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.

 

[TwoSix]

@ezo

I had edited that post.

The DM needs to have fun too. But the responsibility of the DM is make sure the players are having fun.

I would argue that it’s the responsibility of every participant, DM and player, to take actions that enhance the fun of everyone else at the table.

 

[Maxperson]

@Crimson Longinus

Here are some examples of various posts that assert the DM is a "dictator" with "absolute power" who demands "my way or the highway".

















5e never describes the job of a DM to exercise "absolute power" nor be a "dictator".

No. Just no. The whole "dictator" and "absolute power" is just because we don't really have another way to describe it. No matter how much you might argue this, we have no power over the players, so there is no dictatorial or absolute power involved. We only have power over the game, which makes us neither a dictator nor gives us absolute power in actuality.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But do you understand why, if as DM, I am putting in hours and hours of extra work to make the game fun for the players

See, this is where I don't empathize.

I don't feel like I need to be compensated to engage in a creative exercise as part of a bonding session with friends. It's like I don't need any reward when I bake a cake for them or cook for a party and I don't mind being cognizant of their wants and needs and don't say load up some barbacoa with cilantro that could kill one friend, or adding walnut to brownies that one doesn't like. Or I'll make some side brownies for them. It's not skin off my back to do something for people I like and care about.

 

[abirdcall]

The issue with any discussion on this topic is what we attribute the root cause to be.

I have been very outspoken on the epidemic of poor social skills in the TTRPG community as a whole. I believe that without proper social skills you will always have a hobby plagued by anti-social behavior - which is what tyrannical DMing, and many player issues, are.

This is why I believe the correct answer is properly teaching DMs the social skills to manage a table and to play nicely in a group. Rules will always just be interpreted through the lens of a person's social priorities and will be ineffective if those priorities are misaligned with the developer's wishes. And if the player or DM lacks the above social skills that misalignment is likely assured.

This is why I kind of wanted to go back to my hole, my opinion on the topic is not what people want to hear, and I don't feel like any progress can be made. I truly believe that without significant guidance on social skills, any other attempt will be futile. In my opinion, the only reason other games don't have such issues is because of the much smaller user base causing less exposure to those lacking the social skills to play nicely.

In my opinion, we need significant community resources on social skills, not more rules.




I appreciate this. But I had a few minutes with a two year old telling me how much he loved his daddy. I am loving life.

While you're not wrong about the need for social skills, depending on what you mean by 'community' I think you're quite off there.

Most people are having a great pro-social time playing D&D in their homes never to argue with someone on the internet about it.

Are they part of the D&D community? They are certainly part of the hobby. I don't think the hobby has the issue but I could certainly see Adventurer's League being that way. I recoil at the environment of people playing games at games stores most of the time.

There is a blurb in the 2024 PHB on pg. 15 which talks about the importance of doing things that delight you and your friends. I think it says similar things in a couple other places. It's nice to see and some people do need to be taught that that is what the game is really about and trying to be the protagonist is going to be a bad time for all but I think most get it, they're just getting it at home with their friends.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

While you're not wrong about the need for social skills, depending on what you mean by 'community' I think you're quite off there.

Most people are having a great pro-social time playing D&D in their homes never to argue with someone on the internet about it.

Are they part of the D&D community? They are certainly part of the hobby. I don't think the hobby has the issue but I could certainly see Adventurer's League being that way. I recoil at the environment of people playing games at games stores most of the time.

There is a blurb in the 2024 PHB on pg. 15 which talks about the importance of doing things that delight you and your friends. I think it says similar things in a couple other places. It's nice to see and some people do need to be taught that that is what the game is really about and trying to be the protagonist is going to be a bad time for all but I think most get it, they're just getting it at home with their friends.

I agree 100%. The community, by and large, does not have the issues that many in this thread have cited. I have had minimal issues, even while DMing for randoms online. I do, however, feel that the only way to address the issues cited in this thread, if we were so inclined as to do so, is through a greater emphasis on social skills.

But I agree with you 100% the community as a whole doesn't have an issue.

EDIT: I used the phrasing I did, so as to not minimize the concerns others were expressing. Sorry for that confusion.

 

[ezo]

See, this is where I don't empathize.

I don't feel like I need to be compensated to engage in a creative exercise as part of a bonding session with friends. It's like I don't need any reward when I bake a cake for them or cook for a party and I don't mind being cognizant of their wants and needs and don't say load up some barbacoa with cilantro that could kill one friend, or adding walnut to brownies that one doesn't like. Or I'll make some side brownies for them. It's not skin off my back to do something for people I like and care about.

It isn't an issue of compensation or reward, though. It is an issue of not having fun in the activity---which will typically last for several hours during a session, when I could also be enjoying myself as well, because a player wants to play or do something that doesn't jive with my game world or style.

Trying a more appropriate analogy:

You invite the gang over to watch movies. What if you really enjoy watching comedies, and don't like violence or nudity at all--finding it distasteful. But, someone shows up and brings an 80's slasher film which they LOVE. Are you going to sit there and watch it, having a horrid time, just because that is what they want to watch??

Like I said in another post, 99.9% of the time, nothing is that big a deal, but there are things I put my foot down on, evil PCs being one of them.

 

[Vaalingrade]

You invite the gang over to watch movies. What if you really enjoy watching comedies, and don't like violence or nudity at all--finding it distasteful. But, someone shows up and brings an 80's slasher film which they LOVE. Are you going to sit there and watch it, having a horrid time, just because that is what they want to watch??

It cuts both ways.

Would you put up with it if your friend invited you to movie night, then knowing that you don't like violence and nudity, decided to play Naked Stabbathon VI and said you either watch it or kick rocks?

It's not about one person getting the last say, it's about the group working together and respecting each other--which you can't do while declaring someone at the table King of the Castle and Screw Those Other Plebs.

 

[Umbran]

reading comprehension crisis is this bad, huh?

Mod note:
Enough trolling for you.

You are done in this thread. Your rude behavior is wearing your welcome thin. Clean it up, please.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think most players' (IMO quite reasonable) approach is that the DM is presumed trustworthy until proven otherwise.

But there's a few here, it seems, who take the opposite approach: any DM is untrustworthy until proven otherwise.

And that's just kinda sad.

You have conflated two different things.

Enthusiasm is how excited a player is to be at that table. How invested they are. How much they care about the events that will unfold. It is the lone positive force which keeps players at a given table. How much the game matters to them. (There are several negative such forces: social pressure, a desire to avoid "being a quitter" or the like regardless of whether one is seen as such,

But there is a second thread here. Can someone fall short of "I trust them implicitly" without instantly falling all the way to "they're completely untrustworthy"?

What counts as an untrustworthy act? Can someone do something that is not a breach of trust in itself, but that invites reasonable suspicion? I should hope that it is possible to be uncomfortable with a situation before an open, outright, unequivocal betrayal of trust has occurred. But if it is possible to doubt someone's trustworthiness without outright calling them untrustworthy, that means there can be "red flags" (and "yellow flags" for things that are merely eyebrow-raising, not outright suspicious).

And I cannot think of a more suspicious but not actually untrustworthy thing for someone to do than to emphasize for God and sundry their right to throw their weight around, demanding absolute deference, and treating anything I say as a mere "suggestion" even when I'll be heard at all.

Which was the whole point here. It is the insistence that concerns me. "No, no, I absolutely must have that power, no matter what, because something might go bad."

It is not the idea of trusting others that bothers me. It is the idea of someone doing something that I would really like explained right now ifyouwouldplease and being given a coy smile and told, "What? Don't you trust me?"

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Context is important. But it cases like this, so is popcorn.

I certainly agree that context is important. But when someone can quote, and I am not joking, five different people all using the same concepts with the same general meanings in the same thread, I think we have a pretty good idea what the context is.