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.

 

[pemerton]

Not in D&D, and this is a D&D thread. The order of play is very clear.

1) The DM describes the environment(narrates the environment)
2) The players tell the DM what they would like their PCs to do(not narration)
3) The DM narrates the results(more DM narration)

The players don't narrate in D&D unless the DM has changed the game from the default.

So looking at (2) - what the players actually do is state what their PCs do. This contributes to the shared fiction.

And looking at (3) - there is no statement or suggestion that the GM is free to do whatever they like. There are rules and other framework elements that constraint and direct what the GM is to say.

 

[pemerton]

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

That bit - both have to agree (or, better, everyone has to agree) - is where the symmetry resides.

 

[pemerton]

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

I don't know what this means.

The GM proposed some fiction. It was not accepted. The players made it very clear what they thought the fiction should include, namely, a Kobold who conformed to received D&D standards, around which the adventure had revolved to that point and around which we had formulated our plan.

We did not accept the GM's proposal. The GM did not accept our proposal. Rather, the game ended.


I don't know if you consider us expressing our view to the GM as "in game" or not. But it happened, and was not ambiguous. It had the same structure as the example I quoted upthread from Vincent Baker:

"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?"​

I consider that sort of conversation to be part of playing a RPG.

 

[pemerton]

in standard D&D, the power dynamic between the DM and the Players is not remotely equal.

Suppose this were true. It wouldn't entail that the DM has absolute or unlimited power. Which is what multiple posters in this thread assert.

 

[pemerton]

So your answer if the DM and player disagree on something as simple as the use of fast hands to cast a spell from a scroll as a bonus action is ... you don't know? You have no answer?

I answered. Here it is again, in case you missed it:

It's not as if this is an ineffable matter; it's a question of balance in the action economy. So the arguments shouldn't be that complicated.

<snip

one person can persuade the others, via reasoned argument.

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.

You seem to want me to provide a universal template for resolving all social questions. I don't have one. But in my life I have resolved many such questions - in personal contexts, in professional contexts, in the context of RPGing - and very rarely has that resolution depended upon, or involved a situation of, one party having "absolute power" in respect of what was at stake. Most of the time it has involved talking it out and coming to a solution, whether mutually agreeable or because one part accepts that they will have to compromise.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

I agree with you that it is an accurate description of the system. Not only do I think it is a detriment, but the original phrasing was, and I quote, "how can 5e be properly played as written?"

I don't believe it can be "properly played" at all, specifically because I think you are correct in this. I doubt you will find this agreeable. Hence: You may find I agree with you, but I doubt you will find that agreeable.

 

[pemerton]

many players are very happy with railroad-style games. They just want to get on board and ride along for the adventure.

Yes, I realise that.

But that doesn't tell us much about what is necessary in RPGing.

The DM has final say in matters pertaining to the game world in which the players play.

<snip>

The players do NOT control the game world. They influence it and act within it, but that's it. In a way, the "game world" is the DM's character.

Suppose, in an AD&D game, the GM describes the PCs trekking along a rocky path. And one of the players has Transmute Rock to Mud written down as one of their PC's memorised spells.

Then the player can declare "I cast Rock to Mud on the rocks", and the GM is obliged to narrate the rocks as having turned to mud.

Similarly, players can declare that their PCs push things over, hit them, break them, write on them, pick them up, put them down, etc.

There are innumerable ways that players can "control" elements of the game world just by declaring actions for their PCs.

That's before we get to other things players can do, like authoring context and backstory for their PCs - for instance (to choose just one example from actual play, over 30 years ago) that their PC learned magic under the tuition of a mentor who lived in a great hollow tree outside the village of Five Oaks, in hiding from his rivals and enemies in Nyrond.

This sort of stuff is basic to RPGing.

 

[pemerton]

That's never once been considered in this trainwreck thread.

My take-away is that the players, so far from being special, are obliged to sit there and listen to whatever the GM deigns to tell them!

 

[pemerton]

What @Oofta says above is true in every area of life.

It's clear that @Oofta means something along the lines of a process settled and describable in advance.

And it's simply not true that there need to be such processes to make decisions. Nor, in many cases, does there need to be finality.

 

[pemerton]

Even four sessions isn't that much of a trial run.

I'd like to think I'd give it at least 10 sessions (or one completed adventure, if that takes longer) before pulling the pin.

You are clearly far more tolerant of wasting your time than I am!

Curious - did you invite the fired GM in as a player to show him how (in your view) it's done?

Yes, that seemed a minimal courtesy. He declined.