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.

 

[Maxperson]

.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.

Except you are ignoring that the fiction remains intact through the next group where the fiction does change, so your resistance doesn't stop the fiction from changing. It just removes you the player from the equation. The PC remains as an NPC and the fiction does in fact change. You just don't get to see it.

 

[Maxperson]

It is a valid concern that any given DM might.

For exactly the same reason that it is a valid concern that any given player might go bad. Isn't that what all this is allegedly for?

Why is that even a concern? Or at least why is the concern over the power?

Without absolute power, any given DM might abuse the game.

With absolute power, any given DM might abuse the game.

With or without absolute power, nothing changes. Any given DM might abuse the game. This is not a problem with the rule. This is not a problem exacerbated by the rule. It's purely a people problem and if you find a problem DM, leave the game and find one that isn't a problem. The overwhelming majority of DMs are not problems like that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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?"

Could have done, could have looked it up on google, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to stop the game for a couple of hours to research information that was not actually relevant.

These days, if I know that person is playing, I do put more effort into prepping the state of even window-dressing corpses.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why is that even a concern? Or at least why is the concern over the power?

Without absolute power, any given DM might abuse the game.

With absolute power, any given DM might abuse the game.

With or without absolute power, nothing changes.

So, you don't see how this might:

1. Encourage more people who would be liable to such behavior to become DMs?
2. Convince some who have erred that they were in the right all along?
3. Create a culture of play where throwing one's weight around is not just normalized, but promoted?
4. Discourage players from being active participants, because the rules literally do say the DM can shut them down for any reason or no reason at all?

You are wrong that nothing changes.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Could have done, could have looked it up on google, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to stop the game for a couple of hours to research information that was not actually relevant.

If it isn't relevant, what harm is there in letting the player tell you how it would look? Why is it so important that your vision and only your vision matters?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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

No, it an out of character comment, not part of playing the game. “Does my character believe it is normal for kobolds to be this stupid?” would be part of playing the game. In which case the. DM would ask for an Int (nature) check. Or “is this kobald faking?” Which would call for a Wis(Insight) check.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No, it an out of character comment, not part of playing the game. “Does my character believe it is normal for kobolds to be this stupid?” would be part of playing the game. In which case the. DM would ask for an Int (nature) check. Or “is this kobald faking?” Which would call for a Wis(Insight) check.

So absolutely nothing out-of-character is part of playing the game? I'm not sure you want to commit to that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If it isn't relevant, what harm is there in letting the player tell you how it would look?

None, and I might do that under certain circumstances, but on this occasion I didn’t want them to know it was a red herring.

Why is it so important that your vision and only your vision matters?

When there is a bigger mystery, and I know the solution but the player does not, they have no way to give an answer that supports the shared fiction.

The D&D gameworld has an independent existence. It is not made up on the spot by either the DM or the players. The DM creates it before play even begins. But sometimes not throughly enough.

I occasionally farm stuff out to players to create, but that’s very much none-standard practice, and happens between games, not during them. The purpose being to reduce my workload.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So absolutely nothing out-of-character is part of playing the game? I'm not sure you want to commit to that.

Quite happy to comment on that. There is a lot of stuff said during the game that has nothing to do with playing the game. “how is the new baby?” “”I had covid last week” “this T Rex is the wrong colour”, and that’s before the terrible out of character jokes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, I realise that.

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

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.

If that backstory turned out to be incompatible with the setting, the DM would IMO have every right to veto it (respectfully of course, and perhaps offering a compromise).