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.

 

[Emerikol]

Ceteris paribus it'll be the senses of four participants, rather than one's, that are not out of whack. YMMV. But what I wondered more about is where players invoke mechanics to give the greater weight to what they imagine.

I'm not sure about what you mean with that last sentence.

Well in the campaign world, the DM has the final say and thus represents the "reality" of that world.

 

[Lanefan]

Hence the need for democracy and the peaceful transference of power.

In the context of D&D, there is an increasing sense of egalitarianism where players have equal weight in the narrative.

In your D&D, maybe.

The social power rules can describe intent. For example, that the purpose of rules is for players to "fun", and players should choose actions that bring "delight", is hardly a math equation. But it does serve to formally define what the game is for, and how to play it. It isnt for the DM to fantasize an world that players are unable to contribute to. Heh, "here is my museum, please, look around but dont touch anything".

For me it's more "Here is my museum. Touch whatever you like. Break things if you want. But be warned: the exhibits fight back, and sometimes they fight dirty."

 

[Lanefan]

In fact, if the character doesn't contact the bastion for a long time, the NPCs working there will eventually just leave and abandon the bastion.

Is the bolded a locked-in thing, that those NPCs have to leave if the boss doesn't check in for a long time; or could the NPCs working there instead decide to take over the bastion for themselves?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Is the bolded a locked-in thing, that those NPCs have to leave if the boss doesn't check in for a long time; or could the NPCs working there instead decide to take over the bastion for themselves?

I don't know, it was just a quick overview of the rules. There was no mention of the NPCs taking over though. I too thought that this would be a realistic possibility.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

The original 7 species from 1e are the PC-playable species in my games, unless a players gets very (un)lucky on a random-roll species table.

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.

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 .

I'm assuming situations in which that "what species are open to play" information is already present and available to the players, be it through houserule documents or the campaign's website or wherever.

 

[clearstream]

I'm not sure about what you mean with that last sentence.

I mean that once a proposed piece of fiction is made subject to the game mechanics, that seems to be a case where norms point away from any particular participant imposing their version of the fiction authoritatively over others. That's strongly true of modes of play sometimes labelled OC and narrativism, while also true of modes that may be labelled as trad and neotrad.

 

[Emerikol]

I mean that once a proposed piece of fiction is made subject to the game mechanics, that seems to be a case where norms point away from any particular participant imposing their version of the fiction authoritatively over others. That's strongly true of modes of play sometimes labelled OC and narrativism, while also true of modes that may be labelled as trad and neotrad.

As a general rule, the rules are fairly reliable at predicting what will happen given a set of circumstances. Ultimately though, what really happens is what the DM says happens. Almost always, it is what the rules say. Rarely though it is different. Why?

For example: The DM knows something the players don't. So the group was in some kind of anti-magic zone when they tried to cast.

The players never know the big picture. So they can't really argue the rules in a given situation with the DM. And sometimes they can't discern why "in game". Meaning their characters could not have discerned why even if their players might guess. (or not!).

So there has to be a certain trust placed in the hands of the DM for the types of games I play where exploration and the unknown factor in a lot. I always tell the players that the essential knowledge of the PHB and DMG are just the prevailing theories at this time. With everything but especially when it comes to monsters, don't assume it's always true.

 

[Emerikol]

I suspect the DMG will have any NPCs ultimately be the DMs responsibility.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy to extend control of the PCNPCs directly to the PCs themselves - much less of a headache for me. And Frankly, that's what I did the last time PCs had a stronghold, it worked quite well.

I think "in general" and off camera this is fine but the player should never think he is those NPCs. They aren't as loyal as the control he has over his own character. They could do things that the PC doesn't know about. But since they answer to the PC in many ways, the PC can dictate a lot of what their responsibilities are and "in general" they will be doing what they are told to do.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So there has to be a certain trust placed in the hands of the DM for the types of games I play where exploration and the unknown factor in a lot.

But trust is not--cannot ever be--a one-way street.

That's the problem I keep having with all this talk of "trust."

It's that the argument you've just given boils down to, "I'm the DM, therefore you should always trust everything I say, no matter what. Nothing I do is ever a reason to not trust."

That's simply not an acceptable or tenable position--and it is exactly that position which causes me such problems.

 

[Emerikol]

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.

As a player I wouldn't want to shape the fiction either. I want to explore the fiction. Learn about the world. Engage with it. If I'm creating it as a player then it doesn't seem real to me. If the DM is winging it, then it doesn't seem real either.