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.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

There's a third option: stay in the game and argue the ruling until you're blue in the face, hoping to get support from the other players.

 

[Lanefan]

I have some hard no's. That's evil PCs (exceptions exist eg evil campaign), no flyers, and no silvery barbs. And ask about Tashas stuff.

By "no flyers" do you mean "no species with built-in flight" e.g. Aarakokra? I ask because flight comes online pretty early in any case be it by shapeshift, spell, or device.

I'm fine with evil PCs. I'm also fine with good PCs knocking off evil PCs, or vice-versa.

Silvery barbs must be a 5e headache, as I'm not familiar with (it? them?).

 

[pemerton]

The player states "The rule says [insert the player's interpretation that differs from the DM's]". The DM says "no". Who wins? The player can dig in their heels if they really want, but if the DM says they don't rule that way the game either ends or the player agrees with the DM.

So, suppose the game ends - this doesn't show the GM had the final authority.

And of course there is a third option: the GM agrees with the player.

In every D&D game I've play over the decades, it's the DM who makes the final call on rules and what is happening that has any real impact on the game.

OK. That's a biographical fact about you. It's not a fact about how RPGs have to work, and it's not a biographical fact about everyone else.

The players can imagine whatever they want. They can imagine that the small cat I just described was a purple elephant.

Well, when I play a RPG I aim to achieve shared imagination, given that that is central to the whole enterprise.

 

[Oofta]

So, suppose the game ends - this doesn't show the GM had the final authority.

Sure it does. The DMs that were bad enough that people left the game (people leave for other reasons, of course, even just mismatch of expectations) will still be a bad DM whether or not they make the final call.

And of course there is a third option: the GM agrees with the player.

Sure. Sometimes that happens, sometimes there's a compromise, sometimes not.

OK. That's a biographical fact about you. It's not a fact about how RPGs have to work, and it's not a biographical fact about everyone else.

I didn't say it was how RPGs have to work. I said it's the way every D&D game I've ever played works. I've had dozens if not hundreds of DMs over the years. The DM has always made the final call.

Well, when I play a RPG I aim to achieve shared imagination, given that that is central to the whole enterprise.

That's the goal. But it's really odd that you have a problem with players imagining something in the world differently than the DM being a thing that matters. When it comes to the rules, someone has to make the final call. In D&D, that's the DM 99% of the time. In my experience it's been 100% of the time.

 

[Zardnaar]

By "no flyers" do you mean "no species with built-in flight" e.g. Aarakokra? I ask because flight comes online pretty early in any case be it by shapeshift, spell, or device.

I'm fine with evil PCs. I'm also fine with good PCs knocking off evil PCs, or vice-versa.

Silvery barbs must be a 5e headache, as I'm not familiar with (it? them?).

Races with at will flying.

Silvery Barbs is a fun suck spell somewhere between over powered and broken, slows the game down and PCs hate it being used on them.

 

[pemerton]

When it comes to the rules, someone has to make the final call.

This isn't true, in the context of voluntary leisure activities.

it's really odd that you have a problem with players imagining something in the world differently than the DM being a thing that matters.

If the participants aren't agreed on the shared fiction, I don't see how play can proceed. (Unless we're really playing a board game. Some D&D is probably closer to this.)

 

[Maxperson]

There's a third option: stay in the game and argue the ruling until you're blue in the face, hoping to get support from the other players.

That's just a slow motion #2.

 

[Oofta]

This isn't true, in the context of voluntary leisure activities.

If the participants aren't agreed on the shared fiction, I don't see how play can proceed. (Unless we're really playing a board game. Some D&D is probably closer to this.)

Even if you put it to a vote someone is deciding. You don't have one person playing chess while the other is playing checkers at the same time.

They do agree on the same fiction. The world and it's inhabitants as declared by the DM, the PCs and their actions as declared by the players. As far as vision of the shared fiction those will never match up 100%, but if they're too far apart that's another issue.

Obviously other games handle it differently and you can run D&D any way you want.

But we've had this discussion many times before. Do you really expect anything to change?

 

[mamba]

Suppose that the GM makes a "ruling" - that is to say, suggests that something is part of the shared fiction - that a player doesn't like. The player has the option of not accepting that the GM's suggestion is part of the shared fiction.

not sure how that is supposed to work, one fiction will have to win out and be the basis for what comes afterwards. Depending on what the disagreement is about it might not matter in future events or it could be very important. In the latter case only one side can win out, and that is usually the DM as they frame the scenes based on their fiction.

I've played in games in which the GM was imagining stuff to himself, and the players were largely ignoring it and imagining their own stuff (that pertained mostly but not exclusively to interactions among the PCs). The GM didn't have any "final authority". And when the GM tried to change the setting and backstory in ways that would have largely invalidated/overridden what the players were doing among themselves, the game collapsed as the players were not interested in the stuff the GM was putting forward.

if the two fictions cannot be reconciled and
the difference becomes apparent to everyone, that might happen. Sounds like the group was not a good fit to begin with

 

[pemerton]

Even if you put it to a vote someone is deciding.

I've not said anything about voting.

All I've said is that there is no need for a final authority; and that, in a voluntary leisure activity, there cannot really be a final authority, given that no one is under any obligations.