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.

 

[Yaarel]

The ability to define what is found after heading in either direction is an absolute authority resting in the GM's control IoW.... both directions lead to ravenloft because that the adventure the gm bought and prepared. This is such a well defined authority that it even has a name to describe making use of it (quantum ogre)

If the DM "traps" the players, the story ends. The DM fails. The players control the narrative.

 

[Maxperson]

The DM lacks "absolute" control, because the players can choose to go in a different direction.

Ultimately, it really is the players who control the narrative. To a meaningful degree, the DM is answering to the authority of the players.

It's horrible DMing and a clear abuse of power, but the DM has the authority to not allow those things.

 

[mamba]

In the anecdote that I told, the GM's insistence on "absolute power" failed.

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.

‘absolute power’ only goes so far, ie the GM says what the fiction at the table is but the players are always free to leave the table. There is no absolute power over the player…

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.

you did not change the fiction at the table, you left the table. Not sure I consider that a refutation

 

[pemerton]

.

‘absolute power’ only goes so far, ie the GM says what the fiction at the table is but the players are always free to leave the table. There is no absolute power over the player…


you did not change the fiction at the table, you left the table. Not sure I consider that a refutation

The GM proposed some fiction. But that proposal was not accepted. So the GM didn't change the fiction either. Which is my sole point.

 

[Yaarel]

It's horrible DMing and a clear abuse of power, but the DM has the authority to not allow those things.

If the DM "traps" the players, the story ends. The DM fails. The players control the narrative.

 

[mamba]

Even if the players use the GM's fiction as the basis, it was still the players deciding what the shared fiction is however.

In other words, the position are symmetrical. Because we are talking about a shared fiction.

I would not call it symmetrical, but yes, for something to become shared fiction both sides have to agree on what that fiction is.

 

[pemerton]

Well you only tried 1 session.

You're just making that up.

I don't recall how many sessions in we were when the events I described occurred. It was at least the second, and could have been the third or fourth.

With the information you gave us that DM did nothing wrong.

I can tell you what they did wrong - they tried to GM a terrible, terrible game. I'm puzzled by this notion that players are duty-bound to humour GMs who run bad games.

what were you-as-players doing reading the MM in the first place?

Are you serious? I'm guessing everyone sitting at that table owned a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual, given that it came out in 1977, this game was in 1990, and (with the possible exception of one of us whom I never got to know as well) we had all been playing and GMing for years.

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.

Well, the GM I'm talking about lacked that power. I mean, they tried, but they failed!

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

And again, we have some assertion of a duty on players to sit through terrible GM story-time.

Here is your first mistake. You know nothing of the GM or his game world, you are just joining it.

You are correct that my first mistake was playing in this GM's game. Although that's not quite true, because the other players whom I met were worth meeting, and were good players in the game I started, and one of them is still a friend over 30 years later.

If you think you know better, you go DM your own game.

I did. That campaign that I started ran for about 9 years. At one point it had around 8 or 9 players, and was one of the more popular and well-regarded games in that particular university club. Some of the people who played in that game remain among my closest friends; and my current group is a direct descendant of that group, although none of them is an original player.

Part of what made my game popular is that it was known to have deep and rich fiction, and to not be a railroad.

 

[Zardnaar]

You're just making that up.

I don't recall how many sessions in we were when the events I described occurred. It was at least the second, and could have been the third or fourth.

I can tell you what they did wrong - they tried to GM a terrible, terrible game. I'm puzzled by this notion that players are duty-bound to humour GMs who run bad games.

Are you serious? I'm guessing everyone sitting at that table owned a copy of the AD&D Monster Manual, given that it came out in 1977, this game was in 1990, and (with the possible exception of one of us whom I never got to know as well) we had all been playing and GMing for years.

Well, the GM I'm talking about lacked that power. I mean, they tried, but they failed!

And again, we have some assertion of a duty on players to sit through terrible GM story-time.

You are correct that my first mistake was playing in this GM's game. Although that's not quite true, because the other players whom I met were worth meeting, and were good players in the game I started, and one of them is still a friend over 30 years later.

I did. That campaign that I started ran for about 9 years. At one point it had around 8 or 9 players, and was one of the more popular and well-regarded games in that particular university club. Some of the people who played in that game remain among my closest friends; and my current group is a direct descendant of that group, although none of them is an original player.

Part of what made my game popular is that it was known to have deep and rich fiction, and to not be a railroad.

You gave the impression it was the first session.

But yeah if the games not working it happens.

 

[tetrasodium]

If the DM "traps" the players, the story ends. The DM fails. The players control the narrative.

Quantum ogre is pretty well known at this point & the reason I embedded that excellent video talking about it was simply because anyone who doesn't know of it at this point could probably use more than a quick summary to avoid rehashing tiresome & well known immediate objections to learning of it.

I'm not sure that you know what the quantum ogre is if you think it's analogous to a "[trapping] the players" in the way you described.

 

[Mort]

.The GM proposed some fiction. But that proposal was not accepted. So the GM didn't change the fiction either. Which is my sole point.

But the solution was an out of game one. There was no, in game, means for you to reject the fiction.

D&D does not have such.

To use a more blunt analogy:

We're playing chess. I see that I am one move away from getting check mated. Instead of making my move, I get up from the table and leave. Technically, I didn't get check mated, but it had nothing to do with the rules of the game.