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.

 

[abirdcall]

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?).

Silvery Barbs was a 1st level spell in an adventure (I think?) that was beyond overpowered.

The thing with having a built in fly speed for me is that it can create situations that are unsatisfying to the player or maybe even feel unfair. It's similar to having a large character or a centaur or such.

There will be many situations where the flight isn't useable. And when it is sometimes that will make the character very vulnerable.

I have a general rule of not allowing them either for that reason. I just see it as disappointment waiting to happen.

 

[pemerton]

not sure how that is supposed to work, one fiction will have to win out and be the basis for what comes afterwards.

My point is that the GM can't unilaterally make something be part of the shared fiction. It has to be shared.

Hence the GM doesn't have any "final authority". Given that the sharing of the fiction is a dispersed task - everyone has to be part of it for it to work - so, likewise, "authority" is dispersed.

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.

But if the players have a different view, the GM might accommodate their framing to what the players think. I see this happen from time to time in my own RPGing.

 

[Maxperson]

Authority over nothing (as he has no game anymore) is no authority at all.

Of course he has a game. Do you think he is somehow incapable of getting more players for it? Do you think that the Monopoly game on my shelf that I've never opened isn't game or that I don't have full authority over what is done with it?

With internet gaming taking off, a bad DM will have near unlimited players to bring into the game. Eventually he's going to find some that will put up with his crap.

 

[Maxperson]

You are trying to argue that the DM has final authority over what happens in the game by taking as a premise the DM has the final authority over what happens in the game (see the "because" clause in the final sentence of the quote). That is obviously circular reasoning.

No. I'm saying he has final authority because there is literally nothing anyone can do to override him.

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. Other players may or may not join with them. The GM has no authority to compel or oblige anyone to imagine anything.

What they imagine is irrelevant. If, and I would never do this since I view the player as the one who controls PC actions, I said that your PC picks his nose. That's what happens whether you and the other players imagine it or not. You can either accept it or leave the game. Should you choose to leave it, your PC would become an NPC and the next group that encountered the NPC would encounter one who picked his nose.

 

[Oofta]

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.

All I've said is that someone decides. That may mean an individual decides, you put it to a vote or the group never comes to a consensus and the game falls apart.

Other than that I really don't know what you're talking about.

 

[clearstream]

No. I'm saying he has final authority because there is literally nothing anyone can do to override him.

What they imagine is irrelevant. If, and I would never do this since I view the player as the one who controls PC actions, I said that your PC picks his nose. That's what happens whether you and the other players imagine it or not. You can either accept it or leave the game. Should you choose to leave it, your PC would become an NPC and the next group that encountered the NPC would encounter one who picked his nose.

The arguments made seem to partly rest on assumptions about what counts as "the game". So far as I can make out, you're picturing something like this

DM == Game​

​

So that players can enter or leave the game that is virtually embodied in the DM. And seeing as, unlike a Monopoly set, DM is a free person and not a slave, they cannot be forced to change the game that they embody. The authority you refer to is just the basic autonomy of a person in a society that has the freedom to play games (setting aside arguments and variations on what that autonomy could amount to as being irrelevant here, to focus on the nature of games as a voluntary activity.)

Supposing the DM were a slave, then whoever owned that slave might be able to force them to change the game that they embody: making their supposed game playing an involuntary activity. An AI DM might occupy this sort of position. One might feel in that case that DM were not "playing" the game, only serving as an enabler of it. To an extent, it is this aspect of DM as enabler of the game that justifies the sort of model I've attributed to you. The contention is that seeing as DM is enabler, abandoning DM is like abandoning the Monopoly set: the game that they enable can't be played. Moreover, while Monopoly sets are duplicates, one can even make an argument that "the game" enabled by a given DM has only one copy.

Another model is something like this

DM ==> Game <== Players​

​

I've added arrows to suggest that here "the game" exists as a function of both DM and players. Remove a player, and in this model a different game is played (following the same arguments I made above for DM.) No one participant has total authority over "the game". Commonly there are asymmetries in who has the right to say what, but in this model such submissions to "the game" require agreement (which is often tacit, based on prior agreements) because until everyone accepts it "the game" is ambiguous... or splinters. (There's always some fuzziness: I'm referring to instances here that can disrupt what participants say and will agree to next.) The pattern of agreement is most at issue when a participant ought to say something that another participant will find unwelcome (such that their agreement will be fraught.)

If right, then the gap between views may in part be explained by different models. The first model presents a tautology. "The game" is defined in terms of DM and it is meaningless to suggest that they don't have total authority over it. As many intuit, one can only go on to speak about some other game. The second model defines "the game" in terms of DM + players. "The game" exists between them, and to remove a player is once more only to go on to speak about some other game. It is as right in the second model to deny DM has total authority, as it is in the first model to assert it.

There is a resilence that ought to be acknowledged here: "the game" in common can go on to have life beyond the removal of one participant, provided a corpus carries it forwards. (It can be recognisably the same game even after the departure of one participant.) I suspect it's asymmetries in how "the game in common" is impacted by the departure of different participants that prompt folk to entertain the first model. Contrast perhaps Adventurers League play with individual home campaigns.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

What does that have to do with the question I asked?

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."

THEN WHY DO YOU INSIST UPON THAT POWER???

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.

So somehow it's not actually part of being a good DM now?

This, this right here, is the confusing having-it-both-ways thing I keep talking about. Whenever it's inconvenient to admit that the absolute-power argument directly leads to enabling the worst kinds of behavior, of course there are limits, of course decorum and sense and taste and respect are important. But then as soon as I ask anything about limits, suddenly those limits are gone, bye-bye, as if they'd never been there at all.

This is a classic motte-and-bailey argument.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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'm going to make this very simple:

Did.

I.

Ever.

Say.

That?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

If you never use it at all, why is it so important that you insist upon it?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Respect or not, the core assumption is that everyone wants to get their way. If they didn't, or they truly have no opinion, there's neither discussion nor disagreement.

The difference in how this is achieved lies in the types and personalities of the people involved.

If the people doing the discussing are stubborn dig-in-their-heels types (I'm highly familiar with these) then there has to be someone who clearly has the authority to just make and enforce a decision, otherwise all you have is an endless argument where nobody budges.

Contrast: if the people doing the discussing are passive-aggressive types (I've met more than my share of these too) who disagree, then the discussion also never ends. Sure, a "consensus" might be reached in the moment but allowing that consensus is merely a ploy to provide space for ongoing low-grade lobbying and opinion-swaying to continue until the same discussion/argument erupts again somewhere down the road. Lather-rinse-repeat until the PA types get their way. And while it's easy to suggest simply telling the PA types to go pound sand when they start/continue their lobbying, it's often hard to notice the pattern until well after the fact when hindsight shows how well everyone got played.

Would you say that someone who digs in their heels and absolutely never accepts anything except total capitulation is a person who is participating in good faith?

Would you say that a "passive-aggressive type," as you have described here, is a person who is participating in good faith?

If we are to accept the demand that only DMs who participate in good faith are worthy of discussion, then I expect that we apply the exact same standard to players. If we are to move forward presuming that the DM actually must deal with players engaging in bad faith, that that is genuinely unavoidable, then I refuse to accept that expectation: if bad player behavior is seen as an unavoidable issue that must be addressed, then bad DM behavior is also an unavoidable issue that must be addressed.

You cannot have it both ways. Either we only talk about DMs and players who engage with the game in good faith, or we talk about both players and DMs potentially coming to the table in bad faith. It is fundamentally biased and unfair to force a conversation where ONLY players can behave badly, and thus the angelic grace of the DM must be relied upon. Particularly when it is people who mostly DM who demand this we-don't-talk-about-bad-DMs presumption.