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.

 

[Scribe]

As long as that clearly applies to the DM as well, we agree.

Thats the weird part of this. Nobody that I can see is saying otherwise. Its you saying that the individual must be catered to by the group, the group being the other players + DM.

 

[Yaarel]

Thats the weird part of this. Nobody that I can see is saying otherwise.

"Absolute power", "my way or the high way", and the rest of that antisocial garbage.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Wild concept, taking individual responsibility for ones actions instead of demanding others accommodate you at their expense.

LoL. That’s a bit stronger than my actual thoughts. I’m not that… complex and far more devious!. Mostly, I figured if I gave in this time, next time we’d play what I wanted… and we did.

And I got to try out recipes that I’d been dying to cook but, as I live basically alone, never got to try.

Win! Win!

 

[Scribe]

"Absolute power", "my way or the high way", and the rest of that antisocial garbage.

Right, like 'No, I demand to play a Warforged.'

Garbage indeed.

 

[ezo]

You're just making this up. How do you know what evidence I had. What conversations I and the other players had with one another, and with the GM? What the GM said when we expressed our dissatisfaction with his game, and told him we were starting a new game?

Well, I am proposing options for what might have been true (or not).

Answer: you know none of that.

LOL, I've already stipulated I don't know! Are you paying attention??

Not because I wasn't there (maybe I was lol and you didn't see me!?! ) but because I don't pretend to be omniscient and KNOW what that DM was thinking or planning or anything...

He spoke words, sure. He proposed a shared fiction. It didn't become part of a shared fiction, though. Rather, the shared fiction came to an end.

No, he shared it. You didn't accept it, but it was shared (you listened, right?) all the same.

I mean, suppose that we, the players, all sat around talking about how we were so happy that the Kobold had spilled the beans, etc. We could have said words too, proposing a shared fiction. But the GM would not have accepted that, and so it would not have become part of a shared fiction either.

Because players don't control the narrative for anything outside of their characters. That's it. You can talk until you are blue in the face but the DM directs the narrative. That is basic to D&D. Always has been and always will be.

It is right there under the Rhythm of Play in the new PHB: (to summarize)
1. DM describes scene.
2. Player indicate what they character will attempt to do.
3. DM narrates outcome of the character's action.

And... you still keep avoiding my proposed scenario.

 

[ezo]

My friends wanted to play FATE. I have NO fun playing FATE. None. The mechanics of FATE actively work to the detriment of my fun. So, did I say we had to play something else or change FATE so it was more palatable for me?

No, I did not. Instead, I told them that I’d be happy to host the game. I did. I spent the time playing host, cooking nifty dishes from my D&D cookbooks and generally just hanging and watching videos on my iPad on my couch with my earbuds in.

I enjoyed their enjoyment. They enjoyed my hospitality.

When the campaign wrapped up (We only run 10-12 session campaigns with a beginning, middle and end), I proposed running Blade Runner and been having fun with that.

In short, I was the odd man out so I sat out the campaign. We remained friends because… uhm… we’re friends.

Yeah, I've sat out on games. Sometimes I hang out while others play, sometimes I do my own thing. It's all good.

 

[Vaalingrade]

While I am all for other players learning to DM, I don't think your "one true wayism" works either because it doesn't.

Ah. I see we've reached the 'making baseless accusations using buzzwords that evoke emotions on the boards' stage.

I'm not going to engage this kind of scurrilous argument.

 

[Yaarel]

Right, like 'No, I demand to play a Warforged.' Garbage indeed.

group ≠ DM

If the other players are fine with one of the players playing a Warforged, the DM should make an effort to accommodate this. Really, make an effort anyway.

 

[ezo]

Ah. I see we've reached the 'making baseless accusations using buzzwords that evoke emotions on the boards' stage.

Ok, not even close if you had bothered to read the rest of the post. Thanks for wasting my time.

 

[Lanefan]

DnDBeyond

ANIMATED ARMOR

Any setting with golems, animated statues, or animated armor, can sensically integrate a Warforged character, especially if unique or rare.

Golems, animated statues, and animated armour share a feature that would make them unplayable* as PCs, however: none of them have a shred of intelligence. They do what they've been programmed to do and that's it. Not much fun to play.

Making them capable of independent thought is a very big leap, but a required one to get to anything resembling a Warforged or other PC-playable option.

* - there might be a very rare player out there who is happy to play a programmed robot, I suppose...