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.
Sure, okay - I was just trying to explain why some of us might feel (and I admit that it was more a feeling - like I've said, I didn't check the math on it) that the books didn't use the Adventuring Day. I'm fine to admit that I'm wrong when it comes to the Dungeons. I stand corrected.
I'm sorry - do what? I really think that we're talking about two different things, as I have no idea what you're saying to me.
Like this! I have no idea what I'm supposedly "saying not to do".
The DMG doesn't say for there to be 6-8 encounters every single long rest.
It's just a benchmark for what the most amount of encounters a typical party will be able to get through per long rest.
A balanced adventuring day is one where the players don't know how many encounters they are going to end up having and their environment is challenging enough that they can't just rest whenever they want.
The examples given are of atypical challenges. There needs to be a baseline in order for there to be something different. An adventure having a chapter that is atypical doesn't mean that adventure doesn't use the adventuring day structure as laid out in the DMG.
Just in case it is not clear: my problem is not "multiple bad DMs". I mean, I've encountered a good number of these back in the day, but not playing with them is an easy solution.
My point is that a GM cannot unilaterally establish a shared fiction. Because for it to be shared, the players have to accept it, and the GM cannot unilaterally compel them to do so.
And I think this truism has useful implications for GMing advice. Most importantly, as a GM you goal should be to produce content that is engaging and even compelling for your players. And the less control you want to give players over proposing and shaping the shared fiction, the more that your stuff had better be good!
We disagree on what the fiction means and where it cuts off, so I won't rehash that here. That said, I completely agree with your last paragraph.
I've actually experimented several times in different ways in giving the players more control over shaping the fiction, and they balk at every turn. It's just not their thing apparently, which is a bit disappointing. I've since given up on it.
I mean, that could have been a possibility, but I don't think @pemerton is just making up that it was the DM trying not to give information out in order to protect his story. He was there and we weren't.
I've actually experimented several times in different ways in giving the players more control over shaping the fiction, and the balk at every turn. It's just not their thing apparently, which is a bit disappointing. I've since given up on it.
I think this is why it's really not the default for D&D. I've experimented as well with my groups. Some of them love it, and others (even very experienced players) hated it with the intensity of 10000 suns. It's very group specific.
I think this is why it's really not the default for D&D. I've experimented as well with my groups. Some of them love it, and others (even very experienced players) hated it with the intensity of 10000 suns. It's very group specific.
In both cases I was making the assumption that the DM knows more about the setting than the player does. Therefore the player might benefit if the DM were to share that knowledge when the player is coming up with a character that will fit into that setting.
. . . Does that really sound that unreasonable?
No it does not sound reasonable. Your stormreach hypothetical was literally one of the immediately discarded disasters used to draw on FR lore with one of the times I allowed a PC drow in my eberron games
What problems did I quote? Drow are exotic in Khorvaire, but certainly not as problematic as they used to be in FR. As DM you have the right to ban any PC race, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing the justification if it didn't spoil any plot points. I may know more about Eberron than you do, but I don't know more about your Eberron setting than you do.
The way that the reason I gave is able to cause problems are are related to cultural & lore differences not simply because thet are "exotic", I'll get back to that & need to cover this "what problems" thing first.
That difference between a player themselves finding adapting what they plan to bring to a table so that it fits the type of game world being run and a GM being expected to find a way or place to make the initial square peg fit is dramatic & long lasting because the square peg will always be square & continue to draw on/insert things that simply will never fit. When the GM is expected to "help the player find it within the GM's game" that responsibility will continue to rest on the GM for the length of the campaign even as the square peg continues adding an ever growing pile of square ties.
When the player is expected to adapt & perhaps choose a different direction then that player is responsible for not drawing on square peg expectations without first putting in the work to make the thing they want to draw be drawing on something that actually exists.
See the spoiler above for the problems. It's extremely disruptive to the game when the GM needs to regularly stop the game in order to say "no [Bob] that's FR drow, they are super different & none of that applies" or "No [Bob] drow here are different, they [loredump bob will totally ignore & forget by end of session if not sooner]"
. . . You never actually stated a reason why you don't allow drow in your Eberron game, so there is nothing to acknowledge. As DM you can ban an otherwise-existing race from a game, but I know enough about Eberron to know that drow are around, although they don't live on Khorvaire, as you say.
I feel like you quoted me saying why I don't allow drow back in 1610 (the post I quoted while saying you quoted me saying it) but bolded section of the spoiler'd quote above should provide enough of a spotlight to get [past the idea that I "never stated a reason why I don't allow drow". They aren't the only thing from FR that I'd say no to, but most of the others tend to be specific & less disruptive edge cases like the way a dwarf or halfling comes off.
If you stated that drow were not available as a PC choice in your game, then I'd find another way of playing a concept I want, but many of your potential players may not know much about Eberron and thus they would benefit from your knowledge of the setting to find where their concepts fit best.
The fact that they don't know eberron is exactly why the alternative concept for"drow" is "play something else" for drow but more nebulous fuzzy edge cases of rubbing the wrong way with tolkein/FR style dwarves/hobbithalflings where I might or might not set some boundaries if they are disruptive.
I'm assuming Lanefan has a "No races that look monstrous", or similar, but without talking it out with them, a player probably isn't going to know if it is the looks, culture, or mechanical rules of the race that they don't tolerate.
Drow culture is what is so different about their eberron equivalent & it's different in ways that are incredibly significant to things that exist within many of the setting's unanswered lore/history/tech questions. The lore reasons that drow from players who don't know it also IMEc ause problems in eberron games are not relevant but also problematic in the way that lore gets abused while still falling under the above spoiler'd reason. It's cleaner and easier just to stop at the original reason rather than adding a second set of problems on top of that reason.
?
In all my posts on this thread I've literally been talking about how a players might compromise and change their character to accommodate the DM's preferences. But this will often require input from the DM to tell them what those preferences are.
Paraphrasing here "what if my drow came to khorvaire through stormreach" is not a compromise that addresses the reason (see spoiler'd quote) I say no to drow in my eberron games. The fact that you even claimed that I "never actually stated a reason why" while literally quoting the reason gives me the impression that it's more of a dismissal of that reason than anything that could be called "compromise."
If the DM simply says "No. Try again" with no information as to what part of the concept the player will have to change then its just a guessing game .
In this case the player effectively said "no try again" and asked for a second reason while claiming the first reason given was "never actually stated". When the player is responsible for working all this out and adapting to fit the game (instead of the gm), choosing to ignore that & effectively say "no try again" to the GM's reason is still on the player... When the GM is treated as if working out some kind of workaround adaptation or compromise then having the reason ignored by the player is still a problem for the GM to solve.
Before it comes up: I've not ignored the stormreach question, I pointed out that it does nothing to address the reason why I do not allow drow in my eberron games. Since it has nothing to do with the reason I'm not sure how discussing it could lead to anything productive with regards to a player making a PC that does fit my eberron games.
@tetrasodium I totally get that it is annoying if people keep porting assumptions from other settings and that Forgotten Realms drow are probably way more well known than the Eberron drow, but the Eberron actually does have drow, and certainly there are players who are familiar with their lore and want to play such drow specifically?
@tetrasodium I totally get that it is annoying if people keep porting assumptions from other settings and that Forgotten Realms drow are probably way more well known than the Eberron drow, but the Eberron actually does have drow, and certainly there are players who are familiar with their lore and want to play such drow specifically?
They don't have much in common, as Eberron does it's own thing. But the same is true for a lot of other species in that setting too. And in Dark Sun the stuff is even more different. So as same names for species are still used, it sorta requires making sure that everyone is on the same page about what's meant. But assuming they are, I don't see a problem.
@tetrasodium I totally get that it is annoying if people keep porting assumptions from other settings and that Forgotten Realms drow are probably way more well known than the Eberron drow, but the Eberron actually does have drow, and certainly there are players who are familiar with their lore and want to play such drow specifically?
If I had a player who really knew eberron lore I might allow it after some discussion (and have), but would very much make a case for why id rather they go with something else like one of the elven groups native to knorvare where the game is likely to take place
A statblock and high level of melanin... Almost nothing else. Things get complicated from there because eberron deliberately has a lot of elements that are both left undefined and given multiple conflicting plausible causes/triggering events/sources/etc and drow are linked to a lot of them (directly or a few steps removed) in ways that make it hard to loredump a "no actually" without defining which or causing confusion.
As to why use something else even if I knew they were really familiar, that comes down to the political state of things in khorvaire. In a nutshell the continent has a lot in common with post WW1 Europe and it's very much sliding towards a WW2 type scenario (as in even the people of the world kinda know it's likely on the horizon). I can think of three notably well known groups of elves living in khorvaire: Valanar(sp?) and two or three dragonmark houses (thursnni phiarlin &um... mark of storm.... All of those have interesting and complicated political webs of power within the world. A drow would miss out of that just to be an untrusted free agent and still have the lore problem, many other races native to khorvaire can fill that untrusted outsider role just fine and carry something interesting of their own.
Edit: I used to be more open to drow PCs but have seen it go so so wong so often that I just decided that it's not worth allowing them.
