

As an older adult, I have work, my kiddo, my spouse, and all of my responsibilities with life getting in the way. So you obviously don't have to work out the details of a game session in the same was as an adventuring day, pacing for a fun game session is related and just as important. Both the "day" and the individual sessions need to be fun to have a successful campaign with adults who have other things competing for limited available time.