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.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

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.

I was not trying to manipulate anyone. I was worried that the players playing the druid and the life cleric would be upset by the actions of the player playing the wizard. I assumed (wrongly) that someone who plays a druid would be an animal lover and would not morally approve of unnecessary violence against animals. And also because the rogue had stated just a few minutes earlier that she wanted to move stealthily, I felt (wrongly) she wouldn't want the wizard to attack the animals because it would spoil her plan. I was trying to keep peace between the players because they did not know each other well and I did not know them well. I thought the actions of the one player would annoy the other three players and possibly prevent them from enjoying the game so I double checked with them before allowing him to proceed. Plus I felt that if they angered the wood elves then it might prevent them from being able to complete the campaign in a satisfactory manner as future quests I had planned would probably require close interaction and cooperation with the wood elves.

 

[Mort]

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.

I certainly agree the framing could have been more overt. It's a possible opportunity to realize that things that seem completely obvious to the GM are far from obvious to the players.

 

[abirdcall]

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.


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?"

Yeah.

I work in a hospital. I'm not anyone's boss but there are times where I need to make a clinical decision and then once I do so I expect my co-staff to support me (unless it's obviously abusive or harmful). Afterward we can discuss it as a team and sometimes I will learn that there was a better way to have handled the situation.

The worst way of handling the situation though is to have everyone argue over what is the optimal course of action when we just need to be doing some course of action that is better than nothing at all.

A session is similar, someone has to make a decision to keep the game moving and the designated person who has the final say in the moment is the DM. And because it is a leisure activity even when we have discussed something afterward and the group out votes me I have said well that wouldn't be fun for me so I still don't want to do it like that. I think that's okay because in those circumstances they are usually things that will affect my passion for putting in the work outside of the game and if I lose that passion the game will die anyway.

 

[AK_Ambrian]

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.

I certainly agree the framing could have been more overt. It's a possible opportunity to realize that things that seem completely obvious to the GM are far from obvious to the players.

Many wood elves are rangers and can speak with animals. When the players killed one of the animals the others scattered into the woods. I had told the players that there was a flock of birds and deer grazing. I can imagine word of what had happened would get back to the elves from the animals. And because I had explained that the truce between the human townsfolk and the wood elves was fragile, I thought that the players might consider the possibility that the wood elves would be closely monitoring any incursions and outsider activity in the forest.

 

[abirdcall]

I was not trying to manipulate anyone. I was worried that the players playing the druid and the life cleric would be upset by the actions of the player playing the wizard. I assumed (wrongly) that someone who plays a druid would be an animal lover and would not morally approve of unnecessary violence against animals. And also because the rogue had stated just a few minutes earlier that she wanted to move stealthily, I felt (wrongly) she wouldn't want the wizard to attack the animals because it would spoil her plan. I was trying to keep peace between the players because they did not know each other well and I did not know them well. I thought the actions of the one player would annoy the other three players and possibly prevent them from enjoying the game so I double checked with them before allowing him to proceed. Plus I felt that if they angered the wood elves then it might prevent them from being able to complete the campaign in a satisfactory manner as future quests I had planned would probably require close interaction and cooperation with the wood elves.

This is an aside, but I think the idea of druids as animal lovers is not their main representation. They are the prime representation of true neutral and in nature animals brutally rip each other apart. Some of them express their love of nature by protecting animals fiercely against those who are separate from it such as most humans. I would call those good aligned druids.

The neutral ones are more stewards of nature, they watch and attempt to preserve a balance that mostly takes the form of keeping the undead and encroachment of civilization at bay.

There are also evil druids who would be fine with the wizard's cruel actions as nature can be cruel. But then that evil druid would be just as likely to betray the wizard when confronting the bandits to have the wizard meet the same fate as the bird they killed.

 

[Oofta]

Yeah.

I work in a hospital. I'm not anyone's boss but there are times where I need to make a clinical decision and then once I do so I expect my co-staff to support me (unless it's obviously abusive or harmful). Afterward we can discuss it as a team and sometimes I will learn that there was a better way to have handled the situation.

The worst way of handling the situation though is to have everyone argue over what is the optimal course of action when we just need to be doing some course of action that is better than nothing at all.

A session is similar, someone has to make a decision to keep the game moving and the designated person who has the final say in the moment is the DM. And because it is a leisure activity even when we have discussed something afterward and the group out votes me I have said well that wouldn't be fun for me so I still don't want to do it like that. I think that's okay because in those circumstances they are usually things that will affect my passion for putting in the work outside of the game and if I lose that passion the game will die anyway.

If the DM ain't havin' fun ain't nobody havin' fun. I will listen for about a minute if someone objects just in case I made a mistake (I thought it happened once, but I was wrong), but I'm not going to argue about it during the game. If you want to continue the discussion afterwards we can but I will make the final call. Very frequently I find that in a group of six players you have one or possibly two who are really pushing for something and everyone else doesn't care or secretly disagree but don't want to voice their opinion. Because of that I do sometimes send out a survey afterwards to ask people what they really want.

As a DM it's my hope that I'm running a game the players enjoy, but if you try to please everyone you frequently end up pleasing no one. I listen to what players are saying, sometimes I agree, sometimes we meet halfway, sometimes the answer is no.

 

[abirdcall]

If the DM ain't havin' fun ain't nobody havin' fun. I will listen for about a minute if someone objects just in case I made a mistake (I thought it happened once, but I was wrong), but I'm not going to argue about it during the game. If you want to continue the discussion afterwards we can but I will make the final call. Very frequently I find that in a group of six players you have one or possibly two who are really pushing for something and everyone else doesn't care or secretly disagree but don't want to voice their opinion. Because of that I do sometimes send out a survey afterwards to ask people what they really want.

As a DM it's my hope that I'm running a game the players enjoy, but if you try to please everyone you frequently end up pleasing no one. I listen to what players are saying, sometimes I agree, sometimes we meet halfway, sometimes the answer is no.

Yeah, that sounds good.

Most of the time disputes at the table happen because I've misunderstood what a player meant. They explain it again in a different way and then I say oh okay and we continue on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Because people won't always agree, and when they don't, a decision on how to proceed needs to be made.

 

[Mort]

Many wood elves are rangers and can speak with animals. When the players killed one of the animals the others scattered into the woods. I had told the players that there was a flock of birds and deer grazing. I can imagine word of what had happened would get back to the elves from the animals. And because I had explained that the truce between the human townsfolk and the wood elves was fragile, I thought that the players might consider the possibility that the wood elves would be closely monitoring any incursions and outsider activity in the forest.

One thing I've learned is, much of the time, players don't think about these situations in nearly the same way the DM does or is expecting them too. What seems obvious to the DM is often opaque to the players, information transfer is far from perfect. Meaning, if the players need to know the elves are watching or that the elves are communicating with the animals - it's best to just tell them rather than hint at it.

I've had it happen often, as a player, where the DM thought they were being completely obvious in "hinting" at something yet no one at the table picked up on it (least of all me). It's helped me realize to be a lot more up front when framing scenarios.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay so...just so we're clear on this...

The person with all of the power...who calls all of the shots...who can end the game at any time and unilaterally eject anyone from the group they like...

They are going to have just as difficult a time having fun as the people completely dependent on their every word?

Yes. You act as if having the authority that the game gives you is what most DMs enjoy. It's not. In my experience the overwhelming number of DMs aren't in it for the "Muahahahahahaha! Power."

That emphatically does not match my experience of speaking with people on this forum. You, in fact, are one of the specific people I would mention who have explicitly and repeatedly rejected this--that there are not and cannot be ANY limitations whatsoever upon DM power, not even social decorum or respect for others. Which....that's exactly what "use that authority as a hammer to bash the players/PCs with" enables.

Because your limitation doesn't exist. If you have a problem with the authority granted to me by the game, take it up with WotC. My position on what authority is granted to me is far different from how I DM and what I enjoy out of the running the game. If you conflate authority with what DMs do and enjoy, you will be wrong most of the time.