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.

 

[Oofta]

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 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):



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.


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.

So you've made a ruling. If you were DM and a player disagrees, what happens? Can you stop dodging what is a simple question?

 

[Emerikol]

The concern is, the second claim is actually: "With absolute power, any given DM will abuse the game."

A group dynamic where a single member wields absolute power is dysfunctional. It is the stuff of cults and painful families, and bullying "friends".

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It is a salient concern. Especially for teens playing the game, and so on.

This is all well and good when we are talking about the totality of life. We are talking about a game and the players have a veto. They can leave the game. That is a check on a DM. A truly evil or bad DM will just stop getting players. I've seen it. It's rare.

The mindset of a DM should not be adversarial. He should be devoted to giving the best version of the playstyle he offers to the players. Intrinsic though to the playstyle I prefer, is DM authority. So I fail immediately in my playstyle if I abrogate DM authority.

 

[Yaarel]

This is all well and good when we are talking about the totality of life. We are talking about a game and the players have a veto. They can leave the game. That is a check on a DM. A truly evil or bad DM will just stop getting players. I've seen it. It's rare.

The mindset of a DM should not be adversarial. He should be devoted to giving the best version of the playstyle he offers to the players. Intrinsic though to the playstyle I prefer, is DM authority. So I fail immediately in my playstyle if I abrogate DM authority.

There is probably some areas where we can agree. For example, I have a strong sense that the DM plays the "setting" and the players play the "heroes". Just like the players need autonomy to create characters that they enjoy, the DM needs autonomy to create a setting that one enjoys.

In some sense, the setting is one extra player character at the table. Just like heroes cant be jerks to each other, the setting and a hero cant be jerks to each other.

The characterization of self-inflated "absolute power", is wrongminded, and unhelpful.

 

[Emerikol]

There is probably some areas where we can agree. For example, I have a strong sense that the DM plays the "setting" and the players play the "heroes". Just like the players need autonomy to create characters that they enjoy, the DM needs autonomy to create a setting that one enjoys.

In some sense, the setting is one extra player character at the table. Just like heroes cant be jerks to each other, the setting and a hero cant be jerks to each other.

The characterization of self-inflated "absolute power", is wrongminded, and unhelpful.

Well, we who defend it want no exceptions. Absolute rule 0. Obviously, as DM, I would never try to dictate that one of my players drink a coke instead of something else. The power is over the setting. And while within a broad paradigm laid out by the DM, the players are free to make characters. If the DM says "no elves" for example then the setting has no elves and players can't choose elves. But based on what the setting has available yes players can do what they want. Their characters have free will.

 

[Oofta]

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

This is a D&D thread. I was asking what happens in a D&D game if the DM says X and the player says Y. Because it does occasionally happen and the DM has always made the final call. It's not a hard question. I'm not looking for universal answers. I'm asking a question specific to the game the forum is dedicated to.

Although I would ask how it's specifically resolved in other games. What happens if a player declares a move that's simply out of bounds for the game? "They don't do that" is just another dodge.

 

[Yaarel]

So you've made a ruling. If you were DM and a player disagrees, what happens? Can you stop dodging what is a simple question?

In my experience, when a DM and a player disagree, what happens next is: negotiate.

 

[Yaarel]

Well, we who defend it want no exceptions. Absolute rule 0. Obviously, as DM, I would never try to dictate that one of my players drink a coke instead of something else. The power is over the setting. And while within a broad paradigm laid out by the DM, the players are free to make characters. If the DM says "no elves" for example then the setting has no elves and players can't choose elves. But based on what the setting has available yes players can do what they want. Their characters have free will.

"Absolute rule 0".

I mentioned in a post above that I cannot find the phrase "rule zero" in the official rules. Can you find it for me?

Heh, you might be playing D&D "wrong".

 

[Oofta]

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.

That's not the same as creating world lore. A PC casting rock to mud is the PC using an ability to shape the world as their action, the DM then narrates the results if it matters.

When it comes to backstory, as DM I have editorial and veto power, I work with my players to ensure that the story fits in with the world. If not you could get the joke from the video about the guy who shows up and declares that he toppled kingdoms, slew demons and battled an ancient dragon into submission before breakfast. Or at the very least a character that doesn't fit into the world's lore at all.

 

[Oofta]

In my experience, when a DM and a player disagree, what happens next is: negotiate.

I gave a clear example. What happens with the thief using fast hands to cast a spell off a scroll with a bonus action that normally takes an action. The DM says no, the player says yes. There is no "negotiation", it either works or it doesn't.

This really shouldn't be hard to answer, and yes, questions like this do come up now and then in games I've played.

 

[Emerikol]

"Absolute rule 0".

I mentioned in a post above that I cannot find the phrase "rule zero" in the official rules. Can you find it for me?

Heh, you might be playing D&D "wrong".

Rule 0 is something mentioned in the 1e DMG. It has been held widely by many who play D&D all the way to the present. That you don't know about it is pretty amazing.

People who like to argue rulings all the time are called rules lawyers and are generally held in low regard across the hobby. If you think you have a better way then by all means become a DM yourself. We need more DMs.