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.

 

[Zardnaar]

So, what exactly is the difference between this, where the DM (in order to be a good one) must listen to their players and care about what they want out of the game...and what I've spoken of over and over and over again on this forum, which is that stuff is achieved through dialogue and consensus; that it requires participants both being expected to give respect to others, and fully expecting that others will give them respect too; that everyone actually needs to be participating in good faith, which means hearing out what others have to say (regardless of who is listening), etc.?

Because this is nothing at all like the "absolute power", the "unilateral authority", and on, and on, and on that people have so stridently insisted upon every. single. time. we have this kind of discussion, never being willing to accept even the tiniest deviation therefrom. It sounds pretty much exactly like expecting that the participants will be adults who behave respectfully to one another, and that anyone who behaves disrespectfully--including the DM--is in the wrong.

It's not what you say it's how you say it.

And ultimately the DM does have final authority

 

[Paul Farquhar]

let someone

!!!!

If only anyone else was willing to do it!!!!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even a nice, soft spoken individual can turn into a killer if a loved one is murdered for instance.

[gravel voice] “squirrels. They killed my wife. They killed my daughter. They killed my second cousin’s dog. I hate those mangy fluffy-tailed vermin, and won’t rest until I’ve killed every last one of them.”

Sounds like a great backstory to me!

 

[Azzy]

So, what exactly is the difference between this, where the DM (in order to be a good one) must listen to their players and care about what they want out of the game...and what I've spoken of over and over and over again on this forum, which is that stuff is achieved through dialogue and consensus; that it requires participants both being expected to give respect to others, and fully expecting that others will give them respect too; that everyone actually needs to be participating in good faith, which means hearing out what others have to say (regardless of who is listening), etc.?

Because this is nothing at all like the "absolute power", the "unilateral authority", and on, and on, and on that people have so stridently insisted upon every. single. time. we have this kind of discussion, never being willing to accept even the tiniest deviation therefrom. It sounds pretty much exactly like expecting that the participants will be adults who behave respectfully to one another, and that anyone who behaves disrespectfully--including the DM--is in the wrong.

You mean, both the DM and players should behave in a mature and reasonable manner?

 

[pemerton]

Limitation on DM power is social contract.

The limitation on any participant's power to change the fiction is the rules - formal and informal - that make up the system that the group uses to work out what happens next, what the backstory is, etc.

The system is a matter of "social contract", in the sense that everyone has to agree with it for it to have teeth.

It's possible that the system might include a rule that the GM can say whatever they like about the shared fiction, but personally I think that would be a pretty terrible system, and even 2e D&D doesn't quite go this far its rule books.

And ultimately the DM does have final authority

In a voluntary leisure activity, no one has final authority. In a RPG, any participant has the power to destabilise any other participant's authority at any point - because the whole thing is voluntary, and depends upon consensus to establish a shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

In the original post with the example, the poster expressly states that the PCs understood they were not to anger/upset/annoy the wood elves. While the elves were not physically brought in, the stakes were set here, most players should know that blowing away an innocent bird for laughs would violate this.

Now, this might be a bit too tenuous for some groups, but it does qualify (as setting the stakes). From there it's not really DM punishment, it's a consequence from your decision knowing the stakes involved.

I think here we part ways a bit.

What establishes that, at this moment, blasting this bird will draw the ire of the Wood Elves? How will they know (i) about it, and (ii) who did it? I think this GMing approach, of trying to achieve what is really an out-of-game goal (the GM here clearly finds the shooting of the bird silly and/or in poor taste) by exercising a lot of authority over unrevealed elements of backstory, is reasonably fraught.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You mean, both the DM and players should behave in a mature and reasonable manner?

Yes, and that part of both sides behaving in a reasonable manner is (a) listening to what the other side has to say, (b) working to find a result that both parties are happy with, and (c) considering options that might achieve the spirit of what any or all sides are looking for even if it does not achieve the precise letter of what any specific side is looking for.

Because I gave specific, clear examples of doing that, and I was told that it was unacceptable before. Now, it's apparently perfectly fine and is required for DMs to actually be good. This is why I'm so confused.

What I claimed in the past is that it's almost always possible (and I really do mean "almost always," as in exceptions are exceedingly rare, barely even being once-a-campaign IF all parties truly are participating in good faith) to find a reasonable solution that makes everyone happy. I gave, as an example, a player who wants to play a particular race that the DM has not previously included in their campaign world. I listed off at least half a dozen different ways that that could be achieved, each with various amounts of compromise from either side (e.g. "you are not a dragonborn, but you can use dragonborn stats, and be a weird experiment that somehow escaped from a lab/Wizard tower/etc.; just be aware that you weird, unnatural origin will matter" is almost entirely the player making a compromise, while "sure, you can be a dragonborn, you just come from a distant continent nobody here has ever heard of" would be almost entirely DM-side compromise with very little on the player's part.) I was consistently and repeatedly told that I was somehow off the deep end for having this position.

Now caring about what the players want and truly listening to them is, apparently, necessary in order to be a "good DM." Even though that's exactly what I advocated for, and explicitly said so several times, and gave multiple examples.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Well, my suggestion would be that - the next time this comes up - when a player tells you they want to Firebolt a bird, you narrate something like "As you're eyeing the bird to take your shot, you heard something crashing through the forest towards you!" And frame the PCs into an encounter with one of those dangerous monsters.

In other words, instead of hoping to control the PCs, use your control over the elements that are yours as GM - like the framing and pacing of events - to steer the game in a direction that is more interesting to you.

This is excellent advice.
Although I very much empathise with @AK_Ambrian in the scenario presented, I as DM would not ask each and every other player if they are ok with the actions of the wizard, as if trying to manipulate character declarations. Like @Oofta mentioned I would allow for interruptions by others if they were aware.
The PC's declaration would certainly diminish my fun at the table, especially if such actions were of a regular occurrence.

Pemerton's suggestion not only reframes the scene, but ensures both parties (the DM and the restless player/s) are committed and engaged (i.e. having fun) and the scene draws on already established lore (monsters/dangers of the area).

My own view is that this sort of relatively heavy-handed GMing - where the GM uses their control over the background and setting to retroactively impose stakes onto player decisions - can lead to an adversarial relationship at the table, and/or to rather passive players who are scared of making decisions because they don't know what will flow from them.

I think it's better to be up-front about stakes. For instance, if the player declares their PC is about to blast a bird, and you want to make this a druidic matter, have a druid come onto the scene as they are about to take their shot: make it an express part of the stakes before the player commits to their action.

Something similar can be done with resting, though often the conversation might be a bit more "meta".

Also good advice.

 

[pemerton]

This is excellent advice.

<snip>

Also good advice.

Thanks!

 

[Emerikol]

The limitation on any participant's power to change the fiction is the rules - formal and informal - that make up the system that the group uses to work out what happens next, what the backstory is, etc.

The system is a matter of "social contract", in the sense that everyone has to agree with it for it to have teeth.

It's possible that the system might include a rule that the GM can say whatever they like about the shared fiction, but personally I think that would be a pretty terrible system, and even 2e D&D doesn't quite go this far its rule books.

The social contract is the DM can do whatever he or she wants and the players can also leave. The DM is aware hopefully that they want their players to have a good time. Still the campaign is the DM's to control ultimately. Even if the players all leave and make up an identical world to the DMs it won't be the same campaign. It will be the new DMs campaign.

In a voluntary leisure activity, no one has final authority. In a RPG, any participant has the power to destabilise any other participant's authority at any point - because the whole thing is voluntary, and depends upon consensus to establish a shared fiction.

Yes. Players can quit. What they can't do in the campaign is out vote the DM. The DM has committed an enormous amount of effort to craft an engaging campaign (hopefully!). I would never want to have a DM that submitted to group vote against his will. That DM will likely be a very poor DM. That does not mean it has to be adversarial. The DM can just say "That is not what enthuses me. Why don't you DM that idea?"