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]

The shared fiction is created by the PCs engaging with the setting and getting feedback from the DM. The PCs are not making up the setting like the DM. They are responding to the setting and interacting with the setting. You are not in authorial mode as a D&D player character. That is not a D&D approach. You are in actor or pawn stance depending on edition.

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

"We capture and interrogate the Kobold" is not "making up the setting". "I use my spell to transmute the rocks into mud" is not "making up the setting". That has nothing to do with whether the GM has "absolute power" to say whatever they like in response to those action declarations, or is constrained (in various ways - eg by rules, principles, expectations etc) in how they respond.

If it's a setting detail? Absolutely it is against the rules. I'm shocked that you find this unusual.

It's trivial to conjure up examples that pertain to setting details and yet would - I think quite routinely - provoke player responses that query what the GM is putting forward.

First, there's stuff that might be contrary to good taste or to moral norms: say, stuff around sexual violence, vicious racism, graphic torture, etc.

Second, there's stuff that might be contrary to something that the players have been taking for granted - eg suppose the players have, in the development and play of their PCs, been assuming that nobles in the world take honour seriously, and have demonstrated this in the play of their PCs (by way of their banter, the sorts of actions they declare, the way they admonish dishonourable NPCs, etc). If the GM then decides to have leading noble NPCs tell the PCs that honour doesn't matter, that they are deluded to take it seriously, etc - basically pulling the rug out from under the players' assumptions about how the social and moral world of their characters works - then I would absolutely expect the players to query that. It's terrible GMing.

Third, there's stuff that's unfair or unreasonable. For instance, the players defeat some villains, but spare their lives, and release them on their own parole. And the GM - without even (for instance) calling for an appropriate social check or (in AD&D) without even making a loyalty or similar sort of check - then decides that the freed villains go back to the PCs' home village and pillage it. So the GM unilaterally, through their authoring of "off screen" events, turns the PCs' victory into a bitter failure. I think this is terrible GMing too, and as a player in this situation would make my view known.

As the 5e rulebook says, "if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win." It's a player's absolute prerogative to point out that the GM's proposed fiction is not creating a good time and is unlikely to be memorable except as a RPG horror story.

 

[TwoSix]

You're "getting in trouble" because you continuously tell us we're playing the game wrong because you run it a different way.

I've been posting in threads with @pemerton for 15 years, I've never seen a post where they have said that someone is playing "wrong".

One can express distaste for certain playstyles without saying that it's wrong.

 

[Yaarel]

No. Take my example of the elves which vanished 2000 years ago. News of the single PC elf will travel like wildfire. The kingdoms of the world will all take great interest. Some will want to kill the PC to keep elves from returning or learning of what things are now like if they had issues with elves in the past. Others will want to use the elf, others capture the elf for interrogation, and so on. The entire world will change and be thrown into chaos over that one PC elf.

Change on that level will usually be extremely disruptive to whatever campaign is going on and the DM can and should say no to disruption like that.

For example, the Elf doesnt need to be an "elf". It can reflavor to something matching the tropes of the setting.

When the player puts forth the reasons for wanting an Elf, the DM can normally accommodate that.

 

[pemerton]

just because you leave, doesn't mean that the fiction doesn't move forward without you. You cannot stop the fiction from moving forward. Only the DM can do that.

But I can sit in my room just like the GM, and make up new stories about what my PC did after interrogating the kobold. I can even ask my other friends to join in. We could even make a game out of it!

That would be carrying the fiction forward, just as much as your suggestion that the GM is doing so.

 

[TwoSix]

For example, the Elf doesnt need to be an "elf". It can reflavor to something matching the tropes of the setting.

When the player puts forth the reasons for wanting an Elf, the DM can normally accommodate that.

For sure. If any player wants to play an "excluded" race, the starting point for the conversation should be if the player is interested in that ancestry for narrative or mechanical reasons. If it's purely mechanical, then reskinning should definitely be on the table.

 

[pemerton]

there are alot of monsters in that book, you really mean to say your character has every detail of relevant entries in that book memorised?

As I've already posted, in AD&D Dwarves and Gnomes speak the language of Kobolds, and Gnomes get +1 to hit Kobolds. And in the game we had been fighting Kobolds.

Kobolds were not foreign to these PCs.

 

[TwoSix]

But I can sit in my room just like the GM, and make up new stories about what my PC did after interrogating the kobold. I can even ask my other friends to join in. We could even make a game out of it!

That would be carrying the fiction forward, just as much as your suggestion that the GM is doing so.

Exactly. I can sit here right now and imagine new scenes with the interrogated kobold; even if I find those imaginings interesting, it's meaningless in terms of being a "game" or "shared fiction".

 

[Emerikol]

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

"We capture and interrogate the Kobold" is not "making up the setting". "I use my spell to transmute the rocks into mud" is not "making up the setting". That has nothing to do with whether the GM has "absolute power" to say whatever they like in response to those action declarations, or is constrained (in various ways - eg by rules, principles, expectations etc) in how they respond.

Well the argument has swung back and forth between different points. The ability of the Kobold to be forced to talk though would be in the province of the DM. Perhaps most of the time you just roll as DM. But if you know something about the setting that makes just saying no make sense then you do. I'm not saying a DM should be chaotic or inconsistent. I'm saying ultimately the DM has the authority.

It's trivial to conjure up examples that pertain to setting details and yet would - I think quite routinely - provoke player responses that query what the GM is putting forward.

First, there's stuff that might be contrary to good taste or to moral norms: say, stuff around sexual violence, vicious racism, graphic torture, etc.

Second, there's stuff that might be contrary to something that the players have been taking for granted - eg suppose the players have, in the development and play of their PCs, been assuming that nobles in the world take honour seriously, and have demonstrated this in the play of their PCs (by way of their banter, the sorts of actions they declare, the way they admonish dishonourable NPCs, etc). If the GM then decides to have leading noble NPCs tell the PCs that honour doesn't matter, that they are deluded to take it seriously, etc - basically pulling the rug out from under the players' assumptions about how the social and moral world of their characters works - then I would absolutely expect the players to query that. It's terrible GMing.

Third, there's stuff that's unfair or unreasonable. For instance, the players defeat some villains, but spare their lives, and release them on their own parole. And the GM - without even (for instance) calling for an appropriate social check or (in AD&D) without even making a loyalty or similar sort of check - then decides that the freed villains go back to the PCs' home village and pillage it. So the GM unilaterally, through their authoring of "off screen" events, turns the PCs' victory into a bitter failure. I think this is terrible GMing too, and as a player in this situation would make my view known.

As the 5e rulebook says, "if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win." It's a player's absolute prerogative to point out that the GM's proposed fiction is not creating a good time and is unlikely to be memorable except as a RPG horror story.

I wouldn't agree with you on every one of these but let's address the concept instead of the details. Yes DM's can be bad. We are talking about the authority within the game that the DM has. The DM makes the setting and decides those things. If he is a bad DM, then the players find another. This constant "committee" that is overruling the DM is just not going to fly. No good DM and some bad DMs is going to tolerate such a committee in the playstyle I think D&D represents. Your DMing by committee may work for you but it won't for most people trying to play D&D who like D&D.

 

[ezo]

Yes. I've repeatedly stated that it was made clear to the GM that we - the players - did not accept his proposed characterisation of Kobolds.

That wasn't clear in the post, though, so do you understand why people reacted like they did???

Or original statement was: "We politely let the GM tell us all this. And then we (the players) all agreed that we would pull out of the game and start a new game ourselves."

No mention at all of expressing disapproval TO the DM, just that you players agreed to walk away.

Also, "not accepting" --- and giving reasons why, allowing the DM to counter, etc. --- are two very diffierent things.

If you had a reasonable discussion with the DM, and the DM offered reasons you simply did not agree with, then parting ways was the best thing. Sometimes players just do not accept the DM's logic, which is perfectly fine, and if the DM feels they maybe went to far, and make it right. But if the DM doesn't feel they are being unreasonable at all, that is their perrogative, too.

However, if the DM just said, "Because I'm the DM" without any good rational behind it, you were definitely right to part ways!!!

In the first case, the DM is fine IMO and you just didn't fit well. If the second case, the DM probably either found players he could bully or had a short DMing career...

This is where I ask, again, why am I under any obligation to humour a GM who is wasting my time?

Well, you aren't, of course. Feel free to leave whenever you want.

However, as I said before, I doubt this was the only issue and other things added up to this being the final one. But how often on those other issues (assuming they existed?) did you (players) challenge the DM on those narratives??

That GM claimed to be experienced. Yet was terrible. I have been GMed by a friend of mine - using Burning Wheel - who has GMed only a dozen sessions or so but leaves that GM absolutely for dead. It's some of the best GMing I've experienced: a vibrant sense of the fiction; a powerful sense of consequence; and engaging situations. Why would I spend time being bored and frustrated by a terrible GM, when I could spend time running a game that I and others enjoy, or being GMed by someone who does an amazing job?

They might have been a very experienced DM! So far nothing you have descibed would encourage me to walk away from that game. "Experienced" just means they have done it before and know how to run the game. It doesn't mean you will like or appreciate their style.

From the sounds of things, I doubt you would like my games, but I'm an extremely experienced DM, in several game systems over the years. I've easily kept 90% of the people I've played with until circumstances forced them to stop playing. But given our differences in style, you'd probably not enjoy my D&D, either.

If you have a terrible experience, see no way to compromise it to make it worth your time, then yes, walk away.

Again, I don't think anyone has said you shouldn't have left that game. We've disagreed with the timing, manner, etc. based on what you have written to that point. We've disgreed that just because the DM ran the game his way that makes him a bad DM or anything. And we've stated why we think your assumptions about how the game should be run were not very justifiable. But ultimately, no one I can recall ever said anything like "You should have just sat there, shut up, and taken it!"

I mean, just to start: what sort of terrible GM allows the players to spend time at the table coming up with a plan to capture and interrogate a NPC, and then to begin to operationalise that plan, if the whole time they are planning to narrate the NPC as incapable of answering questions? If they want to run their railroad, at least have the courtesy to be upfront about it and spare everybody that hour or whatever of wasted play time.

Oh, lots of times. Not a terrible DM thing to do at all IMO. Players often launch plans which meet with failure to one degree or another. Who's to say if you had used that captured kobold as bait to capture some more you would not have gotten useful information from them?

It is a shame you see that as wasted time IMO. Didn't you have fun planning how to capture the kobold with the other players? Didn't you enjoy the experience of the successful capture? I mean, sorry to say this, but it sounds too much like someone who plays chess against someone they really expect to beat, enjoy the strategy and the game, but then accidently knock over the board and regret wasting the time playing. Just because the destination was disappointing doesn't mean the journey was a waste of time IME. Maybe it really was for you in this case? Maybe you hated the planning, joking with other players about ideas that would never work, or rolled and failed everything during the capture so didn't contribute at all? Only you can answer that, of course.

In the end, who knows? Maybe that DM learned from the experience and was a better DM for it? Maybe they didn't...

 

[Emerikol]

But I can sit in my room just like the GM, and make up new stories about what my PC did after interrogating the kobold. I can even ask my other friends to join in. We could even make a game out of it!

That would be carrying the fiction forward, just as much as your suggestion that the GM is doing so.

I would argue that would be a new campaign. Because when you put what you know of the old campaign into a new one, the new one will not have all the data from the original one. Not even close. It will have a lot of new data too. I realize in your mindset, nothing is established until someone speaks it into existence in the game world. That is absolutely not how it works in my game or in most D&D campaigns I've seen. At best your PC shifted to another parallel universe that has some similarities to the original.