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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe at the kids level but I think very little at the adult level. I've played in tournaments and we had a tournament director but he didn't hover over us unless it was a special situation. The person winning was running out of time on the clock.

Higher level players are just better at not getting caught.

 

[CreamCloud0]

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.

the GM can have unlimited power even if they responded to every action a player attempts with 'okay you do that' or 'sure, roll me an X to see how well it goes',

the player is still establishing fiction with their character actions.

 

[Oofta]

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.

I don't think anyone is disputing that. What is in dispute is things like what happens if you execute a plan and it doesn't work, that NPCs sometimes seek retribution, or that something you believed about the world turned out to be not true being are examples of terrible GMing.

 

[TwoSix]

Yes, of course. But there is not any external list of "reasonable things" and like you say different people might disagree on what is reasonable. For example to me your fireball to water ruling seems pretty reasonable, but I don't believe that's how the rules actually work, so might be "unreasonable" ruling to some. So ultimately this is just self regulation, which is probably at least somewhat influenced what the GM expects the players to find acceptable.

The important point is that the DM's authority to adjudicate the fiction is constrained by plausibility, just as much as the player's declared actions are.

I accept the DM can say "No, because." But the DM can't just say "No."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The important point is that the DM's authority to adjudicate the fiction is constrained by plausibility, just as much as the player's declared actions are.

I accept the DM can say "No, because." But the DM can't just say "No."

Sure, but plausibility is also somewhat subjective. Furthermore, sometimes it could be "No, and you don't know why not." There is a reason, but that reason is not known to the characters.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure, but plausibility is also somewhat subjective. Furthermore, sometimes it could be "No, and you don't know why not." There is a reason, but that reason is not known to the characters.

I know, that was one of the examples I gave.

 

[Oofta]

The important point is that the DM's authority to adjudicate the fiction is constrained by plausibility, just as much as the player's declared actions are.

I accept the DM can say "No, because." But the DM can't just say "No."

I only allow a handful of species, effectively ban a couple of spells in my campaign. I can tell you why, but it ultimately comes down to "because I say so". I don't feel like I have to justify my decisions. I basically make decisions because I'm just running the best game I know how. If that doesn't work for you I may not be the right DM for you.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I only allow a handful of species, effectively ban a couple of spells in my campaign. I can tell you why, but it ultimately comes down to "because I say so". I don't feel like I have to justify my decisions. I basically make decisions because I'm just running the best game I know how. If that doesn't work for you I may not be the right DM for you.

I rather feel that world building decisions are somewhat different than action adjudication. They're often made on more aesthetic basis, and sometimes it just is that "No, because I don't like that and don't want it to be part of this setting."

 

[TwoSix]

I only allow a handful of species, effectively ban a couple of spells in my campaign. I can tell you why, but it ultimately comes down to "because I say so". I don't feel like I have to justify my decisions. I basically make decisions because I'm just running the best game I know how. If that doesn't work for you I may not be the right DM for you.

But it isn't "because I say so." You're doing it because you a particular aesthetic vision for your campaign setting that you're trying to curate. That's a very different rationale and should be presented as such.

 

[Maxperson]

Fair. I disagree, but that's because I don't view any external guidance (such as notes) as being relevant to the state of the fiction at the current time. It guided the DM to the current game state, but it isn't actually present in the fiction.

Group A that uses the DM notes will arrive at a different fiction than Group B that doesn't have the notes, but they're still just two branches from the same tree. (IMO, of course.)

I see it more as a professor telling the class to write a fictional essay on a particular topic. There are going to be a lot of similarities, but they are still going to be different fictional stories, not all branches of the same fictional tree.