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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think D&D is being impacted by broader societal issues here.

In order to be a player in a game of D&D you need to TRUST that your DM is going to try and make the game enjoyable for you.

However, some people’s faith in human nature has been eroded to such an extent that they do not believe it is POSSIBLE for someone to be in a position of authority and use it to screw everyone over.

 

[clearstream]

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

Although "shared fiction" could have other implications, my meaning here is simply

that which is imagined to be going on in the game world (the fiction) is represented in each participant's imagination (it is shared)​

​

Given some arrangement such as a DM and three players, four versions of the fiction exist: one in each participants imagination. The participants typically aim to ensure they "share" the fiction in the sense that what each imagines resembles - while undoubtedly not being identical - what the others imagine... to a degree that gives meaning to utterances formed on that basis.

That is not a "presumption" so much as a basic component of (non-solo) TTRPGing. Once folk are able to concede that basic model, it becomes much easier to see that any authority DM has over the game world is limited to i) their own imagination and ii) norms that urge, but cannot force, others to shape what they imagine in line with what DM proposes.

The arguments in this thread are in a sense a trial or conflict between competing norms. Those on the strong-DM side are vested in exhibiting a norm that players ought to shape what they imagine in line with what DM proposes. Exhibition strengthens a norm. Others not beholden to a strong-DM norm point out that DM authority lacks force in the real world for anyone who resists the underlying norm that procures it. (There is no colour that the hat really is, in the real world.)

 

[pemerton]

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

Fiction: imaginary stuff.

Shared fiction: stuff that is imagined together, by a group. In the context of this discussion, that is a group of people playing a RPG.

The GM can imagine whatever they like in their own head, or when they go home and write up their notes, but that is not playing a RPG. Playing a RPG means creating a shared fiction together.

The shared fiction is what makes a RPG different from a board game, because the only limitation on the moves a player can make is that, when they declare that their PC does something, it must be something that is possible given the circumstances of the PC in the fiction. (The label for this constraint on action declaration is fictional position. In a board game I as a player have a position, but it can be described purely in terms of the logic/geometry of the game. In a RPG I (and my PC) have a fictional position.)

 

[pemerton]

By rule the DM has all of the power people keep saying they don't have.

Which rule?

And how would it work? If all the players at the table are imagining <such-and-such> - let's say, some fact about the shared background of their PCs - then how does the GM have the power to compel them to imagine differently? The GM can suggest that they imagine something different, just as the players can (and in my experience do) make such suggestions to the GM. But where is this power to compel supposed to come from?

 

[pemerton]

Realistic as in, thing that is likely to happen at an actual table in a way that matters to the people involved.

I've already given examples - at a certain level of abstraction, but can elaborate a bit if anyone cares for the detail of decades-old games.

If the players are working with an idea of the shared fiction - about who their PCs are, or what their background is, or what it is that gives meaning to what the PCs are doing - that differs from the GM's, then that does not make for an effective game. In fact, in my experience, it can make games collapse, if the GM tries to insist on their vision over that of the players.

The GM has no unilateral power to just dictate what the players should think about all those things, and in my view would be foolish to try and insist on any such power - especially because, the more intimately involved it becomes vis-a-vis the PCs, the more likely it is that the player cares more about it than the GM.

Here's one example: I was playing in a game run by someone I'd only recently met in the context of a university RPG club. He was running an adventure that may have been of his own design, or may have been a module - if I ever knew which, I no longer remember. What I do remember is that we - the PCs - were in a town, that was under some sort of assault from Kobolds. So we - the players - decided, as our PCs, to capture a Kobold and interrogate it. Which we did.

Our view of what one might learn from interrogating a Kobold was informed by our knowledge of the Monster Manual, which states that Kobolds have Average (low) intelligence. In other words, interrogating a Kobold is not that different from interrogating a normal person.

The GM had the Kobold respond to every question we asked it in any utterly hopeless and incomprehending fashion - we got the same sorts of responses from it as one might get from a 2 or 3 year old child. It could not tell us anything about how it had got into the city, how many other Kobolds there were, where they were coming from, what their disposition of forces was, etc.

We politely let the GM tell us all this. And then we (the players) all agreed that we would pull out of the game and start a new game ourselves.

The GM did not have the unilateral power to establish how intelligent a Kobold is, or what they are able to communicate under interrogation. He tried to do that, in disregard of the rulebook (the MM) that we were all familiar with, and that the GM knew we (the players) had in mind in deciding on our capture-and-interrogation plan. But he failed: we (the players) didn't accept his suggestion about what the shared fiction was, and we walked away from the game.

Maybe that GM is out there somewhere still, insisting that that Kobold really lacked the cognitive abilities to answer the questions that we put to it. But his solitary imagination does not constitute an episode of RPG play.

 

[clearstream]

The arguments in this thread are in a sense a trial or conflict between competing norms. Those on the strong-DM side are vested in exhibiting a norm that players ought to shape what they imagine in line with what DM proposes. Exhibition strengthens a norm. Others not beholden to a strong-DM norm point out that DM authority lacks force in the real world for anyone who resists the underlying norm that procures it. (There is no colour that the hat really is, in the real world.)

A more even-handed way to put this last point would be to say that folk here seem to be arguing slightly different things. One group are making an argument from and about a norm: they're saying what seems true given everyone at the table goes along with it. Another are pointing out what happens at the table absent that norm: they're saying what's going on in the real world.

In the real world, what I as DM imagine lacks power to guarantee what you imagine as a player. That can't be contentious: it just recognises that you and I are separate persons, each with power over our own cognition. There is no factually red or green hat. There is only what you might imagine and what I might imagine about a hat. We've focused on colour, but ask too if we're picturing a hat that is the same in shape, material, or placement? Are you picturing a beanie, a fedora, a bowler, a stetson?

If you accept a norm that you ought to conform what you picture to what I say about the hat, then if I say it is green you ought to picture a green hat. Again, what of aspects I've been silent on? Vast are the voids in what is shared about a game world.

 

[pemerton]

By agreeing to play a DM's game, you are agreeing that the DM runs the game and has final say as arbitor of the game.

When I sign up to play a game of AD&D, I am agreeing to play a game of AD&D. AD&D is a game with rules, and rule-like structures/framework, and principles.

I'm not signing up to just be told, by the GM, whatever they want to tell me.

If you turn yourself into a problem player by disrupting the game that way, expect to leave the game. You can stubbornly insist that green is blue or your butter is a sword, but if you become disruptive to the game doing it, you don't belong at that table.

The game will then progress without you.

I just posted an example that shows you're wrong. The GM insisted that the Kobold lacked the cognitive ability to provide any information under interrogation. The players didn't agree. We were so stubborn in our existence that, the next time that GM showed up to the RP club, he had to find a whole new set of players and start a new game.

The game can't progress without consensus on the shared fiction. And the GM has no capacity to compel that.

For me what the DM says in their own game goes.

This notion of "the DM's game" has been foreign to me for nearly 40 years - ever since, after GMing for a couple of years, I started to work out how a good non-dungeon-crawling RPG might work.

Way back in the second half of the 80s, players established facts about their PCs, their PCs' backstories, etc, that were part of the shared fiction and that I as GM had no unilateral power to veto or change or ignore.

DMs have that power inherently, due to their position within the hobby. DMs are the limiting factor to games, not players. And that has enormous consequences for any attempt at reigning in DM power through printed words.

Some people, due to circumstances, find themselves enjoying social power. They can then use that (or in some cases abuse it) within the limits that others will tolerate.

That doesn't tell us anything about the structure of RPG play, though. I mean, if someone wanted to practice their chess, and I was the only player available to them - maybe the two of us are trapped on a desert island - I could insist on a queen handicap for every game. That doesn't tell us anything about the nature of chess, though. It just shows that sometimes people can hold out and others will give in.

In my RPGing, as a player and a GM, I've generally aspired to treat my fellow participants - who have often but not always been friends - as creative equals. We are playing to enjoy what we all bring to the table, and to find out what happens when we do this thing together. As a GM, there is stuff that it's my job to do (that depends on the details of the particular RPG). As a player, there is stuff for them (if I'm GMing) or me (if I'm not GMing) to do too. The rules and associated frameworks are what we use to bring it all together. Those rules and frameworks give the GM some power over the fiction. But it is far from absolute, in any game that I'm familiar with.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

And I assert you can still perfectly achieve that without an absolute autarch declaring things from on high.

Or do you really mean to claim that it is completely impossible for people to collaborate on a project without one of them needing to be king thereof?

I said nothing about impossible. I said that having such an overseer is beneficial. And it is for collaborative creative attempts. Fiction by many creators is more liable for inconsistencies and continuity errors without such an overseer.

But of course RPGs, and ones like D&D in particular, aren't like other collaborative fiction creation projects to begin with. The setup is intentionally asymmetrical. The players do not have the knowledge of the big picture, the GM has all sort of extra information and secrets not known for the players. In such a setup the overseer is even more important, and it needs to be the participant with most information, i.e. the GM. Because as the players may lack knowledge of the big picture, they even theory cannot be ones checking for the consistency with it.

Furthermore, in RPGs we cannot stop having group discussions about everything, for swift proceeding of the game it is good idea there to be a person who decides that the matter is settled for now and the game can move on.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, there is. As there always is with a claim of authority. A claim of authority means you are claiming control over someone else in some way. That's why authority is such an important and fraught thing, why we have endless philosophical debates about the nature of justice and the legitimate use of force etc., etc., etc.

Yes. None of which has anything to do with this. That philosophy is not about who gets to call shots in voluntary make believe. Again, you're not being oppressed if people don't let you play dragon people in their games.

Nope. That's the sticking point. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, after all.

You're doing this again. Making your elf game preferences a moral imperative, thus framing those who disagree as immoral.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

When I sign up to play a game of AD&D, I am agreeing to play a game of AD&D. AD&D is a game with rules, and rule-like structures/framework, and principles

And one of those rules is that the DM can modify the rules and decides how they are implemented.

And as a player, you are free to walk away at any time if you don’t enjoy the way the DM runs the game.