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.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

They might also just be very new to the game. I've noticed a tendency for new players to still treat D&D a bit like a board game where there aren't roleplaying consequences to actions like that. They don't yet understand the differences between the two types of games. The player of the wizard might just be using firebolt because it would be fun to use and the bird is handy.

 

[ezo]

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.

Trust me, the DM can absolutely NOT have fun even if they are "calling the shots"! Sometimes different game styles just don't mesh well.

My point wasn't with the "power" aspect of being a DM, but what is fun for them. What sort of game does the DM enjoy running? How many players? Why does the DM feel certain things, rules, systems, etc. are what makes the game fun for them to run? And so on.

For example, I recognize I enjoy low-magic low-power games. If I am starting a new game, and a player really wants to play something from Tasha's or 2024 which I find in direct conflict with my preferred low-magic low-power preference, a couple different things can happen:

1. We compromise (if such a place exists) where the player has enough to enjoy themselves but not so much it bothers me. We both have a slightly diminished level of fun.
2. We agree that my style of game doesn't jive with their preferences for playing and part ways. The player absolutely wants more power in order for the game to be fun for them and what they want will make the game really no fun for me to run.

Now, some people might see the second option as the DM saying "my way or the highway", but this really isn't the case. The player certainly can choose to stay, but as DM I would not recommend it. I recognize they would not enjoy themselves and it would be determental to the rest of the group. I'd certainly let them try, of course, but it would have to be re-evaluated on both side after a while.

Also, this is in the case of 1 player vs. the DM. If the entire group sans the DM wants a high-power game, I would say I am not the DM for them. But perhaps there is no other DM? Well, I would coach one of them to be the DM so they could have the game they want. However, like the player staying to play when they recognize it is not likely much fun, I know I would not want to DM (which is WAY more work!) a game where I recognize I am not likely to have much fun.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Okay, but again, class/subclass don't tell you those things. Background and personality do.

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?

You can be an ass and still be seeking fame and fortune. Look at real life celebrities. Many of them are down to earth and cool. Some are aloof. And a good number are jerks who feel entitled to act however they please because they are rich and famous.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

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.

No I didn't know him well. And truly, I know lots of people enjoy the combat side of D&D and I had prepared some encounters accordingly. It was made very clear in the introduction that these brigands were ruthless and were not going to go down easily, it was going to be a serious battle. And the players had also encountered an NPC in the town who had warned of other dangerous monsters and ancient ruins deeper in the forest. So there were obviously going to be several opportunities for major confrontations. There was no need to randomly attack animals.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No I didn't know him well. And truly, I know lots of people enjoy the combat side of D&D and I had prepared some encounters accordingly. It was made very clear in the introduction that these brigands were ruthless and were not going to go down easily, it was going to be a serious battle. And the players had also encountered an NPC in the town who had warned of other dangerous monsters and ancient ruins deeper in the forest. So there were obviously going to be several opportunities for major confrontations. There was no need to randomly attack animals.

Not everyone can take D&D seriously. You can either roll with it (they would probably have loved it if you had thrown swarms of angry squirrels at them (use rat swarm stat block)) or you can walk away.

 

[tetrasodium]

Okay, but again, class/subclass don't tell you those things. Background and personality do.

You can be an ass and still be seeking fame and fortune. Look at real life celebrities. Many of them are down to earth and cool. Some are aloof. And a good number are jerks who feel entitled to act however they please because they are rich and famous.

It's weird seeing someone try to thread this particular needle while maintaining that it's a bridge too far for the GM to ask what the player is trying to accomplish or what their objective is. Why not be explicit and wave the "it's what my character would do" flag for what it is instead of beating around the bush like this and the last few posts on this tangent where a player tried to do something nonsensical and got asked to explain themselves by a GM?

 

[Oofta]

Rule zero has always been part of the game as far back as I can remember, but the problems was that it was paired up with other directives that were much more antagonistic in nature, and the pairing led to the abusive DM style.

I had one DM that abused Rule Zero. He decided it was fun that whenever a monster rolled a crit he'd roll a 6 sided die to see what happened. The die had left and right legs, body and head. So if the monster rolled a crit and the dice rolled "head" the PC was beheaded. Oh, and if a PC rolled a 1, they either broke or dropped their weapon. Oddly, monsters never seemed to roll 1s and the crit rule never came into play with the PCs.

So I dealt with it by explaining it wasn't fun. When he didn't change I quit the game and the group fell apart shortly after. Sad thing is, he had been a decent DM for a while before making these changes. I think he was tired of DMing (and likely D&D) but rather than just admit it he went full on passive aggressive.

Long story short, if your DM is being an ass, find a different DM or DM yourself.

 

[Mort]

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?

The first thing I though of, this is the kind of thing some people do in a Computer RPG - just because they can and think it's amusing. From the reaction you described here, seems pretty similar. He did it because he could and thought it would be amusing.

Is this a continuing game? Or was it a one time/short term thing?

 

[Maxperson]

It's weird seeing someone try to thread this particular needle while maintaining that it's a bridge too far for the GM to ask what the player is trying to accomplish or what their objective is. Why not be explicit and wave the "it's what my character would do" flag for what it is instead of beating around the bush like this and the last few posts on this tangent where a player tried to do something nonsensical and got asked to explain themselves by a GM?

I'm doing nothing of the sort. I have no idea what their character would or wouldn't do. We haven't been told anything about that. I will repeat for the third time.

"Okay, but again, class/subclass don't tell you those things. Background and personality do."

Since we don't know what the character would or would not do, I can't say whether the DM questioning it is the right thing to do or not. So far I've brought it up twice and the poster hasn't responded with any sort of clarification about how the players set up their PCs to act.

 

[Maxperson]

The first thing I though of, this is the kind of thing some people do in a Computer RPG - just because they can and think it's amusing. From the reaction you described here, seems pretty similar. He did it because he could and thought it would be amusing.

Is this a continuing game? Or was it a one time/short term thing?

That's another one. I mentioned board game, but computer/console game is another area where that sort of behavior is done, because again there are generally no roleplaying consequences to killing a bird as you pass by.