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.

 

[pemerton]

You were upset when certain thing happen where things happened you did not expect.

<snip>

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.

If that is really what you think happened, and what you think I said, then I encourage you to re-read my first post about this, and the ensuing discussion over many pages.

The point of my post was not to put forward a theory of terrible GMing. I took it for granted that anyone reading the post would be able to recognise terrible, time-wasting, railroading GMing. My point was that - taking the previous sentence as an obvious premise - that the GM had failed to make something true in the shared fiction (as @clearstream has most recently reiterated not very far upthread). And hence that it is not true that the GM has absolute or unlimited power over the content of the shared fiction.

What has baffled me is that, when the only person who participated in a particular episode of play posts it as an example of terrible railroading so as to make a point that takes that as a given, so many people need to defend the terrible GMing! As if it some threat to their own sense of the quality of the games they run, that someone they've never met is comfortable describing another person they've never met as having done a terrible job as GM.

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.

And now you make stuff up - you have no evidence that I convinced anyone of anything. I mean, here's what I posted:

we (the players) all agreed that we would pull out of the game and start a new game ourselves.

Perhaps you also need to re-read that carefully.

As far as your stuff about "regular basis" and all that, where do these norms of player forbearance come from? You're just making them up. Why are players of RPGs obliged to put up with nonsense, when - especially these days, with so many tightly designed RPGs around - it's straightforward to have nonsense-free RPGing?

You described situations where, as a player, you wanted more control over the outcome than is generally allowed by the DM

No. I described a situation where, in a scenario involving bog-standard AD&D Kobolds, whom everyone at the table knew to be bog-standard AD&D Kobolds, we - the players - came up with a plan to capture and interrogate one. With the GM knowing that was our plan. And then, we we succeeded in the actions that - by the rules of AD&D - are required to carry out such a plan (namely, capturing the Kobold and then questioning it a language - Kobold - that both it and the questioner speak) the GM simply changed the fiction, departing from the AD&D framework to render the Kobold incapable of answering questions. And for the obvious reason that our actions were departing from the GM's intended railroad, whatever that was.

You and others, who were not there, can make up whatever imaginary stuff you like - the GM was using house-ruled Kobolds, the GM had determined all the Kobolds ahead of time and we just happened to have the misfortune to capture the cognitively impaired one, the GM had one of a million other confected justifications. But unlike you and those other posters, I was actually there. As were the other players. We knew what was going on. The GM was making up stuff to railroad the game. But the attempt failed, because the game collapsed.

Which is - as was my original point in posting the example - sufficient to show that the GM did not have the power to make the shared fiction be whatever he wanted it to be.

 

[CreamCloud0]

why is it when that when a player has their heart set on playing an elf people tell GMs to bend over backwards to accomodate them and 'find a way to make it work' but when the GM has their heart set on a setting that has absolutely no elves we're dragged over the rocks for being stubborn, uncreative and inflexible?

why is their vision for a character so much more important than our vision for a setting?

 

[Oofta]

If that is really what you think happened, and what you think I said, then I encourage you to re-read my first post about this, and the ensuing discussion over many pages.

The point of my post was not to put forward a theory of terrible GMing. I took it for granted that anyone reading the post would be able to recognise terrible, time-wasting, railroading GMing. My point was that - taking the previous sentence as an obvious premise - that the GM had failed to make something true in the shared fiction (as @clearstream has most recently reiterated not very far upthread). And hence that it is not true that the GM has absolute or unlimited power over the content of the shared fiction.

And I'm saying that it is not clear evidence of a terrible time-wasting, railroading GMing. It may have been. I have no idea what the GM was thinking or why he had the kobold respond the way they did. Was this a one time thing? Perhaps the GM was just having an off day and totally f'ed up. Perhaps the GM thought they were being funny and misread the room. Perhaps he rolled secretly on whether the kobold would give out any info. Perhaps the kobold was part of a cult and anyone captured was hit with a feeblemind spell. We just don't know. Personally I would have discussed the situation with the GM outside of game time, explain what the issue was and why it bothered me. Then depending on their response I may or may not have given them another chance.

The point is that you present this as a singular incidence. It doesn't prove anything about his GMing, it certainly doesn't guarantee that he is a terrible GM. If no GM is allowed to make a mistake now and then, we're all terrible GMs.

What has baffled me is that, when the only person who participated in a particular episode of play posts it as an example of terrible railroading so as to make a point that takes that as a given, so many people need to defend the terrible GMing! As if it some threat to their own sense of the quality of the games they run, that someone they've never met is comfortable describing another person they've never met as having done a terrible job as GM.

And now you make stuff up - you have no evidence that I convinced anyone of anything. I mean, here's what I posted:
Perhaps you also need to re-read that carefully.

As far as your stuff about "regular basis" and all that, where do these norms of player forbearance come from? You're just making them up. Why are players of RPGs obliged to put up with nonsense, when - especially these days, with so many tightly designed RPGs around - it's straightforward to have nonsense-free RPGing?

No. I described a situation where, in a scenario involving bog-standard AD&D Kobolds, whom everyone at the table knew to be bog-standard AD&D Kobolds, we - the players - came up with a plan to capture and interrogate one. With the GM knowing that was our plan. And then, we we succeeded in the actions that - by the rules of AD&D - are required to carry out such a plan (namely, capturing the Kobold and then questioning it a language - Kobold - that both it and the questioner speak) the GM simply changed the fiction, departing from the AD&D framework to render the Kobold incapable of answering questions. And for the obvious reason that our actions were departing from the GM's intended railroad, whatever that was.

I change monsters all the time. Admittedly, I tell people I do that, but it doesn't matter. In a D&D game you are not running the kobold, you don't get to dictate what the kobold thinks, what they feel, or how they react. Any more than the GM gets to tell you how your PC thinks, feels or reacts. As I said, there may have also been other circumstances. Or, once again, maybe the GM just f'ed up.

You and others, who were not there, can make up whatever imaginary stuff you like - the GM was using house-ruled Kobolds, the GM had determined all the Kobolds ahead of time and we just happened to have the misfortune to capture the cognitively impaired one, the GM had one of a million other confected justifications. But unlike you and those other posters, I was actually there. As were the other players. We knew what was going on. The GM was making up stuff to railroad the game. But the attempt failed, because the game collapsed.

Again, you're making a lot of assumptions that you get to dictate the world outside of your PC and what your PC does. I don't. At least not in a D&D game. But it also fits a pattern. Another terrible GM had you interact with several honorable noble. Then you claim it's bad GMing because you ran into a dishonorable noble. But if you encounter 9 honorable nobles and hit 1 dishonorable noble all that means is that 9 out of 10 nobles were honorable. Unless they established as part of the setting that all nobles were honorable as part of introducing their campaign world, the GM did nothing wrong as far as I can tell. You made an invalid assumption based on partial information.

Which is - as was my original point in posting the example - sufficient to show that the GM did not have the power to make the shared fiction be whatever he wanted it to be.

No, all you've proven is that if you don't like a DM's style, you have every right to leave the game. I've had bad DMs in the past and I've had DMs that simply ran a type of game I didn't care for. I left without blaming the DM for my reasons for leaving. I didn't call them terrible DMs. Well ... the guy that had us all write up 2 PCs and then came up with "creative" ways to kill them all in the first session was a terrible DM but that's different.

With the kobold example, while understandably frustrating, you have not established whether that was part of a pattern. Since you quit instead of talking to the GM, you have no way of knowing if it was that GM's standard way of running campaigns. Some GMs do run very linear campaigns. A lot of modules, for better or worse, are very linear. But if I've agreed to play in a module, I expect there to be points where it's linear just like I accept that in video games there are times where there's a cut scene where the protagonist gets kidnapped.

My recommendation to anyone with a GM they don't know is to simply ask what kind of game they run. If they run a very linear game they may not be the GM for me, but that's not a reflection on them. I have no issue with having different preferences, but I don't tell people who have different preferences that they're playing the game wrong and I don't call GMs that run the game in a different manner than I prefer terrible.

 

[Yaarel]

I am unsure why posters are flying to the defense of the horrible DMing incident that @pemerton mentioned.

I wasnt there, I trust Pemerton at is word, all of the players walked out because of the indicedence, obviously it was horrible.

Hopefully that DM learned from his mistake.

In any case, other DMs seem more worthy to leap to the defense of.

 

[Yaarel]

why is it when that when a player has their heart set on playing an elf people tell GMs to bend over backwards to accomodate them and 'find a way to make it work' but when the GM has their heart set on a setting that has absolutely no elves we're dragged over the rocks for being stubborn, uncreative and inflexible?

why is their vision for a character so much more important than our vision for a setting?

The point is the desire of the DM and the desire of the player are EQUALLY important.

Yet some keep insisting on some kind of self-inflated DM dictatorship.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But it also fits a pattern. Another terrible GM had you interact with several honorable noble. Then you claim it's bad GMing because you ran into a dishonorable noble. But if you encounter 9 honorable nobles and hit 1 dishonorable noble all that means is that 9 out of 10 nobles were honorable. Unless they established as part of the setting that all nobles were honorable as part of introducing their campaign world, the GM did nothing wrong as far as I can tell. You made an invalid assumption based on partial information.

Was this example from this thread too? I seem to have missed it.

The point is that you present this as a singular incidence. It doesn't prove anything about his GMing, it certainly doesn't guarantee that he is a terrible GM. If no GM is allowed to make a mistake now and then, we're all terrible GMs.

Sure. Though, how much leeway one is willing to give a GM who doesn't match ones' style is personal. People probably have more patience and willingness to discuss things with actual friends than just randos they've recently met. Sometimes it just isn't worth the effort.

 

[Oofta]

I am unsure why posters are flying to the defense of the horrible DMing incident that @pemerton mentioned.

I wasnt there, I trust Pemerton at is word, all of the players walked out because of the indicedence, obviously it was horrible.

Hopefully that DM learned from his mistake.

In any case, other DMs seem more worthy to leap to the defense of.

I would likely have been frustrated with the DM. But one incident, without indication of similar behavior being repeated on a regular basis, would not make me feel like entitled to call them a terrible railroading DM.

Being DM can be a thankless job and sometimes we screw it up. Sometimes it's just a difference on how to run a game. It's not that @pemerton left the game, that's their call. It's the pejorative they're throwing around when we just don't have all the info; we certainly don't know the story from the DM's side of things. Different clashing styles of game do not make someone terrible at what they do, it just means we want different things out of the game. It's also not just this story.

 

[Oofta]

Was this example from this thread too? I seem to have missed it.

Post #1001

Sure. Though, how much leeway one is willing to give a GM who doesn't match ones' style is personal. People probably have more patience and willingness to discuss things with actual friends than just randos they've recently met. Sometimes it just isn't worth the effort.

This was apparently after several sessions. Again, it's completely up to pemerton on whether they left the game. I have no issue with that, I've left games myself when it wasn't a good match. It's that they felt that the DM was playing the game wrong because they ran the kobold differently than they would have.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The point is the desire of the DM and the desire of the player are EQUALLY important.

Yet some keep insisting on some kind of self-inflated DM dictatorship.

Sure. But at least how this works for me as a GM, is that I usually have some sort of a premise about what sort of game I want to run. Setting, themes, genre etc. Then I pitch that to the potential players, and they can choose to be in or out. And I am perfectly willing to incorporate their ideas to a point. But if they say they're in, I expect them to actually accept the pitched premise and work within it, instead of trying to alter it. Because that's not something I am willing to do; the premise was the reason why I wanted to run the game in the first place!

 

[abirdcall]

Post #1001


This was apparently after several sessions. Again, it's completely up to pemerton on whether they left the game. I have no issue with that, I've left games myself when it wasn't a good match. It's that they felt that the DM was playing the game wrong because they ran the kobold differently than they would have.

Yeah, to me it's a vibes thing. If I get the vibe that the DM is a jerk I will react differently than if I get the vibe the DM is improvising a situation they didn't prepare for and is doing their best.

My response during the game would probably to try a different approach. Like maybe we let the kobold go and then track them back to their friends and now we can be ambushing them by tricking the kobold.

After the session we can talk about how it made me feel.