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.

 

[Emerikol]

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.

Do what you do well and love it while doing it. You are not unique and others will like what you like.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

If I have 10 billion dollars, but live well under my means, that doesn't cause me to cease having 10 billion dollars. The money is there even if I don't use it all.

DM authority is exactly like that. The authority and power there, even if we never use it all.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Listening to your players and trying to take what they want into account is not the same as doing whatever they want. You can not be a jerk and also have the last word.

 

[Emerikol]

Listening to your players and trying to take what they want into account is not the same as doing whatever they want. You can not be a jerk and also have the last word.

I agree. I mean why are you even running a game if not to have fun? Is it fun if no one else is having fun? No for me. I still hold the last and final vote because I am 100 times more committed than any player. I've worked to create a great world and adventures in that world. And there is no player that cannot be replaced.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Not, really. If you have a tyrant DM who makes a final ruling that you don't like, your have two options. 1) keep playing and the ruling happens in the game, 2) quit the game and the ruling still happens in the game as your PC becomes and NPC and is still present.

Neither of those two options stops the ruling from happening, since the DM has the final authority over what happens in the game. Of course a tyrant DM will often find himself the only person left in his game, but he still has full authority over that very lonely game of his.

 

[Azzy]

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.

Regardless of what WotC says, any authority that a DM has is ultimately granted by the gaming group as a whole. DMs that worthy of trust tend to be granted more authority, and DMs that are not worthy of said trust can go walk and a new DM found. After all, DMs are just as replaceable as any player.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Regardless of what WotC says, any authority that a DM has is ultimately granted by the gaming group as a whole. DMs that worthy of trust tend to be granted more authority, and DMs that are not worthy of said trust can go walk and a new DM found. After all, DMs are just as replaceable as any player.

To be fair, IME it is harder to replace a DM than a player. It's just not a job everybody wants to take on.

 

[Maxperson]

Regardless of what WotC says, any authority that a DM has is ultimately granted by the gaming group as a whole. DMs that worthy of trust tend to be granted more authority, and DMs that are not worthy of said trust can go walk and a new DM found. After all, DMs are just as replaceable as any player.

Leaving the DM's game is not the same as having any authority over it.

Yes, that's ultimately what will happen if the DM is a jerk, but at no point does anyone but the DM have any authority in that game unless the DM gives it.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If you have a problem with the authority granted to me by the game, take it up with WotC.

That's what I did and boy did the slings and arrows fly.

 

[Azzy]

Leaving the DM's game is not the same as having any authority over it.

No, it's not and I'm not suggesting it is. Instead, it's taking authority away from an offending DM.