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.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

Sure. But at a certain point, if the concept is actually everywhere, the DM needs a good reason to say, no. Heh, being a dysfunctional control freak who is determined to micromanage player decisions, is a less satisfactory rationale.

Who is the arbiter of when something reaches that point? Who decides on if the DM's reason is good?

If tieflings are popular, do I need to allow tieflings? Is such an idea not stifling to creativity? Does that not just encourage copy cat worlds meant to appease people you may not care to play with?

Why does the DM have an obligation to appease, but the players have the right to demand? It's very strange.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't know that the small minority of DMs who act inappropriately is the reality you'd see if this was the case.

'Small minority'

And yet look at the vociferous defense of maintaining that authority. Hardly a minority here at least.

I think it's indisputable that being told you are more powerful is positive encouragement.

What about the vast majority of D&D players who are being told they're less powerful and inherently less important?

Is that positive too?

If we count every post on D&D horror stories, and we assume every one is about a power hungry DM, we aren't even close to the numbers required.

Underreporting is a classic symptom of toxic power imbalance.

Edit: More importantly, it's not about numbers, it's about content and behavior.

 

[Yaarel]

Who is the arbiter of when something reaches that point? Who decides on if the DM's reason is good?

If tieflings are popular, do I need to allow tieflings? Is such an idea not stifling to creativity? Does that not just encourage copy cat worlds meant to appease people you may not care to play with?

Why does the DM have an obligation to appease, but the players have the right to demand? It's very strange.

The DM has an obligation to make the game fun for each player.

This especially includes helping the player come up with a character concept that the player thinks is fun.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

The DM has an obligation to make the game fun for each player.

Do they? I feel no obligation. My only obligation is to the players I choose to DM for. Not every player who makes a demand of me.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Warforged is easiest example of not appropriate. Haven't seen one yet which is kind of a shame. Eberrons been an option since 2019 in the roster.

I’ve seen loads of warforged PCs, possibly more than any other species, but we unusually play a whacky magitech game, so they are very much on theme.

 

[Zardnaar]

The DM has an obligation to make the game fun for each player.

This especially includes helping the player come up with a character concept that the player thinks is fun.

Not really. You try and make it fun it's not an obligation.

I closed a game recently because I wasn't having fun.

 

[Zardnaar]

I’ve seen loads of warforged PCs, possibly more than any other species, but we unusually play a whacky magitech game, so they are very much on theme.

Yeah I've been offering magitech for a while. Came down to Norse vs magitech and Norse was chosen. Probably should have DM vetoed that one.

 

[Oofta]

that's fair, i'm all for a curated setting, but i just feel some groups of people are convinced it's far harder to integrate warforged specifically into a setting than it actually is due to tying them so strongly to a specific setting's origin lore.

If I were to consider Warforged I'd do two things. First, I'd ask the other players individually an offline if they want to allow a Warforged. It's a big change thematically so I want to give any individual player veto power.

Second? It has to make sense for my world. It would likely require some sort of earth shattering event such as an invasion from an enemy force using Warforged as troops. Some of the troops went AWOL. Or something like that.

In any case, some people are anything goes DMs and that's fine. I'm just not one of those DMs.

 

[Yaarel]

Do they? I feel no obligation. My only obligation is to the players I choose to DM for. Not every player who makes a demand of me.

According to the rules-as-written. Yes, there is an obligation. The DM is to apply (or modify) the rules for the purpose of making the game fun for the players.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The DM has an obligation to make the game fun for each player.

The DM has an obligation to make the game fun for the players.

That may mean excluding a player who puts what they want to do ahead of the group.