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]

But that doesn't change the fact that 5e (or 3e in that example) has absolutely no way for players to, in game, put controls on the DMs actions.

The way to think of it is...Imagine thousands of alternate universes. Each universe has one absolutely powerful being called the DM who can do anything inside that one universe. The difference is each player has one special power. It's the ability to shift to another universe. That is the only real player power.

 

[Mort]

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.

The GM absolutely had the right and power to establish the stats of that particular kobold.

Even by your own argument, the MM merely lists stats for average members of a race, there are going to be variations, including really stupid kobolds.

More importantly, unless you guys had established some separate agreement, the DM isn't actually bound by the MM, it has suggestions for stats of monsters.

And forgetting the above, your own example shows there was no, in game, means to influence the scenario. You guys had had enough and walked.

 

[ezo]

I'll start with this thread and all the people defending their authority over a pretend game with friends.

If I am playing football with my friends but I am the "referee" for the game, I have authority over the game and as arbitrator of the game I have final ruling on any call.

Also, a lot of DM games are not played with friends. I am "friendly" certainly, but only a few people I play with are actually friends.

For myself, I don't count my friends lightly. You might have a more loose definition than I do.

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.

See above.

 

[Oofta]

Let's suppose the DM has an ongoing campaign like Gygax did where people come and go. The game is the DMs. It is Gygax's game. If a player leaves or all the players leave, Gygax will just bring in more players to that same game. It's the same campaign world. If the players go and buy the Greyhawk setting and one of them runs a game, that game is never the same game that Gygax was running. It's a new game based on the new DM.

I've been running campaigns in the same world for longer than I care to remember. For various reasons, largely because I've moved too many times, I've had dozens of players over the years. No single player has been there the whole time, even if every campaign leaves fingerprints here and there on the world. The closest to a constant player is my wife, but we weren't married when I was 16.

Yet in my mind it's still the same campaign. The stage has seen minor renovations now and then, upheavals that changed the balance of power both in and out of game, some cosmetic upgrades. But the actors? They're important of course but they come and go. I want a world that is consistent and logically fits in that campaign world because that's the best way I know how to run a game.

So yes, there are restrictions on what control the PCs have over my campaign world. Not because I'm an author protecting my precious creation. It's because I want to run the best game possible. That means that Emanon the cleric may bring down Vitrius the corrupt head of the Church of Tyr through what she accomplishes in the game. Her actions may have lasting repercussions, but she wasn't the one who decided who the NPC Vitrius was or what his goals were. As a DM, that was my responsibility.

 

[CreamCloud0]

All this applies equally to players. There is no game without players. And what is a GM going to do, if the players aren't interested in the GM's proffered fiction? Chain them down to their chairs?

There is no asymmetry here.

there is however asymmetry in the number of players looking for GMs VS the number of GMs looking for players, if one side leaves it's far easier for a GM to replace their players than the other way around.

 

[Emerikol]

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.

Then in AD&D 1e, you are not actually playing by the rules. The final rule, rule 0, is a rule. And it pretty much makes optional all other rules.

As for monster manual monsters. I don't want my players perusing the monster manual. Unless they are a DM it was not made for them. I go to all sorts of efforts when I know they know the DM to change things up on the monsters. Their characters are not supposed to have any knowledge. So the monster manual is a great big set of options for the DM to use or not use. He can make up monsters, spells, powers, magic items, and anything else that is not in the PHB or DMG.

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.

I don't disagree that the DM can't make the players play. What I'm saying is that I don't even start with a group with your attitude. Rule 0 is front an center at the top of my campaign introduction. If you can't live by rule 0 then get out now. If you stay then I will disrespect you as a human being because you were warned and chose to stay and try to grief anyway.

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.

Then you were definitely not playing by the rules of 1e or 2e D&D. I doubt in fact you were playing by any rules of D&D.

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.

Rule 0 is right there in the 1e DMG. Gygax wrote articles about the subject. You are the one he called a barracks room lawyer.

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.

I don't question anyone's creativity. The battle here is over roles. The role of the DM is different than the role of the players. If you want to establish fiction in the world without DM approval then you should be a DM or if you can find a DM who will let you go wild then by all means go to that DM. If you really haven't met a DM with our view then it is 100% true that in the gaming world you have led an incredibly sheltered life.

 

[Mort]

there is however asymmetry in the number of players looking for GMs VS the number of GMs looking for players, if one side leaves it's far easier for a GM to replace their players than the other way around.

With the huge success of 5e and the proliferation of online play, is that still true? Is it really difficult for players to find a 5e game?

For, in person, I can see it, though there seem to be plenty of options were I live

 

[Emerikol]

With the huge success of 5e and the proliferation of online play, is that still true? Is it really difficult for players to find a 5e game?

For, in person, I can see it, though there seem to be plenty of options were I live

I think good DMs, versus barely passible or downright poor, are still fairly rare. I wish we had a better way to explain the style of a game to the players which would not make more good DMs but it would help mismatching groups that are good but differ to the degree they will fail.


edit: to add to that...I know how to get players for my style but if we had a better way of expressing ourselves in general I think groups could matchup and overall satisfaction would improve.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

With the huge success of 5e and the proliferation of online play, is that still true

More than ever.

 

[Maxperson]

What does it mean to say it will be? The cap is purely imaginary. If I (a player) imagine it to be green, and the GM imagines it to be red, there is no colour that it really is. There is simply a failure to create a shared fiction.

The DM narrates the fiction for the game. His narration of the cap is what gives it the color in the fiction. Your failure to imagine it doesn't have any impact on that. It's simply your failure to understand/accept the fiction, and that failure has no impact on that fiction. If he gets a new group, it will be red in the fiction for the new group and your imagining of green did nothing.

Your failure in imagining it as red also has no impact on the NPCs. If you stay in the game the mayor will compliment your red cap, not the green one you imagine, because your imagining doesn't change the narrated fiction that the game inhabits.

Lastly, your failure to imagine it as red doesn't cause a failure to create a shared fiction. You all still sharing the fiction of PCs, the game's world, the mayor, and so on. Lack of one detail just means you are getting small portion of the shared fiction wrong, not that the shared fiction doesn't exist or has failed.