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.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't understand. That quote totally vindicates what I said. You can only suggest if the DM has final veto power. It can be brought up and discussed but the final decision is the DMs. It's exactly what I said.

So the players are merely observers on your campaign?

Because that's all observers do--when they're allowed to contribute at all, I mean.

That's my problem here. You don't have players. You have witnesses.

 

[Lanefan]

Everyone I have ever played D&D with, either is a good friend or became a good friend.

All this talk of kick people out or leave the table, sounds bizarre to me. It is alien to my D&D experience.

I've punted players and remained friends with them afterwards.

I've been fired as a DM and remained friends with those who did the firing (and who later regretted doing so, as the person they had lined up to replace me turned out to be worse).

I've left games for various reasons but don't remember an instance where the reason I left was specifically the DM.

I did once leave a game specifically due to another player, but got back in later after that player had been run out of the game by everyone else. Oddly enough, that player went on to become quite a good DM - far more tolerable as a DM than as a player - and later I was in his game on and off for a while.

 

[ezo]

I am guessing, if they have the free time available, your gaming buddies would see a movie together, show up to a birthday party, and so on. For some of them, the D&D game really is all the time they have away from responsibilities.

Oh, I'm sure some of them might, but frankly I wouldn't want them to. While they are people I can game with, there are other reasons why I don't spend my free time with them (outside of D&D).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'll ask again. The DM says X, the player says Y. What's the compromise?

There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer. All compromise always depends on the details of X and Y. Note, for example, that you did not say X and not-X.

Why are you presuming that X and Y can only be things that cannot ever be reconciled under any possible circumstance?

Easy example is the question that's been bandied about lately. Some people say you can cast a spell off a scroll as a bonus action using thief's fast hands, other says you can't. As a DM I say you can't, the player says they can. There is no compromise. What happens?

Easy answer: You are correct. The rules do not support that, and the Sage Advice compendium (which actually is a rule clarification, unlike tweets etc.) explicitly says that scrolls do not fall under the Use an Object stuff. Though even if the SA compendium didn't say it (which it does), the DMG explicitly does say it (p, 141, relevant section underlined):

Activating an Item​

Activating some magic items requires the user to do
something special, such as holding the item and uttering
a command word. The description of each item category
or individual item details how an item is activated.
Certain items use one or more of the following rules for
their activation.
If an item requires an action to activate, that action
isn't a function of the Use an Item action, so a feature
such as the rogue's Fast Hands can't be used to
activate the item.

No need for compromise. The player is simply, explicitly wrong--they have misunderstood the rules. If they get pissy about having misunderstood the explicit rules, that's their issue, not the DM's.

Because that's what we're talking about. Making rulings and establishing lore not directly controlled by the PC.

Well, if that's all you've got, it's a pretty weak showing. I assume you have something better than a rule literally written out, explicitly, in the DMG.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The poster, in that example, was almost certainly engaging in some kind of Internet tough guy power fantasy rather than relaying any kind of actually happened scenario. If the scenario was, in any way, accurate, then his players (if he actually has any) should be reporting him to the proper authorities.

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.

Again: the point was, maybe don't call your own style "Viking Hat" (something that has been done in this thread!) when that's its root.

But yes! I agree with you! I fully agree that that's not a thing the 5e rules support.

As said above: You may find that I agree with you, but not in a way that you would find agreeable.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You do realzie this psot is blatantly a joke, right? This is someone being sarcastic.

They were hyperbolizing--but they were not joking. That is, the presentation was meant to be funny (it isn't, of course, but that's what they meant it to be). The heart of the message, however, was fully sincere: the "Viking Hat" DM is the absolute dominant master of the table.

That's why I said what I said. Maybe don't lay claim to the "Viking Hat DM" label so proudly. It doesn't have great roots.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

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.

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.

It would seem these tables turn just as much against you though. You did what you seem to consider disproportionate from @pemerton and co.--you ended the interaction without any ability to grow or improve. Would not the better choice, the choice that lets both sides learn, be to ask the player, "What do forensic situations like this look like? Can you share your expertise?"

Obviously, there is the risk of them lying or manipulating for their own benefit. One should be on guard for that. But, at least in my experience, if it's actually somebody's job they are more than willing to share something that might apply to the game. I've learned some fascinating things about anthropology, computer security, chemistry, and language, just by listening to what my players have to say, rather than insisting that my brain is the only brain that matters at the table, that my thoughts are the only thoughts that contribute to the world, that my fantasy is supreme.

 

[Mort]

As said above: You may find that I agree with you, but not in a way that you would find agreeable.

I'm not sure why you keep saying that?

Are you saying you think that's a detriment of the 5e system and that I'm not agreeable as to that fact?

 

[pemerton]

DM made more effort than you. You just have to turn up. That DMs not coming across as the AH here.

For all you know DM may have been inexperienced or spent 5 hours prepping.

Were you there 35 years ago? Or are you just making more stuff up?

How do you know what I do or don't know about that GM? Or how much effort he, or I and my fellow players, put in? You have no idea about any of it.

 

[pemerton]

You gave the impression it was the first session.

Huh? I posted:

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.

That says nothing about how many sessions had been played. How experienced the GM was. How much effort anyone involved put in.

What amazes me is how quickly you and other posters are to leap to the defence of a terrible game and terrible GM about which you know nothing except for my report that it was terrible.

It implies that you think would-be GMs have some sort of entitlement to the time of players, who are obliged to sit and listen to their nonsense.

Just utterly bizarre.