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]

I've got 2 recent examples from a group who are all there in good faith to help each other have a good time.

One player wanted to have custom weapons that are not described in the PHB. He thought it was fine to just pick a weapon's stats and re-theme it. I hate re-theming like that because the theme is the game otherwise we are playing a really clunky strategy game. So, as his weapons were very small I suggested instead of the stats of the 2-handed heavy weapon he wanted that he choose the stats of a light weapon. It was a compromise and ultimately I had the last word on it even though he had come from games where it wouldn't have been a question to just do it.

Another example is a social situation where I felt the NPC would not be likely to respond well to the character's idea so I called for disadvantage. He was understandably put out by this because he thought his idea was good. Ultimately he acquiesced and then rolled a 17 and 18 and the whole table cheered.

Sometimes the DM has to make decisions players don't like for the good of the game and often the players are not aware why.

 

[Oofta]

I think we have if nothing else demonstrated to @pemerton that there are other play styles that are popular.

What is great and I hold to it faithfully is that no matter how rare your approach to a game is if you can find players it is not too rare. You can play any way you like. I think the pushback is when you go against widely held ideas about D&D and act like your mainstream in your thinking. You aren't. And I am ready to say about many things gaming related I am not either. On DM authority over the fiction though, I think you are in a distinct minority.

Play the game you want to play. I will say though that I'd question whether D&D is the right game given your tastes. I'd think a more shared fiction game would be better for you.

And to be brutally honest, I wouldn't mind your style for a one shot in a car riding cross country playing with family and younger kids. I'm just not going to spend precious gaming type playing what you like because for me I have a preferable style to go after. YMMV of course. People are different.

So I love you Pemerton, I really do. I appreciate your voice on these boards. I just don't agree with your assumptions and we can just agree to disagree.

There's also a difference between sharing what works for my game and why versus telling people that they're doing it wrong. The roles and responsibilities of DM and player can adhere to the D&D default without the DM being an autocratic ruler. There can be clear delineated roles without limiting people's creativity. That creativity is just expressed in different ways.

Personally when I'm playing, if it's not related to my PCs lore or what they're doing, I don't want to be responsible for it. If I wanted to play a more collaborative story based game, I'd play some PbtA variant. I don't. I will note however, that even in PbtA games there are limits and rules, expectations of what can and can't happen in any given move. The ultimate authority deciding that is just different from D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Take a situation where everyone involved agrees the PCs are outdoors, travelling. The GM narrates the weather as rainy and dreary, referencing mud-spattered cloaks and sloppy roads. The players say "No, we're not buying that; it's sunny and warm and dry!".

Now what?

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.

Before going further: what were you-as-players doing reading the MM in the first place?

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.

Once, this is fine: maybe by sheer bad luck you happened to capture the Kobolds' village idiot. "Average(low)" intelligence implies a range of about 2-14 (where Humans are 3-18) with the average being the listed 8-10, meaning it would be possible to capture a Kobold who didn't know anything other than maybe its own name; while also possible* to capture a genius among its people. Dice, here, are a GM's friend; even if it's just a quickie d% roll to give a guide as to where this individual falls in the range of Kobold intelligence.

But every time? Yeah, that's a problem.

* - slightly less possible, perhaps, as a smart Kobold might do better at evading capture than a dumb one.

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.

The Kobold is an NPC; the GM controls NPCs, and thus the GM has the power to determine a) how intelligent this particular Kobold is (within the range of Kobold intelligence) and b) how it reacts to being interrogated. For example, instead of playing the Kobold as an idiot the GM could have played it as a loyalist, refusing to talk until-unless broken under torture; or as a liar, happily giving you false information; or as a coward who won't say a word because he's more afraid of his own people than of you. Result: you-as-players still don't get the useful info you're after.

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.

Which, absent other info and-or context, seems to be a major over-reaction.

 

[Mort]

Once, this is fine: maybe by sheer bad luck you happened to capture the Kobolds' village idiot. "Average(low)" intelligence implies a range of about 2-14 (where Humans are 3-18) with the average being the listed 8-10, meaning it would be possible to capture a Kobold who didn't know anything other than maybe its own name; while also possible* to capture a genius among its people. Dice, here, are a GM's friend; even if it's just a quickie d% roll to give a guide as to where this individual falls in the range of Kobold intelligence.

Unless the DM decided that Kobolds are stupid and that's that. The MM stats are merely suggestions.

Our maybe the kobold was just playing super dumb, which was so effective it nuked the campaign.

Or maybe the DM was inexperienced, didn't want to impart the information and didn't handle it great, still his prerogative.

 

[Zardnaar]

Unless the DM decided that Kobolds are stupid and that's that. The MM stats are merely suggestions.

Our maybe the kobold was just playing super dumb, which was so effective it nuked the campaign.

Or maybe the DM was inexperienced, didn't want to impart the information and didn't handle it great, still his prerogative.

Without more information it's odd. If DM was pulling it all the time that's different.

Walking over it seems odd. DM might just be inexperienced.

 

[pemerton]

I'd imagine you would respect that people play the game differently to group A, group B or group C.
What you're describing may be an episode of someone else's RPG play but not necessarily your preferred style.

People play in different ways - I'm well aware of that. But a GM on their own imagining things happening isn't playing a RPG at all.

In some cases they may be preparing to run a RPG. I've been doing that a bit over the past few weeks, converting/adapting the old White Dwarf scenario Halls of Tizun Thane for Torchbearer play. But making notes, writing up TB2e versions of creatures like the Shadow Dancers and Nandie Bear, etc is not playing a RPG. It's not creating a shared fiction.

In the anecdote that I told, the GM's insistence on "absolute power" failed. Given that nearly 35 years have passed I'm not able to give a verbatim account of the conversation, but I can set it out in broad structural terms: the GM presented the Kobold as cognitively incapable of answering the simplest questions; we as players expressed our disbelief in that fictional state of affairs, which is to say that we did not accept what the GM was presenting as a candidate for the shared fiction; and no reconciliation was reached. Rather, the game ended.

This is a simple illustration of my point that the GM does not have the capacity to compel others to imagine whatever the GM dictates. Constraints arise in all sorts of ways: from the rules; in a game like AD&D where the rules are stated only semi-completely, from the explicit and implicit frameworks that surround the rules; from expectations generated about the fiction that arise from the fiction so far; etc.

Vincent Baker once gave this imagined example:

Roleplaying is negotiated imagination. In order for any thing to be true in game, all the participants in the game . . . have to understand and assent to it. When you're roleplaying, what you're doing is a) suggesting things that might be true in the game and then b) negotiating with the other participants to determine whether they're actually true or not.

So you're sitting at the table and one player says, "[let's imagine that] an orc jumps out of the underbrush!"

What has to happen before the group agrees that, indeed, an orc jumps out of the underbrush?

1. Sometimes, not much at all. The right participant said it, at an appropriate moment, and everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation. "An orc! Yikes! Battlestations!" This is how it usually is for participants with high ownership of whatever they're talking about: GMs describing the weather or the noncombat actions of NPCs, players saying what their characters are wearing or thinking. . . .

2. Sometimes, a little bit more. "Really? An orc?" "Yeppers." "Huh, an orc. Well, okay." Sometimes the suggesting participant has to defend the suggestion: "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" "Yeah, cuz this thing about her tribe..." "Okay, I guess that makes sense."​

When you read that, don't get hung up on the word "negotiated/negotiating" - he's describing the structure of the process, not the minutiae of activities that actually take place. As the first example shows, sometimes no literal negotiation is required because "the right participant said it, at an appropriate moment" and so "everybody else just incorporates it smoothly into their imaginary picture of the situation".

But look at the second example - "Really, an orc this far into Elfland?" And now replace it with "Really, a Kobold that can't answer even simple questions about who it is, where it came from, what it is planning to do, where its friends/allies/family are positioned, etc?" And now imagine that the participant fails to defend the suggestion to the satisfaction of the others. That is what happened back in 1990 at the university RPG club.

The fact that the participant who was putting forward this idea about the Kobold was the GM didn't magically immunise their suggestion from scrutiny. It didn't follow from the fiction. We had a character (probably a Gnome?) who spoke the Kobold language, and as we were making our plan to capture and interrogate the GM didn't correct our beliefs (which were clearly our PCs' beliefs) that Kobolds might usefully be captured and interrogated. It didn't follow from the rules. AD&D has Kobolds being as intelligent as humans.

I feel we may also have to account for the experience of the DM, because if it was as bad as you say (and this format can make things appear far worse than they actually were), I'd be inclined to think that DM did not have much experience and likely did not have the answers to your questions and thus communicated that using the fiction, which is bad play by a DM but not uncommon for someone inexperienced.

Well the GM, in pitching his game, purported to be experienced and high quality. I have no idea about the claimed experience, but have expressed my view about the claimed quality.

But in any event, this discussion of why he may have said what he did is tangential, isn't it? The claim being made is that the GM has absolute authority to establish the shared fiction. And I've provided a counter-example. Thus the claim is refuted.

Now, if the claim is instead that there are some players who will sit through whatever a GM says, whatever that is - well maybe that's true. But that's a claim about some players, not a general claim about the way D&D (or other RPG) play works.

The GM dictated the fiction, the players didn't like it and left. Just like everyone has said it could go.

The GM proposed some fiction. It didn't become part of the shared fiction, though.

things happening in the game like your hit points going down and the monsters not going down are not your decision.

In my experience, hit points going down are decided by the wargame-y process set out in the rulebook.

In my games, the DM establishes ALL the fiction. It may be in reaction to a player action but it is established by the DM.

I'm not sure whether you mean this literally or not - as in, if a player says "I raise my hat in greeting <to such and such NPC>" are you saying that that does not become part of the shared fiction until the GM reiterates/affirms it?

That is not the typical way of playing D&D. I learned to play D&D from Moldvay Basic, and the examples of play in that book show the players contributing to the shared fiction, and not being subject to any GM veto - eg they describe their PCs opening doors, greeting Hobgoblins ("It's okay, Gary sent us"), etc.

But anyway, I am familiar with the general approach to RPGing that you describe, even though - taken literally - I think you are espousing an atypical variant in which the players can make no contributions. I describe it as "the GM making all the decisions about what happens next, using the players' action declarations for their PCs as prompts for that decision-making."

 

[pemerton]

No one is suggesting that the DM could not have handled it better, only that your reaction was disproportionate.

Disproportionate to what? Do you think I and the other players owed that GM a moral duty to sit through his terrible storytelling?

You could have let is pass, and given the inexperienced DM some constructive feedback at the end of the session. As it is, the traumatised DM probably never played again and therefore never learned to be a good DM.

The GM asserted that he was experienced. I'm pretty sure he started a new game. The only other time I played with him was when he GMed a convention/tournament session that I played a few years later.

@EzekielRaiden has been criticised in this thread for moralising, but at least that poster is quite upfront about it. I don't understand what motivates people to make assumptions about events and participants of whom they have no knowledge but my description, which include or entail assumptions about my falling short in some notional duty I had to a terrible GM. It does tend to make a farce of remarks about "players' power to veto by leaving".

But the DM could not have given you the information that you were demanding if they did not know it themselves. Maybe they could have come up with a more convincing in game reason for not having the information at hand, but “dumb kobold” is a common stereotype in D&D novels and computer games.

I once had a player who knew a huge amount about forensics interrogating me about the state of a corpse they had found. I had to throw up my hands and explain I didn’t know the answers to their questions.

If the GM had upfront told us that he wasn't capable of doing anything but run us through a railroaded module, that might have saved everyone some time . . .

 

[pemerton]

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.

And how many contemporary RPGers, or even RPGers in the 1980s, do you think were playing in that sort of fashion?

 

[pemerton]

As described by the rules of the game, in the games that I've played and run the DM is responsible for the campaign world, it's inhabitants, and what happens in response to what the PCs say and do.

This is true of most mainstream RPGs. Consider, for instance, the following from Apocalypse World (p ):

Apocalypse World divvies the conversation up in a strict and pretty traditional way. The players’ job is to say what their characters say and undertake to do, first and exclusively; to say what their characters think, feel and remember, also exclusively; and to answer your questions about their characters’ lives and surroundings. Your job as MC is to say everything else: everything about the world, and what everyone in the whole damned world says and does except the players’ characters.​

The question is not what the GM is responsible for, but rather whether they are under any constraints in discharging that responsibility.

As far as rules, there has to be some process for how the final decision is made.

This isn't true in many other areas of life. RPGs are no different.

I have no control over what they think or why. If I've thought about something like fast hands and scrolls and made a decision, barring errata, I'm not going to change my mind. I won't reiterate my logic from the other thread but as far as I'm concerned it doesn't work.

So if the player insists it does work and refuses to accept the DM's answer, what happens?

I don't know what your reasons are, or what this hypothetical player's reasons are. I don't whether they are good reasons or not. If no one can be persuaded, or if everyone is impervious to reason, or if no can agree to compromise based on some meta-reason (like "I want the game to keep going") then as far as those two people are concerned the game is over.

What happens to everyone else at the table will depend on further social circumstances and dynamics.

 

[pemerton]

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

The GM didn't have the power to establish the Kobold's cognitive abilities. They tried to. And failed.

The shared fiction with his new group will include kobolds that lack the cognitive ability to provide information.

Maybe, maybe not. Who knows what happened in any future game that guy GMed? You certainly don't!

But whatever happened in that future game, that doens't time travel back into the game I played. In the game I played there was no shared fiction established about the cognitive ability of Kobolds. Rather, the game collapsed over disagreement about that very thing!