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.

 

[Oofta]

According to Emerikol, even that much is verboten.


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.


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.

I'll let @Emerikol speak for themselves. As far as I can see you're misrepresenting their position.

But you didn't answer my question, I assume because you can't. Sometimes it is either X or Y. Look at how many rules questions come up on this forum that ends up failing into two camps.

The no evil PCs thing? If your PC was evil before the campaign started I don't care. It can be an interesting plot hook. But your PC cannot continue being evil. Someone who used to be evil but no longer commits evil in word or deed is no longer evil as far as I am concerned.

But if you can't even acknowledge something as fundamental as there are times when it really is a choice X or Y, I don't see any reason to continue the discussion.

 

[Yaarel]

I'm not sure how DMing by committee would work.

In our games, we take turns DMing during the same campaign.

Generally, each DM provides an adventure for a level up. But sometimes someone DMs for several levels.

During a session, what a DM arbitrates goes. Discussions for reconsiderations happen between sessions. Because it is a shared world, each DM tends to integrate the decisions of the previous DMs.

 

[Emerikol]

To restate my point, here you are defining "reality" as what one person imagines. What happens when others at the table choose to imagine something different? There's really nothing DM can do to force it.

They can't make use of anything they think they "know" that doesn't accord with the reality set forth by the DM. They can of course just think random thoughts that don't impact the game.

What happens should the players just go on as they have? Perhaps nominating one of their number to take over as DM. Their views become "reality"? I believe all one can really show is DM may have a loud voice on some matters.

Once they nominate another player as their DM they have left that campaign and went on to another campaign. That is the players veto.

Here is a popular quote:
What the DM says goes, and if the DM says enough stupid crap, the players go.

I absolutely realize that players can leave. What they cannot do though is take over the DM's campaign. The DM is still in charge of his campaign. If he invites a different set of more amenable to playstyle players over and runs that game, it is still the same campaign. The original players left that campaign and went to a different one with a different DM.

Think of it like a business. Business sell what they want and they charge what they want for their products. They arrange their stores how they like. The customers can choose to come in and buy or not. They can't tell the business owner they want the store changed.

Yes, that was intentional, and I am not referring to narrativist games here. The model you describe conflates "the game" with DM. Under that model it can seem justified to say that X is not part of the game unless X is accepted by the DM. I am pointing out that not only is that not the the only model, it's not the model for non-narrativist games such as those played in Adventurers' League that can live on past any given DM. If anything, it is the game designers and players in that case that persist "the game".

Going further, I would say that it's trivially shown that the "DM = Game" model is false, by asking how "the game" goes where there is only the DM and no players? Seeing as we are not talking about solo-play, we're really only debating matters of degree.

Well, if a DM cannot find any players then his campaign would at best be put on hold and at worst die. It is still his campaign.

And I hold Adventurer's League games in such low regard, I don't even consider them the same thing as a real campaign. I'd never do them. I'd hate it as a player or DM. That doesn't mean I wouldn't play a game at a con but my motives are 100% different in that situation. I am just pretending to play so as to learn some new game or experience some new set of rules. I don't see it as anything really worthwhile.

For some of us, we believe we struck gold sitting on the knee of Gygax and haven't looked back since. There are enough of us to really enjoy our games and we don't care what the rest of you are doing. And I don't begrudge you one iota having fun doing it your way.

 

[Oofta]

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?

Then I would tell you it's not true. If you make a big deal out of it? I'm not the right DM for you, good luck finding a different group.

But this is an obviously ridiculous example and a strawman. Until you want to discuss something real, I'm done.

 

[Emerikol]

According to Emerikol, even that much is verboten.
<snip>

Actually you are wrong. I said that after the session we could have a discussion but that the final word was still the DMs. That doesn't mean the answer is always "No!". It does mean no committee is going to override the DM.

 

[Maxperson]

There is nothing anyone can do to override anyone. It's not a legislature, or a court, or a committee governed by externally-imposed rules. It's a group of people jointly participating in a voluntary activity.

If I decide, for instance, that my PC's is wearing a green cap, there is nothing the GM can do to override that.

Yes he can. He can simply say it's red and it will be. I've never met a DM who would do that, but the the DM is very capable of changing the color and you can imagine it green all you want, but it won't be green in the fiction. You can either accept that it is red or leave the game. And I'd suggest leaving the game of any DM who did that. I certainly wouldn't stay.

 

[Maxperson]

And I become instantly suspicious when someone says, "You are not allowed to question anything I say, and at best you may make suggestions, which I have absolute and total veto power over."

I agree. If I make a ruling in the game and someone disagrees, he's free to make a quick statement about why he thinks the ruling should be different. I'm human and make mistakes and/or don't think of everything. However, unless the PCs life is on the line, if you make the quick argument and I decide against it, we can continue the discussion after the game is over. Continuing to argue is disruptive to the game.

You are presuming good faith on the DM's part. This entitles me to presume good faith on the players' parts. If I am not allowed to assume good faith on the players' parts, you are not allowed to presume good faith on the DM's part.

Good faith on the DM's part should be assumed, as should good faith on the players' parts. Bad DMs and bad Players are pretty rare.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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


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


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.

Yeah, the presumption of "shared fiction" really needs a firm definition if it's going to be discussed.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

But in the game world the PC is delusional and is wearing green cap. The world reacts to him as if he is wearing a green cap, no matter how much the PC insists that it is red. Eventually folks are just going to treat the PC as insane if he truly pushes the issue. The player's imagination in this regard doesn't override what is happening in the game world.

Now, if the player starts insisting outside of the game world that his PC is really wearing a red cap and becomes disruptive, that's a major issue. I have no issue with a player running an insane PC, though.

I can't change what's in the players mind. If he wants to imagine his elf bard as a 50 story tall godzilla smashing Tokyo and breathing atomic fire, I can't change that. The game world isn't going to start being smashed or catching fire, though. It's going to treat him like the elf bard that he is. The player's imagination doesn't override the game world, which the DM narrates

 

[Maxperson]

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?

That doesn't matter. If I narrate the grass is green and you and all of the other players imagine as purple, that grass is still green in the fiction. Your imaginations can't override that. If your PCs start insisting the grass is purple, they will eventually(after it's assumed to be a joke) be labeled as insane by the NPCs who hear it.