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.

 

[Mort]

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.

Because "stop playing and leave" is not a game mechanic.

Because the players looking at the DM and saying "we refuse to accept stupid kobolds, change it or we walk.." is not something the game (D&D) even contemplates. It's a social power play not a rule or game mechanic.

Is it a discussion with having? Sure, the DM really should know if the players are going to accept him changing monsters around, home brewing and to what extent. But that's a social contract, table rules conversation.

 

[Mort]

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.

Honest question,

If you think 5e can't be properly played, at all, why hang around a board where the primary function, is people discussing how they like playing 5e?

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think you might be reading the wrong (2014) rules.

Here is the relevant ability (from D&D Beyond):

Fast Hands
As a Bonus Action, you can do one of the following. . . .

Use an Object. Take the Utilize action, or take the Magic action to use a magic item that requires that action.​

The Utilize action says: When an object requires an action for its use, you take the Utilize action. So that doesn't seem very relevant to scrolls.

The Magic action says: When you take the Magic action, you cast a spell that has a casting time of an action or use a feature or magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated.

Thus, as a bonus action the character can cast a spell that has a casting time of an action, or use a feature of magic item that requires a Magic action to be activated.

Now, I found this on D&D Beyond also:

A spell scroll bears the words of a single spell, written in a mystical cipher. If the spell is on your class’s spell list, you can read the scroll and cast its spell without providing any material components. Otherwise, the scroll is unintelligible. Casting the spell by reading the scroll requires the spell’s normal casting time.​

So if the spell on the scroll has a normal casting time of "an action", then reading it from the scroll requires "an action". It seems to me that the most natural reading of the Magic action is that performing that action would be an instance of taking the Magic action. And it further seems that this is something the Thief PC can do as a bonus action.

To get the opposite conclusion would regard reading the rules for casting a spell from a scroll as mandating the "normal casting time" notwithstanding any other effects that modify or interact with that casting time. Which seems to me not that plausible in the context of D&D, which is rife with such interacting and modifying effects.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Honest question,

If you think 5e can't be properly played, at all, why hang around a board where the primary function, is people discussing how they like playing 5e?

I have little choice. There is no community for me online. I went looking. They don't exist.

I'd rather enjoy the various discussions that occur on here that I can contribute to, and (potentially) contribute to future change, than do literally nothing because 99.99% of conversations about a specific edition or editions of D&D aren't about the one(s) I prefer.

 

[pemerton]

Because "stop playing and leave" is not a game mechanic.

OK. But not all "moves" in D&D are game mechanics.

The GM saying "You see a Kobold" is not a game mechanic. A player saying "I pick up a rock" or "I study the door closely" is not a game mechanic.

And the players saying to the GM "Are you really telling us that this Kobold is that cognitively incapable" is not a game mechanic, but it is part of the players playing the game.

Because the players looking at the DM and saying "we refuse to accept stupid kobolds, change it or we walk.."

That didn't happen.

 

[ezo]

That says nothing about how many sessions had been played.

You're right... it says nothing:

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.

That is the phrase that implied to me... oh, I had only recently met him at the RPG club. Like "Hi, you running a game I see? Can I join? What is going on? Oh, kobold attack on the town. Sounds good!"

You then jump into the example with the captive Kobold, which if you had been playing a few sessions, seems like there might have been a bit more intro up to that point.

I mean, you aren't wrong, certainly, but can you see how at least two people here got the impression this was your first time with this DM? There were no red flags in prior sesssions until the kobold incident?

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.

That's the point though, isn't it. Those of us "leaping to the defence" do so because--guess what?--we don't see anything terrible being done BY the DM in this situation.

I see terrible things being done by the players. Like using MM info to assume you know something meta about the kobold captive, for example.

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.

First, since the DM is the narrator of much of the game, players do sort of sit and listen.

Second, nonsense is apparently not universal.

Just utterly bizarre.

Not to many of us replying here it seems.

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.

No, these are examples of how players can influence and act within the game world. They DO NOT control it.

PC casts Rock to Mud. Unbeknownst (I love that word!) to the player, the rock is actually part of an Earth Elemental. Oops!

PCs pushing thigns, hitting them, breaking them, or whatever are all subject to the DM's narration and control of the game world (true control, mind you...) and the DM can narratate things NOT working how the player imagined if they wanted to.

Now, 99.9% of the time the DM will do what the player expects because it makes sense and the DM isn't being an ass about it. But, sometimes, things don't go the way the player expects because the DM knows things about the game world the player doesn't. Like how smart the captive kobold actually is?

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.

Which is all subject to the DM's approval. Does the game world have a village named "Five Oaks" or a place called Nyrond?

To be clear I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here. Again 99.9% of the time DMs are happy to have players come up with stuff to feel ownership of the PC and participation in the game world. However, the DM can veto any and all of it.

Player: I want to play a neutral evil Warforged Warlock who make a pact with his Patron Geppetto.
DM: No. I don't allow Warforged in my games. And that subclass for the Warlock is 3PP, too powerful, and you can't use those spells, either.
Player: So, you're telling me I can play a Warlock, though?
DM: Well, yeah, I run pretty much just what is in the PHB as it puts everyone on the same playing field. Oh, but sorry, no evil PCs, either.
Player: Hmm... well, I have an idea for a Half-Orc, too. What about the Hexblade in Xanthar's?
DM: Sure, I'll go that far. We have a couple copies in the group. Roll up stats!
Player: I don't care for rolling--too much bad luck! Can I use point-buy?
DM: That's fine. You know the system right?

Frankly, that is something like nearly half the conversations I have with new players who join my games.

This sort of stuff is basic to RPGing.

Sure, which is why most DM's are perfectly fine with such things. But I don't question a DM who isn't. And I don't expect them to question me when I am DM, either.

 

[pemerton]

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?

It sounds to me like that GM has not done a very good job of getting the players to accept their narrations of stuff that is, traditionally in most RPGs, the purview of the GM. What happens next is obviously going to depend on stuff that you have not specified in your example.

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.

I thought you didn't believe in retcons!

 

[Mort]

OK. But not all "moves" in D&D are game mechanics.

The GM saying "You see a Kobold" is not a game mechanic. A player saying "I pick up a rock" or "I study the door closely" is not a game mechanic.

All of those may or may not be game mechanics actually.

Is the Kobold easy to see? that's up to the DM and may involve a game mechanic.

Whether the player successfully picks up the rock is up to the DM and very well might involve a game mechanic (depending on if the DM decides one is appropriate).

The results of studying the door closely are, again, up to the DM, and if the DM chooses, of involve a game mechanic.

In D&D, In all of these situations, whether they requires a game mechanic and the likelihood of success, are all up to the DM.

And the players saying to the GM "Are you really telling us that this Kobold is that cognitively incapable" is not a game mechanic, but it is part of the players playing the game.

The DM says yes, without requiring a check - then yes the kobold is that cognitively incapable. This is the reality the DM has set. If players refuse to accept it, they are, literally, rejecting his game.

Or the DM frames finding out if the Kobold is that dim as a challenge (could be just an insight check, could be a skill challenge, whatever). If the players complete the challenge, but reject the results (win or lose) they are rejecting the rules/terms of the game. We are again in social contract territory and outside anything resembling D&D.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

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.

I think this statement is interesting. It leads me to believe that the purpose of the situation you laid out was solely to get others to condemn the DM. And to do so, by your own words, with only one side of the story. Does this not strike you as odd? Almost like you are saying; "It amazes me that you don't agree with me! After all I made it so obvious!"

If I tell a story about how a guy, using the dog piece, ruined a game of monopoly by referring to the money by the bill's color. And the other players were all better able to understand numbers. Should people on a monopoly forum, based solely on my account, demonize the dog player? And if so, where does that leave online discourse?

So could you enlighten me as to your end goal besides getting others to demonize a mystery DM based solely on your word? Because based on the above quote, I fail to see alternatives besides; "please demonize the person I didn't like playing with."

I'd love to better understand. I must not be getting the whole picture.

 

[Zardnaar]

Huh? I posted:

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.

It was the impression your post gave. GM you just met. You could see how that happens?