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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What you describe applies to every form of social activity whatsoever, from grocery shopping to to politics. It has nothing to do with D&D per se

True. But it real life we generally don’t have the power to remove the horrible people.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The go-to reflex is that anyone who believes they are entitled to take part in the game irrespective of anyone else needs to be removed as soon as possible and as far away as possible.

And this would be an excellent point if it wasn't excluding that one guy in the group that feels they're entitled to having exactly the game they want and screw anyone who might like some input in the activity they're doing as a group for fun.

 

[Vaalingrade]

True. But it real life we generally don’t have the power to remove the horrible people.

In this case 'horrible people' could mean people who might want to play a non-Tolkien species, crack jokes at the table or not use critical miss tables that specifically make their play experience worse based on what just one person at the table wants.

 

[Yaarel]

It really has nothing to do with rules. It is about making sure that everyone actually wants to play the same game. It is not exclusion or bullying and it is weird to suggest so.

If I say "I'm planning to run a Star Trek game set on a Federation starship, you interested?" And you respond, "Sure, I want to be a Wookie Jedi," then you actually didn't want to play a Star Trek game, did you?

But some of the discussions keep assuming that "the character concept is difficult" means, the player is disinvited. This is not normal. Nor healthy.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In this case 'horrible people' could mean people who might want to play a non-Tolkien species, crack jokes at the table or not use critical miss tables that specifically make their play experience worse based on what just one person at the table wants.

People who put what they want to do ahead of the group - yes.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But some of the discussions keep assuming that "the character concept is difficult" means, the player is disinvited. This is not normal. Nor healthy.

It seems completely healthy to me if the player keeps insisting. It tells me the player is not interested in playing the game I want to run, and in the long run it is better to have players who are.

 

[Vaalingrade]

People who put what they want to do ahead of the group - yes.

Yes. that's the problem.

The concept tells DMs that what they want is more important than the groups and the community tells those people to kick whoever doesn't lie down and let you do it. It's all right here in the thread, replete wit 'well I never do it so it's super rare to the point that we can and should ignore it. Now let me tell you how I impose my authority'.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But some of the discussions keep assuming that "the character concept is difficult" means, the player is disinvited. This is not normal. Nor healthy.

No, the player is disinvited because they refuse to choose a character concept that fits with what everyone else wants to do.

 

[Yaarel]

This applies to the DM too:

The go-to reflex is that anyone who believes they are entitled to take part in the game irrespective of anyone else needs to be removed as soon as possible and as far away as possible.

When the DM is being problematic and "believes they are entitled to take part in the game irrespective of anyone elses needs", it is called "rule zero".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes. that's the problem.

The concept tells DMs that what they want is more important than the groups and the community tells those people to kick whoever doesn't lie down and let you do it. It's all right here in the thread, replete wit 'well I never do it so it's super rare to the point that we can and should ignore it. Now let me tell you how I impose my authority'.

No, if the DM is the problem they can be kicked just as easily as any other player.