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]

What counts as "wearing a red cap" in a TTRPG? Typically, participants picture it in their imagination. No matter what DM chooses to imagine, player can continue to picture that they are "wearing a red cap". Suppose there are three players and one DM, and the three players all share that picture, then the normal view is that the character is indeed "wearing a red cap".

Nothing DM chooses to picture can dislodge that, other than in their own imagination.

No. Suppose they run across a bull that will charge anyone wearing red. The bull doesn't charge. If all the players are going along this is just mass delusion.

If bad guys are wearing red hats, and the player tries to say he is wearing a red hat the bad guys won't see it and they will attack.

The DM is the campaign world's reality. What the DM thinks IS reality in that campaign world.

 

[clearstream]

You cannot demand that we look at DMs exclusively as being without any fault, and then turn around and say that we have to consider the full spectrum of possible player behavior.

Well, one can, but the results reached in such a conversation - predicated as it is on good-DM/bad-players - may only be applicable within that scope. It would remain valid to wonder what things look like predicated upon good-DM/good-players (I assume we can exclude bad-DM/bad-players as likely to yield anything worth helpful!)

 

[Oofta]

What counts as "wearing a red cap" in a TTRPG? Typically, participants picture it in their imagination. No matter what DM chooses to imagine, player can continue to picture that they are "wearing a red cap". Suppose there are three players and one DM, and the three players all share that picture, then the normal view is that the character is indeed "wearing a red cap".

Nothing DM chooses to picture can dislodge that, other than in their own imagination.

What's the point? Is this really an issue? It feels like a complete strawman if it has no impact on character abilities, what they say, what they do,how they describe what is happening.

I don't care if you think the grass is purple in my campaign world if you never mention it.

 

[clearstream]

No. Suppose they run across a bull that will charge anyone wearing red. The bull doesn't charge. If all the players are going along this is just mass delusion.

How does that possibly fit the label of "delusion". Here, seeing as they hold an abnormal view, it is the DM who is deluded.

If bad guys are wearing red hats, and the player tries to say he is wearing a red hat the bad guys won't see it and they will attack.

What prevents the players continuing to uphold their world consistency. "Yikes, they attacked. I thought we'd tricked them for sure." Vincent Baker already supplied the classic example of this, with his Smelly Chamberlain.

The DM is the campaign world's reality. What the DM thinks IS reality in that campaign world.

Given DM is imagining something no one else is, that seems like an odd sort of definition of "real" for a shared fiction. Highlighting once again the two-models divide I outline upthread. (My #576.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First, the DM making the final call does not mean you can't question a call. During a game I'm not going to have a long discussion so that we keep the game going, but we can talk about it after the game.

According to Emerikol, even that much is verboten.

But there will be times when the DM says X, the player says Y and there is no middle ground. What do you envision happening? There's nothing to work out, there's no compromise. It's either X or Y.

I don't envision anything--because I think that the only times this happens are:
1. When at least one person is not actually participating in good faith, and thus no compromise was ever possible to begin with, or
2. When at least one person has genuinely screwed up, and is thus actually at fault for having failed to do something they were obligated to do.

I make no judgments about which side is in the wrong, but at least one side is wrong, whether by intent (bad faith) or by accident (messed up). The former has been discussed to death here and elsewhere. The latter would be things like a DM failing to communicate the tone and style of game they intend to run, or a player failing to specify that they have some major hangup about something (e.g. "no sex scenes please" or whatever) in advance of actual play.

So long as those two things aren't relevant? I don't actually believe there is such a thing as a situation where both people are participating in good faith. Someone who participates in good faith is interested in what the other side wants, and in finding ways to rearrange the pieces. I've already laid out examples for how even such seemingly-bright lines as "no evil PCs" (one of my own limits!) or "no PC races with flight" can actually be much more nuanced than they seem. That's my whole point here.

There are bad DMs out there. DM making the final call or not has little to do with it.

Whereas I think that that very thing is the first brick on the road for such DMs. It is giving them carte blanche. It is telling them that this is a home made for them.

 

[clearstream]

What's the point? Is this really an issue? It feels like a complete strawman if it has no impact on character abilities, what they say, what they do,how they describe what is happening.

I don't care if you think the grass is purple in my campaign world if you never mention it.

But I do mention it, and the other players (in my thought experiment) agree with me. The challenge presented is how to show that what DM pictures is any more real than what players do?

 

[Maxperson]

THEN WHY DO YOU INSIST UPON THAT POWER???

I don't. Again, it's what I have because that's what the game gives me. DMs have it and that won't change unless the game changes.

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.

I don't think I've ever said the absolute authority is part of being a good DM. Being a good DM or being a bad DM is apart from that. The authority is just a tool in the DM's toolbox.

My view on the "enabling" argument is 1) simply playing any game enables bad human behavior, because humans are humans, 2) you cannot legislate away someone being a jerk, no change to the rules will prevent abuse, 3) because of number 2, there's no point in removing a helpful tool from the DM's toolbox, because the removal will only hurt the responsible DMs. The rare bad ones are going to be abusive regardless of what the rules say.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, one can, but the results reached in such a conversation - predicated as it is on good-DM/bad-players - may only be applicable within that scope. It would remain valid to wonder what things look like predicated upon good-DM/good-players (I assume we can exclude bad-DM/bad-players as likely to yield anything worth helpful!)

I still say "cannot," because it's an unfair debate tactic. It forbids one side from making bad-person-behavior arguments in any form whatsoever, while not only allowing but depending on bad-person-behavior arguments for the other side. That's not an acceptable situation in a reasonable debate. It would be like having a debate over whether marijuana should be legalized, but forbidding any studies that speak about health benefits to users, while allowing studies that speak about health detriments caused by secondhand smoke. A double standard is no standard at all.

 

[abirdcall]

I kind of like that but wonder how it would play out in very remote regions. Short rests and hope for the best? Sure makes it more challenging.

What about big dungeons? Would you allow resting outside the dungeon at camp if creatures are not assailing them?

Not criticism, just thinking of how I might do it when it’s my turn to DM!

These are good questions.

It is going to be campaign specific. For me the key is to have somewhere that is safe enough they don't need to have a watch. So there is little danger and that allows for real rest.

In very remote regions this could include a good aligned dragon's influence area, some druids, maybe a powerful good hermit invites them in.

In large dungeons there are often settlements like deep gnomes or myconids and the like.

Otherwise I also don't think it is a problem to say they need to return all the way back to a city after their dungeon venture. There will end up being some days where they are not there and things can change and that is the idea. It incentivizes them to push further.

 

[Emerikol]

How does that possibly fit the label of "delusion". Here, seeing as they hold an abnormal view, it is the DM who is deluded.

No. The DM's view is the physics of the world. What he is imagining is reality in that campaign world.

What prevents the players continuing to uphold their world consistency. "Yikes, they attacked. I thought we'd tricked them for sure." Vincent Baker already supplied the classic example of this, with his Smelly Chamberlain.

They could do that but the results would be eventually that they could not prosper having views that are not in accord with reality.

Given DM is imagining something no one else is, that seems like an odd sort of definition of "real" for a shared fiction. Highlighting once again the two-models divide I outline upthread. (My #576.)

Well, the use of the term "shared fiction" is telling. I don't describe my game as shared fiction. Players don't introduce things about the campaign world into the setting just because the DM hasn't yet described them. That style of play exists and for some it is fun. It isn't really traditional D&D though. Now, I agree that the Players actions/reactions and the DM's update of what they are experiencing in the world is a sort of shared fiction I agree. The term is loaded nowadays though and I don't use it. It's a far more narrativist term so I just don't associate it with my games at all.