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.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Well, there's also the positive force of being able to hang out with friends. There's many a player - usually labelled as "casual" - for whom this is the primary thing that keeps them enthused about showing up every week; the game itself is secondary to the socializing.

(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,

Pure inertia (or routine) is another force, neither positive nor negative. You've gone to that game every Friday for the last four years and now it's just your normal routine: it seems odd not to go, if the game is cancelled.

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"?

Trust is a binary: you either trust someone or you don't.

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).

The presence (and noticing) of a red flag causes trust to become distrust. If the red flag proves to be a false alarm distrust returns to trust.

The question IMO is more one of whether someone goes in specifically looking for red flags, thus indicating distrust right from the start. Or put another way, whether someone's "default setting" is to trust or not to trust the DM they just sat down to play with for the first time.

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?"

If that explanation you seek would lead to revealing in-game secrets that were supposed to stay secret, you ain't gonna get it from me.

And sometimes situations arise where a DM just has to ask for trust and hope he gets it. I'm in one such right now: for various reasons I've had a lot dumped on my plate this past month and have had no time to prep anything; poor timing in that the game suddenly got to a point where I needed to sit down and work on it some, as in I didn't have a next adventure prepped (or even thought of yet!) and they finished the last one about 2 months sooner than I thought they would*.

And so, even though I'm not one for out-of-game discussions about such things, a few weeks ago I basically explained the situation to the players and asked them to bear with me - to trust me - as I floundered for a few sessions. So far so good, and I'm now to the point (I hope!) where I can go another few sessions just on what I've made up on the fly, by which time I hope to have a few chances to sit down and work on game stuff.

* - they were in a big sprawling dungeon complex, the sort of place they usually explore every nook and cranny of while stripping it to the studs for treasure, and they still hadn't hit half of it. But they were there on a specific player-instigated mission, and on completing the mission they threw me for a loop when instead of exploring the rest of the place they decided to bug out immediately and go home.

 

[Lanefan]

No one here is a comic book villain, ...

Crap - looks like I really need to up my game.

Muwahahahahah!

 

[CreamCloud0]

Man, this thread just gains pages at a time.

 

[pemerton]

Trust is a binary: you either trust someone or you don't.

I think it's pretty clear that trust can be a matter of degree: for instance, I might trust a child with my pen or even my phone, but not my credit card.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Well, there's also the positive force of being able to hang out with friends. There's many a player - usually labelled as "casual" - for whom this is the primary thing that keeps them enthused about showing up every week; the game itself is secondary to the socializing.

That's not a positive force, meaning an impulse that pushes the player toward the game. It is a negative force against leaving, because leaving would have undesirable consequences (not spending time with friends when you otherwise could). The one and only positive, force toward the game itself, is player enthusiasm.

Pure inertia (or routine) is another force, neither positive nor negative. You've gone to that game every Friday for the last four years and now it's just your normal routine: it seems odd not to go, if the game is cancelled.

That would be a negative force too...? It isn't attracting the player toward the game; it is friction delaying one's departure.

Trust is a binary: you either trust someone or you don't.

Absolutely not. Are you serious? I trust some people with my life, others with basic things, some with nothing more than direct and explicit instructions, and many with not even that. Trust is on no way a binary, you can trust someone on some things and not others, and you can trust someone a lot or only a little bit on a given issue. For example, one could trust that a friend needs to be spotted $100 for something serious but not explicitly specified, but not trust that they need your credit card info, even though both things are open-ended and financial in nature.

The presence (and noticing) of a red flag causes trust to become distrust. If the red flag proves to be a false alarm distrust returns to trust.

Nah. It weakens trust. You might no longer trust the person with your bank info, but still trust them with pulling cash from your pants pocket, or perhaps no financial things, but you still trust them to cook dinner when they say they will.

The question IMO is more one of whether someone goes in specifically looking for red flags, thus indicating distrust right from the start. Or put another way, whether someone's "default setting" is to trust or not to trust the DM they just sat down to play with for the first time.

Is it "looking for red flags" to respond negatively to someone justifying their declaration of absolute power with "Don't you trust me?"

If that explanation you seek would lead to revealing in-game secrets that were supposed to stay secret, you ain't gonna get it from me.

There is a vast difference between "I won't instantly tell you, the player, every plot reveal" and "I won't tell you why I destroyed your signature magic item you've had for 6+ months without issue, just trust me bro."

And sometimes situations arise where a DM just has to ask for trust and hope he gets it. I'm in one such right now: for various reasons I've had a lot dumped on my plate this past month and have had no time to prep anything; poor timing in that the game suddenly got to a point where I needed to sit down and work on it some, as in I didn't have a next adventure prepped (or even thought of yet!) and they finished the last one about 2 months sooner than I thought they would*.

And so, even though I'm not one for out-of-game discussions about such things, a few weeks ago I basically explained the situation to the players and asked them to bear with me - to trust me - as I floundered for a few sessions. So far so good, and I'm now to the point (I hope!) where I can go another few sessions just on what I've made up on the fly, by which time I hope to have a few chances to sit down and work on game stuff.

That's....not trust? Like...I'm baffled you would call it that. You just told your players, "hey guys, real life kicked my ass, stuff is gonna be wonky for a bit because I'm not as prepared as I normally would be." That's asking for respect and patience and giving a clear, specific reason. The only possible "trust" involved here would be at the absolute baseline level of assuming you don't lie to them about absolutely everything. Which, again, shows how there are levels and layers of trust. Just because I will instantly believe someone if they tell me (making something up here) "my grandad just died, I'm not gonna be as with it for a few weeks," doesn't mean I trust them with my address and phone number!

 

[Oofta]

Crap - looks like I really need to up my game.

Muwahahahahah!

If I were described as a cartoon villain, it would probably look something like this

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My point is not about preference; it follows from the basic logic of play.

Settling on a technical set of rules to adjudicate a small-unit skirmish, for instance, is not trivial. Likewise a satisfactory set of rules for spell casting, or sneaking through catacombs, or anything else. Especially if the goal - which it clearly is, in D&D's case - is for those rules to have a certain crunch-y "presence" during play. (Cf Cthulhu Dark's rules, which would not satisfy typical D&D groups as best I can judge.)

But saying "You all have to agree on a setting" or "You all have to agree on allowed races" is tautological. Setting out a rule for it just reiterates a basic premise of getting the game moving. Purporting to allocate authority over that to one party, when the game can't get going unless everyone agrees, is misleading on top of it.

What it does is set the baseline and manage expectations. For example if the rule is that the GM can alter monster stat blocks or create new ones, then the players know that this is normal and expected part of the game and won't feel surprised when this happens. It also prompts the GM to do this, which is not something that might occur to people new to this.

(Again, there are exceptions: formally structured play, say in a tournament or league. But is that who the D&D rules are written for?)

The point can be worked through in more detail, using as an example the 4e PHB, which describes the DM thus (p 8):

One person has a special role in a D&D game: the Dungeon Master (DM). The Dungeon Master presents the adventure and the challenges that the players try to overcome. Every D&D game needs a Dungeon Master - you can’t play without one.​

​

The Dungeon Master has several functions in the game.​

​

*Adventure Builder: The DM creates adventures (or selects premade adventures) for you and the other players to play through.​

​

*Narrator: The DM sets the pace of the story and presents the various challenges and encounters the players must overcome.​

​

*Monster Controller: The Dungeon Master controls the monsters and villains the player characters battle against, choosing their actions and rolling dice for their attacks.​

​

*Referee: When it’s not clear what ought to happen next, the DM decides how to apply the rules and adjudicate the story.​

​

The Dungeon Master controls the monsters and villains in the adventure . . . The DM’s job is to provide a framework for the whole group to enjoy an exciting adventure. That means challenging the player characters with interesting encounters and tests, keeping the game moving, and applying the rules fairly.​

If we look at these, we can see how they might be varied or elaborated on. The second and third points (Narrator and Monster/NPC controller) are common to any RPG with a mainstream/traditional role allocation: not just D&D (all versions I'm familiar with) but Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Cthulhu Dark, Prince Valiant, HeroWars/Quest, etc.

The first admits of variation, because it doesn't tell us who decides what the adventures are about. More typical in D&D is for the GM to do this. 4e includes the option for the players to do this, via player-authored quests. But either way, there is no "absolute power". Even a GM who does not take up the idea of player-authored quests is going to need to prepare material that players will find interesting. Otherwise the players will depart!

The fourth point sets out a referee function. Again, this is fairly typical in RPGs although more fraught in my experience in D&D, because of the complexity of D&D's interlocking rules components. The reference to "adjudicating the story" I take to be much the same as @TwoSix's comment upthread about resolving uncertainty in the fiction. Deciding how to apply the rules is trickier. In this job description, that is constrained by a pre-condition of uncertainty - so the rules are taken to be binding even on the GM, but there is a recognition that uncertainty can arise.

For the rules to try and push the matter further - for instance, by stipulating that the GM can suspend or ignore the rule at any time - would in my view be futile. First, that is really rewriting the rules - it makes the key rule "GM decides", and then the other rules become something like optional prompts or decision heuristics. And second (and even setting aside the oddity of saying "Here's hundreds of pages of rules that you can and should ignore if you want to" - what, then is the point or function of all those rules?), a rule like that simply can't bootstrap itself - a game which presents itself as a game, with multiple participants, can't then simply stipulate that one of those participants is the only actual player. Even if it tries to, the other participants will want to set their own degree of participation: they are turning up to play a game of shared imagination, and the rules on their own can't tell them that their imaginings are subordinate to another participant's.

Which is ultimately why I regard rule zero, at least in the form of "the GM has absolute power", as making no sense. It is an attempt to state that in a non-solitaire game, only one person is beyond doubt a player.

4e has no language about the GM changing rules, creating monsters etc? It has been a while since I interacted with that game, but I doubt this is the case.

 

[Oofta]

Being able to take actions through one's PC doesn't stop the game being a railroad. It's about how the consequences/results of those actions are established.

I mean, I've given an example: we as players were able to capture and speak to the Kobold. The game was still a railroad, due to the way the GM established consequences of our attempted interrogation.

You attempted an interrogation, you were upset because the interrogation didn't work. Sounds to me like you wanted to dictate to the DM how they should have the kobold respond.

If every time the players achieve something, or have some impact, it's simply because the GM "let" them, then to me that is simply a game in which the GM authors the fiction, treating the players' declared actions for their PCs as prompts. The players are not having an impact of their own.

This is an example of what I mean: if every attempt by the PCs to affect the behaviour of a NPC is simply a prompt to the GM to make a decision, then it seems to me to be an utterly GM-driven game. And quite different from the sort of game that I learned about from Moldvay Basic, Classic Traveller and AD&D - these games all have reaction mechanics, which can be influenced by aspects of the PC (eg CHA in D&D, or social skills in Traveller) and by decisions the player makes, such as in this example of play from Moldvay Basic (page B28, following on from B60 despite the lack of sequentiality):

Hobgoblins turn up (due to a wandering monster role by the GM) and Silverleaf's player says that​

​

Silverleaf steps forward with both hands empty in a token of friendship, and says "Greetings, noble dwellers of deep caverns, can we help you?"​

​

The example goes on:​

​

The DM decides that Silverleaf's open hands and words in the hobgoblins' language are worth +1 when checking for reaction. Unfortunately the DM rolls a 4 (on 2d6) which, even adjusted to 5, is not a good reaction.​

Silverleaf's player's choice to greet the Hobgoblins in a polite and non-threatening manner affects the reaction roll, and as the example unfolds the GM is bound by the results of that roll.

As I posted upthread, I regard a GM-driven game as having an inherent fragility, because the players don't have the capacity to shape the game in a way that they think is interesting. Everything therefore turns on the ability of the GM to present interesting stuff that the players are happy to accept.

That's a preference. One I don't share. I don't want to control the hobgoblin when I play, they aren't my PC.

What you describe here is a GM who is under a constraint: they are bound by the rules, and bound by fidelity to the fiction. So play might be GM-led, but it is not completely GM-driven in the sense I've described, because the players can also shape the shared fiction. By declaring actions, they can activate relevant rules; and by declaring actions, they can engage constraining fiction.

What you've described can very easily drift to player-led play: all that has to happen is for the GM to take cues (formal or informal) from the players as to what sorts of scenes to frame, and what sorts of consequences to foreground. I experienced that sort of drift in my own RPGing, to various degrees and in various different ways, throughout the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

I am always bound by the fiction of the world. However, as DM I decide what the fiction of the world is, not the players. I know I could run the game differently but like every DM I've ever had over the past half century I don't. If I wanted that kind of game I'd play something different.

None of what you've described, of the DM making decisions about how the NPCs narrate the result of PC actions resonate as terrible DMing to me. If it's a consistent pattern? If every single time I try to go left at Albuquerque I'm forced to go right? Then it's an issue. But sometimes the kobold isn't going to give me the answers I want, sometimes the prisoner I release is going to be vengeful, sometimes the DM has a different concept of what is really going on and what will be the most fun for the group than you do. If something is consistently a problem, talk to your DM about it. Let them know how you feel outside of game time.

But if you don't want a game with clear built in assumptions about who is responsible for what in the manner of D&D, perhaps D&D isn't the game for you. You can do whatever you want in your home game of course, and more power to you because that's one of the strengths of the game. Just stop telling people who follow the default assumptions that we're terrible DMs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If every time the players achieve something, or have some impact, it's simply because the GM "let" them, then to me that is simply a game in which the GM authors the fiction, treating the players' declared actions for their PCs as prompts. The players are not having an impact of their own.

This is like saying that if a magazine has an editor who has final say of what articles get published, the writers of those articles have no impact to the content of the magazine.

What you describe here is a GM who is under a constraint: they are bound by the rules, and bound by fidelity to the fiction. So play might be GM-led, but it is not completely GM-driven in the sense I've described, because the players can also shape the shared fiction. By declaring actions, they can activate relevant rules; and by declaring actions, they can engage constraining fiction.

What you've described can very easily drift to player-led play: all that has to happen is for the GM to take cues (formal or informal) from the players as to what sorts of scenes to frame, and what sorts of consequences to foreground. I experienced that sort of drift in my own RPGing, to various degrees and in various different ways, throughout the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

That you think there was some fundamental difference displayed here from the "GM has final say" stance is telling, but also just weird. No one is advocating the GM arbitrarily nullifying player action declarations for no reason or silly stuff like that.

 

[Oofta]

There has been no meaningful difference in the teaching of social skills over time. Social skills are not static, they change with time and place. As we become more urbanized, urban manners become more relevant, for example. In rural places, where contact between people is uncommon and noteworthy and life moves at a slow pace, the kind and respectful thing to do is to engage with others, showing them that you value their intersection with your life. In urban places, where many are simply trying to survive the contact with SO, MANY, PEOPLE, and where services need to move at a mile a minute to get through the whole line fast enough, the kind and respectful thing to do is to keep to yourself, engage only as much as necessary when interacting with retail or customer service types, and generally letting people have whatever personal space they possibly can.


And I'm saying that rules simply are useful for helping us address any of these issues. Yes, having good teaching is always a good thing. But it is not the only good thing. More arrows in our quiver is better than fewer. These arrows do not have zero impact, they really do actually help shape and change the behavior of real people!


We can do both things. One of them is something easily controlled by a group that we can lobby to and make requests of. The other can only be done by the community, which has to have the will to do it.

This has nothing to do with "not wanting to hear" what you're saying. Community norms and values absolutely 100% matter! But rules matter too. Neither of these solutions, nor their combination, can ever or will ever completely solve the problem. That's not possible. But both of them can contribute to a better situation than the one we're in now. And, frankly, if you think the community-standards side of things has been neglected, that's no reason not to also do other, distinct things that can help. If anything, it's a reason to diversify our efforts so that we aren't so dependent on just one thing.


That's good to hear.

There have been many, many articles about how D&D is a good for your mental health and is often used to help people overcome social issues. The idea that because the DM is the final arbiter of the rules and narrator of the result of the PCs actions is somehow this twisted power relationship you seem to imagine simply has no support.

DM making the final call may not be a style that works for you but it has worked as a core process of the game for millions of people for half a century. In my experience it doesn't add stress to the game for most people, it helps them sit back and relax. It gives a certainty to the game and how it is run, especially when playing with people you may not know very well. In any game with the relatively complex rule structure and situational openness of D&D is going to occasionally have disagreements. Someone has t make the final call despite your trying to weasel out of answering the question, and I greatly prefer that we know when we sit down to the game that it's the DM. Because let's face it, when you get 7 people at a table there's bound to be difference of opinions and what a certain rule means.

Obviously there are disruptive or players, bad eggs. But in games I've played in where there was someone that made the game less enjoyable? It was almost always a fellow player. Thank goodness we had a DM (or I was that DM) with a role of authority to deal with the issue. In the rare occasion that the DM is that bad egg? The player always has the option to walk.