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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But it's clearly not - for instance, the people who are participating in the sharing of it are different.

RPGing is a social process of collectively creating and sharing a fiction together. RPGing is not just about content - if it were, we couldn't distinguish playing a RPG from reading a novel or watching a film.

But content is the base all those interactions you're talking about rest upon.

 

[Oofta]

Do I need to go back through the thread to quote everyone who has defended the GM decision-making I've described in relation to the Kobold interrogation?

I mean, this is just one of the latest examples, with a helping of "you're playing the wrong game" layered on top.

You were upset when certain thing happen where things happened you did not expect. I also said that if this happens on a regular basis, it's and issue and you should discuss it with your DM. I never once asserted that you cannot leave a game you are not enjoying. Did the DM have situations where the PC plans did not work on a regular basis? Were there other instances where they decided, for whatever reason, an NPC would never cooperate? Then yes it could be a bad DM. You have never given any other examples on the part of this particular DM. It was a one time scenario, you were upset, so you convinced all the other players to quit the game.

You described situations where, as a player, you wanted more control over the outcome than is generally allowed by the DM and then saying anyone the does things like the kobold not answering your question, an enemy seeking revenge, a noble not being honorable when previous nobles have been and so on is a terrible DM. I have never once said you are playing the game wrong. As far as I can tell, you do not like and are not playing by the general assumptions of the game. That's fine in your home game.

You are telling every DM that sometimes do not allow a plan of the PCs to succeed that they are playing the game wrong and they are terrible DMs.

 

[Umbran]

The problem is that in these conversations I'm describing the level of power the game gives to the DM, not how I describe my play.

The game book is not a Tolkienesque Tome of Power, with magic imbued in it by its creator in the dark forges of game design. The rules cannot give you power.

Power comes only from mutual agreement of the people playing. The social contract is the only real source of power in games.

The GM's "absolute power" comes only with a mandate from the table - when that absolute power stops serving the needs of the table, that power should go away, no matter what the rulebook says.

So, I feel what I said stands. GM's who understand this very basic truth about our games will generally speak about responsibility, not "power".

 

[clearstream]

I don't think anyone pointing out that the GM had the authority to make the call they made is at all in doubt about that stuff. Including it just before what follows feels like a bizarre flex trying to imply that the GM should hop to granting what follows. That might not have been your intent, but it's definitely odd to cite when the only posters doubting that seems to be the posters also saying that the GM does not have the authority to make a call like a dumb kobold not giving info .

Are you suggesting that the time to import fate style declarations into d&d is immediately after not getting the results a player wanted from a captive monster/NPC?

I haven't been following the kobold debate in detail, but anyone supposing the D&D rules give DM absolute power seems instructed by those same rules to giving DM that power only as a matter of preference... where it is more fun for players to do so than it would be otherwise. (I don't interpret fun in play to equate to everything going your way or always winning, which are usually taken to degrade it overall.)

All through my purpose hasn't been to say that groups can't choose to play that way, but that doing so is just one choice. Nor am I saying that choice can't be motivated. What I'm saying is that what DM imagines has no better metaphysical standing than what players imagine.

 

[tetrasodium]

I haven't been following the kobold debate in detail, but anyone supposing the D&D rules give DM absolute power seems instructed by those same rules to giving DM that power only as a matter of preference... where it is more fun for players to do so than it would be otherwise. (I don't interpret fun in play to equate to everything going your way or always winning, which are usually taken to degrade it overall.)

All through my purpose hasn't been to say that groups can't choose to play that way, but that doing so is just one choice. Nor am I saying that choice can't be motivated. What I'm saying is that what DM imagines has no better metaphysical standing than what players imagine.

It's not a complicated example and claiming that you haven't been following it does not change that. The example is critical. Claiming that you haven't been "following" it does not change that.

 

[Lanefan]

It's not a complicated example and claiming that you haven't been following it does not change that. The example is critical. Claiming that you haven't been "following" it does not change that.

Neat trick with this post: you quoted @clearstream but I got a notification that I'd been quoted, and it led me here.

 

[clearstream]

It's not a complicated example and claiming that you haven't been following it does not change that. The example is critical. Claiming that you haven't been "following" it does not change that.

You're right, I did not intend to be dismissive.

The case looks to me like one of broken suspension of disbelief, where what one participant says jars with what others imagine. No one seems to doubt the truth of the testimony, therefore it doesn't matter what one feels ought to have been pictured or done. That's not at issue: all that is, is that what DM imagined and what players imagined evidently diverged, and players did not give up their version.

What DM imagines has no better metaphysical standing than what players imagine. That's not a comment on its normative status: it's saying that one can't justify the norm on metaphysical grounds... one needs - and many seem to have - other motives.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

How about "The DM is God. Abide or die." - does that work?

Nope. If the character concept doesn't exist in the setting (e.g. my setting has no Dragonborn or anything remotely close), the only response from me will be a longer version of "Banned - try again".

. . . and this is the sort of DM attitude that they are trying to move away from.

Rather, they suggest working with the player to accommodate them within the game. - Ask the player what it is about the dragonborn that they like and want to express, and help them find it within your game. You have a better idea of the cultures and peoples than they will.
Is there a culture that has a particular reverence or association with Dragons? Or one with the same independent and honourable streak as the dragonborn. Is there a race with the capability for cantrips that might be expressed as a breath weapon?

Finding out what the player wants, and helping them find a character that they want to play, and that you are willing to allow will work so much better than your current attitude. The attitude of; "I've banned that concept: Try to guess another concept that I haven't banned." doesn't help either of you (unless you specifically derive enjoyment from exercising your authority in this way).

I design the world long before I have any idea who will end up playing in it, never mind what specific character ideas those players might have. Therefore, by the time any players get exposed to it the various setting conceits (e.g. no Dragonborn) are locked in.

Game settings can be almost infinitely fractal: they have corners and subcultures aplenty where ideas that haven't yet been set in stone might be found. Being possessive about it may lead you to think in terms of a concept contradicting your lore, when in fact it could be used to add more detail instead.

 

[tetrasodium]

. . . and this is the sort of DM attitude that they are trying to move away from.

No, the 2024 phb actually backs up what he said about PCs who don't fit the setting & they even showcased a critically relevant page during their own PHB hype.

Rather, they suggest working with the player to accommodate them within the game. - Ask the player what it is about the dragonborn that they like and want to express, and help them find it within your game. You have a better idea of the cultures and peoples than they will.
Is there a culture that has a particular reverence or association with Dragons? Or one with the same independent and honourable streak as the dragonborn. Is there a race with the capability for cantrips that might be expressed as a breath weapon?

Finding out what the player wants, and helping them find a character that they want to play, and that you are willing to allow will work so much better than your current attitude. The attitude of; "I've banned that concept: Try to guess another concept that I haven't banned." doesn't help either of you (unless you specifically derive enjoyment from exercising your authority in this way).


Game settings can be almost infinitely fractal: they have corners and subcultures aplenty where ideas that haven't yet been set in stone might be found. Being possessive about it may lead you to think in terms of a concept contradicting your lore, when in fact it could be used to add more detail instead.

What you describe is backwards in the expectation being drawn out for the GM to accomplish for a player what a player needs to be accomplishing for themselves. The 2014 PHB erroneously gave the impression that a player could roll up to a table with literally anything & expect the GM to somehow make it work but the new PHB even has two separate sidebars about this very sort of divide in character creation in addition to better wording to the character creation section itself.

Sometimes the best solution for everyone is for the player who does not know the cultures & peoples of the world to simply pick one that does exist because the player does not know them & how they differ from their first "can I play..." stab in the dark. I've seen the old way you advocate for play out multiple times in my eberron games and it never works when a player wants to play an FR race that is dramatically different in eberron (ie drow & some others) a statement like "no drow don't live on Khorvaire where the game takes place" or whatever is a perfectly reasonable hurdle for a player to find their own way around during character creation without the GM spending the entire campaign carrying the workload for changing that.

That difference between a player themselves finding adapting what they plan to bring to a table so that it fits the type of game world being run and a GM being expected to find a way or place to make the initial square peg fit is dramatic & long lasting because the square peg will always be square & continue to draw on/insert things that simply will never fit. When the GM is expected to "help the player find it within the GM's game" that responsibility will continue to rest on the GM for the length of the campaign even as the square peg continues adding an ever growing pile of square ties.


When the player is expected to adapt & perhaps choose a different direction then that player is responsible for not drawing on square peg expectations without first putting in the work to make the thing they want to draw be drawing on something that actually exists.

@Lanefan I noticed after the post and edited it out since I couldn't remember why it was there while walking the dog in the middle of the night. Your post reminds me why there was an empty quote box from your earlier post talking about how the gm is not required to find a way to fit a PC that simply doesn't fit the world. I had considered adding that page from the 2024 character creation.

 

[Azzy]

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.

I think the tin-pot dictator DMs are just as uncommon as entitled karen players. But those keep getting brought up....