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.

 

[Umbran]

Well you only tried 1 session. Without more information you guys are the AH here.

Mod Note:
Hey. Dude.

If you call people the AH, then YOU, in this disucssion, are the AH.

You're done. Find a discussion where you can treat people well.

 

[Emerikol]

It sounds like I haven't made my line of thought clear to you. You introduced an entity - the "campaign" - to the discussion, which I have contended is distinct from the played "game". That seems easy to see if it is right that properties of the campaign can include a "DMs record" which directly implies some fiction that could be incorporated into or excluded from more than one game session. You seem to want to create a distinction or compartmentalisation of a single DM from multiple. However, you've spoken of that single DM accepting fiction created by others - game designers who most likely are at times DMs. (And referenced Greyhawk... a multi-DM campaign as recounted in Peterson's histories.)

I'm saying a campaign is the sum knowledge of that campaign which includes time played resulting in events happening in that campaign as well as the DM putting things into the campaign unilaterally. The DM also in some cases may approve some aspect of the campaign the player thought up and then that could at that moment of approval become part of the campaign. The campaign is the known state of that imaginary "universe".

My general point is that "the campaign" does indeed seem to have standing separate from the game. Suppose one of those notes that "good DMs keep" is about grocer Jill living the town of Hookhill, and that this has not been shared with players nor has anything characters have done invoked or impinged upon it. Until it is shared in play, it exists only in whatever it is that amounts to the DM's "campaign" (about which I've advanced a theory.) TTRPG play relies upon imagining something in common to function. It's an experience, not an object.

If by game you mean only the play sessions, then yes. You've defined it that way though and I don't necessarily accept that definition. But by your definition I grant what you say.

Wording such as "the official one" admit that multiple takes are possible on what is imagined, and press for one take - the DM's - to hold special authority. Can you say why you do not see this preferencing as down to some set of established norms? Or are we now just debating mechanisms that enact and buttress them (which I doubt we have any meaningful disagreement on)?

Yes that is the norm of D&D. It may not be the norm of every game or even roleplaying game. And I'd argue even now it's the norm if we had every table vote on how they played. And yes, a lot of our disagreements come from our implied assumptions about roleplaying. They differ greatly.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

There of course could be perfectly reasonable and good reason for a single kobold not knowing the kobold war plan. However, if the GM keeps inventing such reasons every time the PCs try to do something else than the GM's preferred approach in order to block them, then that is railroading and frustrating to the players.

Now it might be hard to tell from a brief description of one instance whether this was happening, but I think people being there for several sessions probably could get an idea of what's going on.

But also, yes, "players not getting what they want every time" of course in itself is not railroading.

 

[Emerikol]

As far as I can tell, the phrase "rule zero" or "0", only shows up once in all of the D&D official products.

It shows up in the 3.0 Players Handbook, but not the 3.5 Players Handbook. The content is also in 3.5, but the phrase "rule zero" seems to have become instantly problematic, thus avoided subsequently.

In the Character Creation section in the 3.0 Players Handbook, there is an itemization of rules. The first rule is number zero.

"
[Rule] 0.
CHECK WITH YOUR DUNGEON MASTER

Your Dungeon Master (DM) may have house rules or campaign standards that vary from the standard rules. You might also want to know what character types the other players are playing so that you can create a character that fits in well with the group.

"

Properly, rule zero means the house rules and setting standards, with regard to what character options are available. (Anything unavailable would require working with the DM).

In other words, rule zero mainly happens during session zero at level 1. But at higher levels, more player options might become available, while filling in blankspots within the setting, or even sequeing into a different setting.

In first edition the last page of the DMG is where rule 0 came from. We players invented the term rule 0 and it's later use was indicative of that established term. The idea underlying rule 0 though goes all the way back and it is the DM has final authority over the campaign he is DMing.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Who accused the GM of being malicious? I said that the GM was terrible. I thought you disagreed, but maybe not?

They may well be terrible - just not for the reasons you originally gave.

 

[ezo]

So you wouldn't think that it is terrible GMing for the GM, in the first session of the game, to tell the players that the red dragon flies up to their PCs, says "You look tasty", and breathes fire and kills them all? I mean, that's a plausible thing for a dragon to do after all!

I already addressed this in my last post, but I'll add something which happened in a friend's game in AD&D about twenty-five years ago:

In one campaign this DM used random encounters a lot. The very first random encounter was an age 10 (or so) green dragon! The DM ran the encounter as the dragon attacking the town in which the PCs were meeting up.

The PCs knew confronting the dragon directly would be suicide, so they focused on helping as many people escape as was possible. Eventually, they also left, abandoning the town to the dragon's wrath.

Years later, in game time and IRL, the PCs returned to defeat the dragon, ending the campaign.

But back to your original scenario, such "killer DMs" rarely lasted or changed their ways IME.

And while NPCs, the weather, calamities, etc. are all under the control of the DM, the DM can certainly use any or all of it to tell the story, but most players won't appreciate the story being "and died!"

 

[Oofta]

Has it occurred to you that I, having been there, might have the "additional information" that you do not?

People have repeatedly asked if this was a one time situation or if it was part of a pattern. You never indicated it was more than a one time situation where you didn't get the results you wanted. As always you can leave the game for whatever reason you want, but I, and others, have been responding to what you've told us. If what you told us was not the whole picture, clarify.

I didn't say that. I routinely GM games without detailed plans ahead of time, and have posted frequently about techniques for doing so, including (I'm sure) in threads that you have participated in.

Here are some examples:

Into the North - Cortex Plus Heroic Fantasy actual play

Over the past year or so my group has been playing a bit of Marvel Heroic RP, mostly as an alternative when the full 4e crew can't turn up. Last week I bought the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide and, knowing that one of our players would be in the US for a couple of weeks, I wrote up some PCs to run...

www.enworld.org

Classic Traveller - session report with reflections on the system [long]

Recently I've been re-reading my Classic Traveller books, and yesterday I GMed a session. It's the first time I've played Traveller for at least a couple of decades. One of the distinctive things about Traveller is its use of random generation to deliver content and flavour. For PC generation...

www.enworld.org

Cthulhu Dark session

Cthulhu Dark is a rules-light system for Cthulhu Mythos RPGing. There was a Kickstarter last year for an expanded rulebook, but we were using the short, free rulebook that I'd downloaded years ago. Designing the PCs took about five minutes, because a PC is just a name and an occupation: we had...

www.enworld.org

Cthulhu Dark - another session

There were only three of us at our session today (real life getting in the way for the others), so we played some Cthulhu Dark There was one player, and me, who had played this system before, but it's not a hard system to introduce a new player to! PC build is name, occcuation, description. So...

www.enworld.org

Played some Wuthering Heights today

Wuthering Heights is a French RPG, though - as the name suggests - it has been translated and adapted to English. I first learned of it from Ron Edwards's review and have found a few versions online - here's one - two in English, one in French. The French version has a few more rules. Last year...

www.enworld.org

But when I run with detailed plans ahead of time, I don't just make up stuff that defeats player action declarations outside the game's action resolution framework.

You seem to say that any time the DM puts an unexpected obstacle in the way that stops them from succeeding, it's railroading. Any time a plan by the players works but they didn't get the results they desired, it's railroading. Any time the GM runs an NPC in a way that you don't expect or don't care for, it's railroading. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding because it seems like what your real complaint is boils down to default style D&D not being a different game. You seem to want more of a narrative story telling game (or whatever the "proper" terminology is), something more along the lines of a PbtA game. That's perfectly fine. Those games have certain checks and balances D&D doesn't have, and personally I don't care for that structure, but we all have different preferences.

Along a similar vein I had a DM a while back that basically told us that if we could come up with a convincing narrative, if we could make it sound interesting, that it would work. So we had one player that was wrasslin' huge monsters into submission because she was enthusiastic about it. In another case a player was able to plug a cave hole because the player happened to use a mini for their familiar happened to fit the exact size of the hole in the terrain piece the DM was given. The players were given a lot of narrative control over the game. Given a choice I would never play with that DM again.

But just because a D&D DM doesn't run the game the way I want, they are not automatically a terrible DM. There are terrible DMs out there. I had a DM just roll a dice, went down the list of PCs and told the player of PC #5 that a giant hand comes out of the wall and crushed them to death. He then went on to kill all the PCs in different, just as random, ways. I can confidently state that they were a terrible DM.

So if multiple plans that do not follow the DM's clear narrative fail, if every attempt to go left when the DM wants you to go right, then there is an issue. At that point I would feel free to call them a railroading DM. Based on the stories you've related, I just don't see justification for your call unless there is more information. A DM is well within their bounds to have a captive not give you answers, as players you don't "deserve" a specific outcome and the players do not control the narrative results of the player contributions to the game.

In D&D there is no "narrative" that controls or demands specific outcomes. There are players that make decisions for their PCs and a DM that makes decisions based on the environment and how they thing NPCs and monsters would react.

 

[ezo]

The Kobold in my example impeded play just the same as a TPK might have.

I find that a bit hard to believe, personally.

Failure to obtain useful intel, even if the DM portrayed this in a horrible fashion, doesn't stop you all from doing something else. A TPK tends to stop PCs from taking any action.

I can tell when a GM is running a railroad.

Playing the omniscent card again? Not a good look IMO.

A railroad is giving the PCs only a single direction or course of action. I rarely find DMs actually doing that, although to a player it might seem that way. 99% of the time there are, in fact, other options.

Whether a DM is prepared to deal with those options or not is another factor, however. A know many DMs on both sides of the continuum---some a ready at ad hoc and spontaneous actions by the PCs, others struggle to run a game off the cuff that way.

 

[Emerikol]

I already addressed this in my last post, but I'll add something which happened in a friend's game in AD&D about twenty-five years ago:

In one campaign this DM used random encounters a lot. The very first random encounter was an age 10 (or so) green dragon! The DM ran the encounter as the dragon attacking the town in which the PCs were meeting up.

The PCs knew confronting the dragon directly would be suicide, so they focused on helping as many people escape as was possible. Eventually, they also left, abandoning the town to the dragon's wrath.

Years later, in game time and IRL, the PCs returned to defeat the dragon, ending the campaign.

But back to your original scenario, such "killer DMs" rarely lasted or changed their ways IME.

And while NPCs, the weather, calamities, etc. are all under the control of the DM, the DM can certainly use any or all of it to tell the story, but most players won't appreciate the story being "and died!"

View attachment 384230

This is also why I don't use the wandering monster tables as written but even deep in a wilderness area where theoretically a dragon could be, at maybe a mid level characters, my group would hide and avoid the dragon.

 

[ezo]

This is also why I don't use the wandering monster tables as written but even deep in a wilderness area where theoretically a dragon could be, at maybe a mid level characters, my group would hide and avoid the dragon.

Oh, no, I love using them as written and came up with something similar for 5E! I really miss the frequency info from AD&D.

IMO the game world is the game world, regardless of the PCs level. As a general rule of thumb, tier 1 creatures are common, tier 2 are uncommon, tier 3 are rare, and tier 4 are very rare.

So, yeah, extremely unlikely, but the PCs can encounter an ancient dragon at 1st level.