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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The wizard seemed to be in his twenties, not sure of his exact age. The players didn't seem to mind that evil alignments were banned (if they did they didn't mention it to me).

I didn't react in a bad or upset way. I simply wanted to know why the characters wanted to do what they were doing. I was just confused. I mean you buy this expensive rulebook, you spend hours and hours learning the rules and spells and different class abilities, and this game allows you to simulate all kinds of epic adventures and you choose to just do random things for no discernable reason?

Maybe they just really hated squirrels?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To a point, certainly, but Rule Zero includes the fun the DM has, not just the players. If allowing 2024 materal, for example, makes the game less fun for the DM, the players need to consider that, too.

However, if there is a great disparity, then probably the DM/player isn't a good match when it comes to the game.

Rule Zero is about establishing the baseline for the game style that hopefully everyone can enjoy--and that means everyone--including the DM.

It'd be nice if more DMs recognized that their great power comes with great responsibility though. If they're the ones calling the shots, it really shouldn't be that hard for them to have fun. The players, on the other hand, are completely beholden to what fun the DM permits them to have, under the "what the DM says, goes" approach.

 

[Maxperson]

Now to me, these decisions are not consistent with who the players have said their characters are and also the quest they have been given.

You didn't actually post anything about who the players have said there characters are. You only gave us their classes, which isn't enough to determine that.

A druid that is okay with people killing animals for no reason? A rogue who said they want to move through the forest stealthily but is okay with a party member shooting firebolts at random animals for no reason? And a life domain cleric, according to the players handbook, "focuses on the vibrant positive energy that sustains all life, healing the sick and wounded, caring for those in need". Plus the fact that such an action as the needless killing of a harmless animal would probably anger the wood elves if they learned of it.

One of the things I liked about 3e was that it changed druids so that they were any version of neutral. This better matched nature which has aspects that would be considered chaotic, lawful, good or evil.

There are animals who kill for reasons other than hunting for food. It's not common, but it happens. Henhouse Syndrome, Surplus Killing, cats who kill animals and bring them back to the house even though their food needs are met without the need to hunt, killing over territory, etc.

The druid might be following or seeing this aspect of nature in play with what the wizard did.

These players are not role playing their characters in a way that is logical considering what their in-game objective is. And their choices are not consistent with the defining traits of the classes they have chosen.

The objective is not the focus of the roleplay. The personalities of the PCs are the foci. The objective, whatever that objective may be, is funneled through the lens of who the PC is and the actions should be consistent with that.

Did your players provide you a backstory or tell you in brief about their PCs personalities, goals, backgrounds, etc.?

 

[Maxperson]

Personally, I argue the blog author has committed exactly the same conflation.

He's posting what the games say. Rule 0 has always been about modification of the game, whether through house rules or on the spot rulings.

Because note what the reference they cited says: "JUST SO LONG AS EVERYONE KNOWS THAT'S WHAT YOUR PREFERENCE IS AHEAD OF TIME." (Capitals in original.)

The use of "Rule Zero" to smooth over issues is an entirely different beast from that. You don't give a ruling ahead of time when the rules run afoul because...if you knew it was going to happen, you'd fix it so no ruling was even required in the first place. The whole point of "rulings" is that they are made on the spot to address gaps, holes, or conflicts that impede the process of play; you can't let everyone know ahead of time.

No. What they are saying is that the DM should let the players know ahead of time how he is going to enact Rule 0.

For instance if there are issues on the fly, how he is going to hand. Whether he is going to issue a temporary on the spot ruling, a permanent on the spot ruling, leave the rule stand and alter the rule later.

He should also let them know how he enacts house rules using Rule 0, such as if he is going to only enact house rules at the beginning of the campaign and not during, during the campaign, but not during a session, or whenever he feels like a house rule is needed.

That's what the distinction you mention is saying, not that Rule 0 is only done on the fly.

The thing being cited here is the reminder of exactly what @pemerton described: that every game exists by participant consensus and no game can take that away from its participants. (No matter how much high school students love to insist that that is not true with their "you've lost the game" meme. Which I found deeply tiresome even as a freshman in HS.)

Again, Rule 0 isn't for those people. It's existence is for those rule followers who aren't comfortable changing rules without official sanction.

 

[Micah Sweet]

How does that square with the "what the DM says, goes"/"the DM is the final authority" thing?

I like to have the conversation first, for one thing. But ultimately, DM authority doesn't extend to PC choices (that's literally where the line is), but if something appears nonsensical it is IMO worth having a discussion about.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It'd be nice if more DMs recognized that their great power comes with great responsibility though. If they're the ones calling the shots, it really shouldn't be that hard for them to have fun. The players, on the other hand, are completely beholden to what fun the DM permits them to have, under the "what the DM says, goes" approach.

Not really. You can't make the players have fun playing your game any more than they can make you have fun doing what they want. No game is going to be fun if the DM doesn't want to run it.

 

[TiQuinn]

Those other directives haven't been in the game since 1e or maybe 2e. 2e changed some stuff and I can't remember if those directives remained. The overwhelming number of D&D players today never played under those rules. Many started with 3e and most started with 5e.

I think generally the board tends to trend older so folks cling to those 1e/2e standards.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The wizard seemed to be in his twenties, not sure of his exact age. The players didn't seem to mind that evil alignments were banned (if they did they didn't mention it to me).

I didn't react in a bad or upset way. I simply wanted to know why the characters wanted to do what they were doing. I was just confused. I mean you buy this expensive rulebook, you spend hours and hours learning the rules and spells and different class abilities, and this game allows you to simulate all kinds of epic adventures and you choose to just do random things for no discernable reason?

So, not people you know well then? They just have a different playstyle - old school murder hobo. They don’t play D&D to immerse themselves in a fantasy world, or to inhabit an elaborate alternate persona. They just want to kill some stuff. This talk of “alignments” not really relevant to the way they play.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

It may also be that your players assume that you are there to engage them in an entertaining story and they are there to be entertained by that story. It might be foreign to them to understand their job (as players) to include saying what the story should be about. In that, I agree with @CreamCloud0 that they might not have said enough about their characters.

Well I honestly do want to engage my players in entertaining adventures. And I do want my players to be able to make their own choices and do things their own way within the adventure. But I just feel that your character should be doing this in a way that makes sense. I mean these are often life and death situations for the characters, I don't see why characters would be goofing around doing random things for no reason when the stakes in the game world are so high.

As for their characters, they said they were adventurers seeking fame and fortune. Which is fine but I don't see how randomly killing defenseless animals in a forest is going to help you achieve either of those things?

 

[Maxperson]

I think generally the board tends to trend older so folks cling to those 1e/2e standards.

I've seen a few people post "my way or the highway" as their DMing style, but for the most part the older DMs here have moved at least somewhat with the times and has a different view of how to implement Rule 0, even if they maintain the DM has the ultimate authority to do so. They follow the "don't be a jerk" philosophy, which gets rid of the adversarial advice of the earlier editions.

Even the very few "my way or the highway" DMs, though, have said that they don't just use that authority as a hammer to bash the players/PCs with. They just maintain that if they do decide a change is necessary, don't argue with them over it, it's happening anyway and if you don't like it there are other game out there.