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.

 

[ezo]

This is in my view absurd. It implies that a player is breaking the rules if they make any response to a GM's proposed fiction other than - what - just getting up and walking away? (Or is that breaking the rules too?)

It's a game of collective make-believe. Page 2 of the 5e Basic PDF sets it out like this:

Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, torn apart by ferocious monsters or done in by a nefarious villain. Even so, the other adventurers can search for powerful magic to revive their fallen comrade, or the player might choose to create a new character to carry on. The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.​

But you're saying it's against the rules for a player to point out that something the GM is putting forward is neither exciting nor apt to be memorable nor leading to a good time.

As I said, that proposition I regard as absurd.

I agree it is absurd for anyone to think the players lack the power to challenge a DM on their proposed fiction. It is the DMs job then to refute the challenge and explain why the fiction is as presented. Discussion and debate can then lead to a happy conclusion for all--if possible. However, there will be times when compromise is not possible, at which point those players (including the DM) simply don't want the same sort of memorable, exciting, good time and can part ways amicably enough IME.

FWIW, I think any sort of this "challenging" should be done outside of game time if at all possible. Game playing time is too precious IME to waste with such things and players (hopefully?) trust their DM enough to just "go with the flow" until such a time that the discussion can be made.

However, I will restate the DM is the final authority when it comes to the narrative fiction of the game and the game world implications. The ultimate power of veto a player has is to leave the game.

Can you think of examples where player knowledge would really matter?

Certainly. The precise eye-beam abilities of a beholder, for example, should be a mixture of actual truth and rumor / mistakes as well. Beholders (thankfully!) are very rare creatures in D&D games IME. What incredible powers a beholder actually possesses should be rare knowledge requiring consulting a sage IMO.

The more common a creature, the more widespread and accurate the knowledge in the game world should be IMO.

For example, the contenious kobold is uncommon in AD&D, not common like the orc or ogre. As such, general information and opinion (evil, wicked, vile little things kobolds, are... kill ya as soon as look at ya) should be typically known, but as an uncommon creature there is by no means any guarantee a PC will have ever met a kobold until the encounter one during an adventure.

For example, does everyone at the table need to pretend they are surprised that a Troll requires fire to kill it?

No, but realizing as an uncommon monster there will also be fokelore and misinformation about it as well.

That would feel off to me.

Plus, in a setting where people encounter Trolls, fire would definitely be part of the folklore.

"Aye, sure ya are fire is the bane of a troll! But it only works during the day I tell ya!--At night, fire won't stop them monsters from coming back from death to kill ya!"

And often depending on the rarity of the monster, that fokelore should be misleading or even outright wrong.

"It'aint fire, ya idiot, 'tis water that the trolls have a bane for! Like witches, water will melt a troll away! Why do you think they hide under them bridges? To stop people crossing the water!"

Again, if the DM really wants to surprise the players, create a different kind of Troll. (Norwegian folklore is full of extremely different kinds of troll, if looking for inspiration.)

Well, here's the issue with this: if the players know before hand that the DM will throw all sorts of different monster variations, great; but if not, players will often complain "but that isn't what it says in the MM!!!"

 

[TwoSix]

Outside of a playing session, I've allowed players to propose something and as DM I either approved or disapproved. But inside a session that doesn't happen. Players don't go into a tavern and say "I will approach the hot blond wench at the bar". I'd say there is no hot blond wench. (Assuming there wasn't of course). I've already detailed that tavern out before the party arrives.

The DM is the gatekeeper to the campaign fiction. He creates 99% of it for sure. Player actions create some. Player suggestions can create some but in my game it would only be with approval and it would never be something as big as an entire nation.

That's probably the divide, yes. I encourage my players to create scenery like that. I've found over the years it makes them more attached to the ebb-and-flow of scenes that are more the "connective tissue", not the major conflicts. Any tactic that increases participation is a plus.

It helps that probably 2/3 of my players are DMs as well, so they all have a pretty good sense of where scenes are going and what elements to introduce would be relatively appropriate.

Having the player say "I approach the 7 ft tall hairy orc at the bar and challenge him to arm-wrestling" is more immersive and fun, to me, than having the player ask "Is there anyone tough at the bar for me to arm-wrestle" and me rolling on my table of 1d100 bar patrons to check.

 

[Emerikol]

Well, here's the issue with this: if the players know before hand that the DM will throw all sorts of different monster variations, great; but if not, players will often complain "but that isn't what it says in the MM!!!"

As DM I would laugh as say "Oh that old book written by sages you found in a dusty library? You going to believe your own eyes and ears or trust some ramblings of a dude long dead."

 

[ezo]

The suggested limit is on consulting the MM during an encounter - in other words, players are expected to rely on their knowledge, as the quoted passage goes on to say.

Which is because they didn't anticipate players pouring over the MM like a novel and memorising 90% of the facts in it.

As DM I would laugh as say "Oh that old book written by sages you found in a dusty library? You going to believe your own eyes and ears or trust some ramblings of a dude long dead."

Yeah, me, too.

 

[Yaarel]

Well, here's the issue with this: if the players know before hand that the DM will throw all sorts of different monster variations, great; but if not, players will often complain "but that isn't what it says in the MM!!!"

I as DM can invent from scratch − new places, new monsters, new spells, new magic items − and for players to choose from, new species, new skills, new feats, new backgrounds, and even new classes or subclasses (albeit classes take alot of work) − and all of this is the exercise of rules as written. All of this is part of a setting choice.

If I remove options from the Players Handbook, players need to agree on it, for the sake of peace. But adding options, they can enjoy the option or not as they like. Deciding on a setting together happens during session zero.

If a player was surprised the DM is allowed to create a new monster, or use a monster from an indy publisher, I would be surprised.

 

[pemerton]

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.

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

What Yaarel said.

In my experience, that negotiation normally consists of putting forward reasons. Depending on what is being discussed, those reasons might pertain to the fiction, to some consideration of mechanical balance or elegance, or both, or even some other relevant consideration. I've never found it to be different in D&D and other RPGs, because the basic issue is the same in all cases: what process are we going to use to work out the content of the shared fiction, and what happens next.

I can remember a few occasions in my 4e D&D game. I remember a playing asking if Weapon Focus (Dagger) would enhance a dagger used as a Sorcerer implement. I read the feat description - Choose a specific weapon group, such as spears or heavy blades. You gain a +1 feat bonus to damage rolls with your chosen weapon group. I pointed out that it seemed obvious that the damage bonus attends damage dealt using a weapon - and that Sorcerer powers have the Implement keyword, not the Weapon keyword. The player agreed with my reasoning. Subsequent errata went the same way.

I remember starting a session. The PCs were at a banquet. The action was picking up from the conclusion of the previous session, where the PCs had just provoked their enemy, hitherto keeping his true nature secret, into revealing himself in rage. As part of my framing at the start of the following session, I described the attitude and reactions of some of the minor NPCs present. One of the players queried what I was saying - it seemed to go against the fact that the players had succeeded in their skill challenge, and hence had successfully goaded their enemy into revealing himself as an evil wizard. I agreed with what the player said, and corrected my framing.

The wizard PC in that game had a feat that granted a +2 bonus to skill checks for rituals. I think the authors of the feat intended it to affect only rituals as mechanically defined. My player interpreted it as affecting any skill check that pertained to a ritual, whether or not that was a ritual in the mechanical sense. His interpretation was more interesting, and hardly overpowered, and so we played the feat that way. At least once or twice a question would come up as to whether or not some feat of Arcana the character was performing was a ritual, and he and I would discuss it and reach an agreement. This meant that he took the lead in developing a "theory" of how magic worked in the campaign world.

Here's an example from non-D&D play, namely, Classic Traveller:

The PCs had travelled to the icy world of Zinion looking for the ruins or relics of an ancient alien civilisation. They knew that the aliens had lived on the world around 2 billion years ago, and had identified the site where they thought the ruins might be found.

<snip>

The PCs had conjectured a location based on a combination of 2 billion year old information with trance-produced maps of Zinion's surface that allowed them to develop a working theory of the planet's tectonic movements. Looking up information about the earth's Antarctic ice sheets led us to conclude that the depth of the ice at this particular point was 4 km.

<snip>

it was time to start the excavation. We did some Googling (of ice-melting with lasers) and decided that it would take 4 days to cut through 3 km of ice with a triple beam laser.

For clarifying factual questions, Google is helpful.

A session or two later in that Traveller game, I described some pseudo-scientific aspect of a room in the excavated installation: a field of some sort keeping certain gases inside a room and stopping them leaking into the corridor. The electrical engineer in our group asked a bit more about this; I read a bit more from the module I was using; he groaned and face-palmed, but let me keep going. I was in no position to contradict his scientific and technical intuitions, which are far stronger than mine; and was grateful that he didn't press the point!

 

[DarkCrisis]

Speaking of Trolls and Mummies and Regen monsters and Fire.

They used to be scary before Fire Cantrips etc existed.

Gotta whack that Troll or Hydra with a torch! As a DM I miss that

 

[Maxperson]

Here we agree. The DM can absolutely say, Elves dont exist in this setting, or Halflings, or Humans or whatever.

Establishing a setting is part of the "session zero" (an official 5e term). A setting choice requires some negotiation because everyone at the table needs to buy into it.

If one player has their heart set on playing an Elf, there are ways to make it work in any setting. The Elf can be reflavor in a way to match the setting themes and tropes. The Elf might be from some peripheral setting in "a land, far, far away". The Elf might be a unique anomaly, where the setting interacts with the Elf sensically. There are also other solution. It is a negotiation between the player and the DM.

There will be settings in which even a single PC elf will disrupt things to the point where it should not be allowed. If the setting had elves that disappeared 2000 years ago and not one has been seen since, a single PC will will throw the entire world into chaos and completely alter the way the game is played.

 

[pemerton]

That's not the same as creating world lore.

I didn't assert that it is. I have been talking about the shared fiction, not just "world lore".

But in the post you quoted, I did give an example of "world lore", namely, the player establishing PC backstory.

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.

And I do not have, nor claim to have, any such power. Yet I manage to play D&D (and other RPGs too) and the only time I get in any trouble is when posters on ENW tell me that I don't know how to play D&D!

 

[pemerton]

Rule 0 is something mentioned in the 1e DMG.

No it's not. Or at least not under that description. I believe it comes from one of the 3E rulebooks.