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.

 

[ezo]

I did a campaign from 3rd to 12th and found that 3 deadly encounters a day, with short rests between, with my own level adjustments for how many magic items the players had, felt challenging and no one died.

Deadly wasn't deadly, it was just hard.

Deadly doesn't mean someone will die or is even likely to, just that there is a distinct possibility--which IME there usually is. Especially if it isn't the only enounter you have since resting.

Too much depends on the party composition, scenario, etc. for any "universal metric" to always work well.

Besides, the point was if you want a single encounter for a day that is fun and a bit challenging, deadly will certainly do it IME and hard can.

 

[OB1]

Gonna have to do a lot of reading, but I'm going to find it unusual if there aren't at least recommendations for allowing for an average of 2 short rests a day at the very least.

So far, the only thing I've found related to how many rests to provide is in the Scaling Lethality section of the DM's Toolbox. The advice is basically to use High difficulty encounters w/o the opportunity to rest for a more lethal experience or Low difficulty encounters with plenty of opportunity for rest for a less lethal one.

My guess is that with the narrowing of the gap between what used to be considered 'Short' and 'Long' rest PCs, strict daily encounter guidelines are no longer needed to balance the DPR of those classes.

 

[Oofta]

Rests are also mentioned in the encounter planning section, Encounter Pacing and Tension. It's pretty general, more about what kind of feel you're going for along with advice to mix it up now and then.

Whether this is good or bad? I dunno. I think most DMs just kind of have to figure out what works for their group.

 

[pemerton]

Here's the thing, it's entirely possible the kobold captured doesn't know any useful information.

It's likely the Kobold knows things like (i) where it entered the city, (ii) where it came from, and (iii) how many other Kobolds are with it.

It is like me driving to the store to get milk. I expect once I successfully turn on my car and drive to the store, finding it still there, I should be able to buy milk. But what if I get there and there is no milk? I dont'get to decide that there MUST be milk.

Are you talking about a character in a RPG, or a player playing a RPG where there character is trying to buy milk, or about an actual real-world trip to the shop to buy milk?

The real-world activity I've been talking about is not shopping; it's playing a RPG. When I sit down to play a RPG, just as when I sit down to play any other game, I expect to be able to affect what happens in the game. As I've already posted, I'm not just turning up to have the GM tell me their story.

Killing of a PC in the narrative is hardly the same thing as informing the party they failed to do or gain something. Such things would be terrible DMing IMO, because it takes away all agency from the player.

How does it take away "all agency"? The player can build a new PC and jump right back in.

 

[pemerton]

Why would you need to fail before things could change? Things change all the time without the party needing to directly impact them. Perhaps the DM has a timeline for the events independent of the players?

<snip>

at this point the group could have said "Well, that didn't work... so, plan B?" or something. I know you've said you felt it was a waste of time, but if you had fun in the planning and capture, it doesn't seem like a waste of time IMO just because the result wasn't what you expected.

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

A recurring element in some discussions on these boards is not engaging with the distinction between (i) failed action resolution and (ii) the GM just saying "no" until the players say the magic words that will prompt the GM to say "yes".

 

[pemerton]

Deleted.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

A recurring element in some discussions on these boards is not engaging with the distinction between (i) failed action resolution and (ii) the GM just saying "no" until the players say the magic words that will prompt the GM to say "yes".

They're different things, and almost every RPG contains both, even though they might not be equally prominent. We've been over this before. Now you describe the latter derisively, which shows your bias, but something akin it is normal part of a RPG. Sometimes the situation is such, that the action will be unsuccessful, and the GM is one who handles that.

Player: I open the door.
GM: It won't open, it seems to be locked.

 

[pemerton]

You seem to say that any time the DM puts an unexpected obstacle in the way that stops them from succeeding, it's railroading.

Can you please quote me saying that? If not, please stop attributing to me views that I don't hold.

Any time a plan by the players works but they didn't get the results they desired

This doesn't make sense - in that, the definition of a plan working is that it produces the intended/desired results.

What is railroading is the GM making up stuff, without regard to any action resolution procedure, in order to shape the fiction in the direction they desire without regard to the players' intentions in declaring actions for their PCs. One example would be a GM making up fiction pertaining to an interrogated NPC in order to block the players' intended line of action (ie gathering information so as to take the initiative in a conflict) and force the players back into the passive role of responding to whatever the GM has next on their list of events to describe.

Any time the GM runs an NPC in a way that you don't expect or don't care for, it's railroading.

If this is your take away, perhaps you need to re-read my posts.

If I fail a check, I expect to suffer adverse results in the fiction. If the GM has notes that specify certain facts, and I fail in declared actions to acquire those facts, I expect to proceed in ignorance of those facts.

But if the GM makes up fiction with the sole purpose of rendering a declared action unsuccessful, in a context where I and my fellow players have spent a significant amount of time at the table working up to that action in order to try and exercise some influence over the direction of play, than that is a railroad. Basically the textbook definition.

I mean, suppose that the module had instructions to the GM: Any time the players try and obtain information from a NPC, make sure they are unable to do so by playing the NPC as cognitively incapable of understanding the PCs' questions and providing answers. Are you really insisting that that would not be instructions to run the game as a railroad?

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.

D&D does not have to be a railroad. I have multiple sets of D&D rulebooks - Moldvay Basic, Gygax's AD&D rulebooks, the 4e rulebooks - which set out approaches to D&D that are not railroads.

You seem obsessed by the idea that I should not be playing D&D. But I have been playing D&D (on and off, but with quite a bit of "on") for over 40 years.

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.

What does this have to do with anything?

If you want to know what I think a good non-railroad game looks like, you can read any of my actual play reports. You will see that they in no way resemble what you describe here (which also has absolutely nothing in common with Apocalypse World). You are describing a game of free-form resolution, as best I can tell.

I am simply talking about the GM applying action resolution rules.

There are terrible DMs out there.

But you seem absolutely convinced, for reasons that escape me, that the GM who had five players leave his game was not one of them. I don't know why you feel the need to carry a torch for this guy you've never met and his game that you've never experienced.

 

[pemerton]

Sometimes the situation is such, that the action will be unsuccessful, and the GM is one who handles that.

Player: I open the door.
GM: It won't open, it seems to be locked.

When and how is the situation established? What is at stake?

For instance, suppose that the GM is running a modern game, set in a city. There is no map-and-key. The PCs are fleeing for their lives from ruthless killers pursuing them. The GM described an alley with a door on one side wall. The players describet their PCs fleeing into the alley, and trying the door. The GM replies that the door is locked, and that while the PCs are trying to open it, their pursuers catch up.

You don't think that that is questionable GMing? The GM is pretending to the players that they have a choice, and a chance of their PCs escaping the killers; but in fact just makes stuff up so as to frame the PCs into combat.

How is that not railroading?

 

[Manbearcat]

The fragile/untrusting relationship between the humans of the region and the various demihuman populations nearby (not just the wood elves) was going to be one of the themes of the campaign. I was planning a series of adventures where the players could slowly help to rebuild trust and cooperation between the different races/species of the region. This was the first adventure in a planned series of adventures.

Further few questions:

* I believe you said that this was a new group and they were also making characters at the outset of this session? So that leads me to believe that what you've written above is GM authorship of the foundational premise of a big chunk of the trajectory of play before knowing what characters and what character motivations would be brought to bear upon play.

1) If that is correct, do you think this sort of consensus instigator move of Firebolt the wildlife in "the forest of elves-who-care-about-natural-stewardship" was a reaction to them sensing you were compelling a nature and trajectory of play upon them that they didn't agree to?

2) Or do you think maybe that was a misread by them (you weren't intending to compel them with your exposition in the human settlement) and they were reacting on a bad inference + priors? Like maybe they had experienced GMs in the past that railroaded them into content they weren't interested in and when they tried to escape the gravitational hold of such content, the GM deployed various techniques of force to block their opt-out?

3) Or do you think this was just some kind of bored GTA move where the player(s) just wanted to inject some violence and burnination?

4) Did you guys have an actual meta conversation to get on the same page when this dysfunction was happening? Or did you maybe have a postmortem conversation to reflect upon WTF just happened and how to establish better "same-pagedness?"