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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't know what you mean by "social contract" here. The only usage I'm familiar with in the context of RPGs comes from The Forge, where it means (roughly) the agreement to use a particular set of constraints, rules, processes and expectations in establishing the content of the shared fiction.

The same people who coined that terminology endorse the "Lumpley Principle", which asserts that social contract is prior to system - or in other words, that formal rules that proclaim that one party has authority can't actually do any work, if there is no agreement among participants.

Sure.

Which is exactly what I have been saying, and is why rules that purport to give one party absolute power in respect of the shared fiction are pointless.

This doesn't follow. Ultimately any game rule is subject to the consent of the participants. If participants do not agree that long swords should deal d8 damage then that rule does not function. This doesn't mean that rule is pointless. Rules are package that establish procedure of playing the game. When the players agree to play the game they agree to that structure. That they could withhold their consent doesn't mean the structure is pointless.

And this is not just semantics - presenting it as semantics is, in effect, an attempt to put forward a particular type of play (namely, GM-driven railroading) as if it were normative or even exclusive. As soon as we have non-railroading play - that is, play where the players can actually make a meaningful difference to what happens next - then it has to be the case that the GM does not have unlimited power over the shared fiction; because it has to be the case that the players can do things or produce results that bind the GM. (Because if they can't, then only the GM can make a meaningful difference to what happens next, and we're back on the railroad.)

Not at all. You're doing some quite strange conflating here. That the GM has the final say in no way at all precludes the players contributing to the fiction or imply railroad play. To be so the GM would need to constantly use their power to override the player action declarations, which of course generally is not what happens.

These differences between GM-driven and other approaches aren't just semantic. I've encountered them, repeatedly, both in actual play experiences and in conversations about them.

They aren't semantics, but that's not even what we're talking about. To go there we would need to go where I suggest: to the social contract. For example the consent given by the players to participate the game might be conditional on the GM not railroading them. Usually with people who know each other's styles well, such agreement can be merely implicit, but when playing with strangers it of course is generally good idea to make sure that everyone is at least roughly on the same page before committing to the game.

 

[Maxperson]

I think if the DM carries that fiction forward with an entire set of new players (and presumably PCs, unless the DM can convince a whole new set of players to play the old ones*), then you run into some Ship-of-Theseus definitional problems pretty quickly.

I don't. The future fiction hasn't yet been created, so there's nothing being duplicated or redone. The fiction up to that point has already been set. Now, if the DM starts over at the beginning it will drastically change things, but if it's just a continuation of the campaign you don't have those issues. The former PCs are now NPCs and everything just moves forward.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't. The future fiction hasn't yet been created, so there's nothing being duplicated or redone. The fiction up to that point has already been set. Now, if the DM starts over at the beginning it will drastically change things, but if it's just a continuation of the campaign you don't have those issues. The former PCs are now NPCs and everything just moves forward.

This is a fun hypothetical. Let's assume the players from this fractured campaign assign one of themselves as the DM, and pick up the campaign from where they left off (except that the kobold actually does what they think it should.) The DM also continues the campaign with a new set of players.

Is one of those campaigns more the "continuous" campaign than the others? (Ultimately it doesn't "matter", of course, but as a thought exercise.)

 

[Maxperson]

But if rule zero really means that the GM has unlimited power to decide what happens when a player declares an action for their PC, then a player can't do what you say they can do.

That's not true. Let's say I own a company and I have total control over it. I can micromanage my employees, ensuring that they do things exactly as I want them to do, or I can macromanage and just give the employee what I want the end result to be and let them work out how to get there, or I can just trust them to their own devices, knowing that they know what the company needs.

The DM having the unlimited ability to decide doesn't mean that he is going to micromanage the PCs. The players will decide to say kill the mayor and that decision will establish elements of the fiction through that action that alter direction of the campaign. Or they could join the mayor against cult. Or they could join the cult in overthrowing the king. Or...

Even with the ultimate authority to force things, the overwhelming majority of DMs don't misuse it like that. The games will be a collaborative back and forth with both the DM and players moving the story of the game forward through their interactions.

For the players to have that ability, there must be some constraints on the GM. I can point to classic D&D (OD&D, Gygax's AD&D, B/X) and tell you where those constrains are found: in the binding nature of the GM's pre-authored map-and-key; in the action resolution rules; and in some more diffuse principles and expectations (some inherent to the game; some that need to be developed over time, which mean that a given campaign should have a "sequence" of increasing complexity, and increasing contextual sensitivity, of tricks and puzzles).

The constraints are self-constraints due to wanting to have an enjoyable game for all. There are no built in constraints in AD&D on the DM. None. He can alter any rule he wants.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But if rule zero really means that the GM has unlimited power to decide what happens when a player declares an action for their PC, then a player can't do what you say they can do.

For the players to have that ability, there must be some constraints on the GM. I can point to classic D&D (OD&D, Gygax's AD&D, B/X) and tell you where those constrains are found: in the binding nature of the GM's pre-authored map-and-key; in the action resolution rules; and in some more diffuse principles and expectations (some inherent to the game; some that need to be developed over time, which mean that a given campaign should have a "sequence" of increasing complexity, and increasing contextual sensitivity, of tricks and puzzles).

I can do the same for 4e D&D as well, though given you have little interest in that edition I won't bore you.

It's not clear where any relevant constraints are found in 2nd ed AD&D or 3E as written (at least, it's not clear to me); but if they are to be played as non-railroads then some constraints must be adopted by the group.

I disagree. The ability of a DM to make a final call in the fiction or resolve a dispute, even if the player disagrees, does not mean the player has no ability to take actions through their PCs.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The point is, the assumption that D&D requires a "DM tyrant" is false.

It depends what you mean by “tyrant”. In their role of referee they have to have the final word over the rules. In their role as world builder they have the final word over the fiction, so that all the participants have, as much as possible, the same mental movie playing. They play all the NPCs (not always in my game, but my game is an outlier), and determine events in the game word. They decide what monsters are in the dungeon, they modify or invent them to better support the fiction

But they don’t do these things in tyrannical manner, they do them so as to create the best experience for the players. To borrow a phrase from Pratchett, they are a semi-benevolent dictator.

 

[Maxperson]

This is a fun hypothetical. Let's assume the players from this fractured campaign assign one of themselves as the DM, and pick up the campaign from where they left off (except that the kobold actually does what they think it should.) The DM also continues the campaign with a new set of players.

Is one of those campaigns more the "continuous" campaign than the others? (Ultimately it doesn't "matter", of course, but as a thought exercise.)

The original is the continuous one.

The new campaign where the players assign a new DM won't have the old DMs notes and plans, so it can't really continue on with the same fiction. Nor will the new players know what the old DM has NPCs doing behind the scenes in response to their already played out interactions. And lastly, players miss things that can still impact the game in the future, but they won't have knowledge of those in their game.

They will be creating a new, but similar game and playing that one. It can't be a continuation of the old game's fiction, though, because there are too many variables that they don't have.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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

Negotiate is a synonym for argue.

Rule zero exists so the game does not descend into arguing (like an internet forum inevitably does).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They're probably not unknown if they're invading the town and we (that is, the PCs) are fighting and capturing them.

Aliens invade your town. Does that make you an expert on their biology and culture?

 

[TwoSix]

Not at all. You're doing some quite strange conflating here. That the GM has the final say in no way at all precludes the players contributing to the fiction or imply railroad play. To be so the GM would need to constantly use their power to override the player action declarations, which of course generally is not what happens.

I think "final say" gets overemphasized. The DM is ultimately the arbitrator when there's a lack of clarity about the fictional positioning. But the DM must allow players to take the actions and specify the results allotted to them by the rules, unless they give a reason that those actions or results are rendered implausible by the fiction.

If a player wants to cast fireball on a group of kobolds, the DM can forbid it because the kobolds are 500' away and that is well outside of the range of fireball.

They can stop the damage from happening because an enemy spellcaster cast counterspell.

They can forbid the damage from occurring because the targets are underwater, and fireball can't penetrate water.

They can forbid the fireball from being cast because of a secret antimagic field. They can withhold the actual reason at that time, but there is an implicit promise that there IS a reason and that reason is able to be determined (even if it never actually is determined in play).

But what the DM CAN'T do is say "No, because I don't want that to happen right now."

Now, some DMs might object to some of those examples because of other play concerns, but the overall principle is core to the play loop of pretty much all GM-led games.