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]

I've had bad DMs in the past

I don't believe you. I think they had perfectly good and justifiable reasons for doing what they did. You just happened not to like their style!

Perhaps the kobold was part of a cult and anyone captured was hit with a feeblemind spell. We just don't know.

You don't know. I know, though, because I was there.

 

[pemerton]

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

I have all the info. I was there!

 

[DinoInDisguise]

In a context like this, a "consensus" includes protection of minorities.

When religious groups become dysfunctional, ostracizing is how it happens.

I think if this is the path this discussion is taking, I will bow out. I think it is both irresponsible and deeply troubling to suggest that picking like-minded players is a moral failing.

 

[Scribe]

In a context like this, a "consensus" includes protection of minorities.

What are you even talking about.

If a player decides that their desire to play a Goo Person, or a Warforged, is more important than the shared consensus of the group to not have those options available, that player is the one who decides to conform, or find another group.

I have no interest in seeing where you decide to run with this given the weird leaps you seem to be taking.

 

[Yaarel]

What are you even talking about.

If a player decides that their desire to play a Goo Person, or a Warforged, is more important than the shared consensus of the group to not have those options available, that player is the one who decides to conform, or find another group.

I have no interest in seeing where you decide to run with this given the weird leaps you seem to be taking.

Ending the friendship is the better option. Because elves.
/end sarcasm

The "rule zero" impulse to "take a walk" is unhealthy when dealing with friends. To jeopardize a friendship because of nerd rage about a fantasy setting is self-destructive.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I play with friends. There is nothing neutral about how one treats friends or friends of friends.

Yes me too. I also have friends with whom I don't play RPGs, as our tastes and styles are too different. This is normal.

 

[pemerton]

And I disagree that the DM has absolute or umlimited power over the content of his game. He runs NPCs, including captured kobolds, he defines the narrative, even the results of how PC actions play out.

If you cannot accept the DM narrative, your choice of course, but that doesn't stop the DM from having the power to define the narrative as they see fit to the game.

Yes it does: when all the players left the game, the GM was no longer defining the narrative as they see fit. Rather, there was no narrative!

You still don't see that your (the players) visions of these kobolds does not jive with the DMs?

Huh? My whole point is that the visions didn't match. To such a degree that it brought the game to an end. Hence, as I've said, the GM did not enjoy absolute power to establish a shared fiction.

 

[pemerton]

We don't know that.

<snip>

What we don't know is whether the DM had the change in kobolds planned from the start and/or overlooked that having a language of their own means that they are smart enough to be interrogated with it, or whether he was trying to keep information secret and forcing his way at the expense of the players.

I know. I was there. For reasons I don't understand, you (and others) are projecting your ignorance of something you weren't part of onto me, who was a participant in the episode.

 

[Scribe]

Ending the friendship is the better option. Because elves.

 

[pemerton]

It was a one time incident. We don't know what the DM was thinking, or why he was playing the NPC that way.

I do. I was there. I participated in the incident. I (and the other players) spoke to the GM about why we were leaving his game.