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.

 

[Oofta]

Why are these two approaches contrasted in this way? Like what this passive setting tourism thing has to do with the matter? Like are you implying that this is the result of not on-boarding the meta considerations? I hope not!

And for me, I cannot do the bolded seamlessly. It is definitely the sort of multitasking where the two things interfere each other somewhat. It is by no means impossible, but to me they work better when I can focus on just one. And I find this to be extremely common.

Multitasking is a myth (1), at least for most people. You simply can't hold two things in your mind, you have to stop thinking about one thing, put it on the shelf and pull out the other. There's a cost to this task switching every time you do it. There is a very small number of people that can do it, but they are the rare exception.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't want to answer here and get you wrong. Your second paragraph makes perfect sense to me, but I don't quite get that first paragraph. So I can confirm I know what you're after, can you unpack what you're sense of each of the bolded parts are:

* What two approaches? I'm talking about cognitive orientations to information/play. Then I'm talking about three different sets of play priorities, system, and play; Narrativism, challenge-based play, and GM Storyteller + Setting Tourism.

* What are you seeing as "the matter" under discussion here. I thought it was clear, but I'm not so sure we're on the same page.

* What is "this" that you're pointing at in that 3rd sentence?

"The matter" is the preference or ability to integrate the meta considerations. "This" is passive setting tourism.
I am asking are you implying that lack of former leads to the latter.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Multitasking is a myth (1), at least for most people. You simply can't hold two things in your mind, you have to stop thinking about one thing, put it on the shelf and pull out the other. There's a cost to this task switching every time you do it. There is a very small number of people that can do it, but they are the rare exception.

I can multitask some thing pretty much perfectly. Like for example I can draw and listen at the same time, and they do not impede each other in any meaningful way. But yeah, having two perspectives running simultaneously and them not interfering each other seems like a very different thing to me.

 

[TwoSix]

Why are these two approaches contrasted in this way? Like what this passive setting tourism thing has to do with the matter? Like are you implying that this is the result of not on-boarding the meta considerations? I hope not!

And for me, I cannot do the bolded seamlessly. It is definitely the sort of multitasking where the two things interfere each other somewhat. It is by no means impossible, but to me they work better when I can focus on just one. And I find this to be extremely common.

A Gamist or Narrative approach requires the player to account for meta-priorities outside of the character's purview. (Winning the challenge or pushing the dramatic arc forward, respectively.) There are absolutely players who can do that while simultaneously maintaining their viewpoint within the character's fiction.

I can make up a bunch of details about the bartender, or the city, or my character's rival from my character's point of view while never losing the sense that I am immersed in my character. Not everyone can (or wants to) do that.

 

[TwoSix]

However, just not allowing the PCs the time to do it before more things happen is just the narrative the DM is estabishing and there is nothing wrong with that (see below).

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, per se. But it is absolutely a play style question to ask why the DM would frame the scene in such a way that the PC can't engage with some sort of action resolution, like picking the lock.

If your answer is "Well, they obviously don't have enough time because their pursuers are close", I understand your perspective, but it's fundamentally at odds with @pemerton's preferred play style.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

A Gamist or Narrative approach requires the player to account for meta-priorities outside of the character's purview. (Winning the challenge or pushing the dramatic arc forward, respectively.) There are absolutely players who can do that while simultaneously maintaining their viewpoint within the character's fiction.

I can make up a bunch of details about the bartender, or the city, or my character's rival from my character's point of view while never losing the sense that I am immersed in my character. Not everyone can (or wants to) do that.

I just have hard time imagining it not interfering. Like during combat, sure, we are still immersed in our characters to a point, but it is much more shallow than during an intense social scene with little or no mechnics, as people's thoughts are occupied by the rules.

 

[ezo]

When I talk about players shaping, I'm talking about them (i) declaring actions for their PCs, and (ii) those declarations being resolved by application of the action resolution rules, rather than the GM making decisions (including imaginative manipulation of secret/hidden backstory) so as to produce an outcome that the GM wants.

With the captive kobold, how would you feel if, knowing the range of intelligence for kobolds (5 to 10), the DM rolled a d6+4, using this result to determine not only how intelligent the kobold was, but also the amount of information it is privileged to?

The DM rolls a 1, meaning INT 5. The DM decides that due to this result the kobold knows nothing useful to the PCs.
.........

You know, something just occured to me, which I don't recall if you've covered in your responses or not: Did the DM use a reaction roll, morale check, or any such system to determine how likely the kobold would be to succumb to the interrogation methods used by the party???

1) If yes, then I must assume the result dictated the behavior of the kobold (along with the possibility of the option above indicating their intelligence, etc.). Even if the DM didn't randomly determine what the kobold might know or not... the use of the reaction roll, morale check, or whatever IS part of the AD&D system and there to be employed.

If this case, I don't see much ground for your objections beyond the "not fun" you had--which is fine of course.

2) If no, then that is not good IMO, and I mean a definite "no", not a "well, he might have but I might have missed it..."

If this case, while it wouldn't bother me as much as you it seems, that is definitely railroading. In AD&D many times DMs had a course for the adventure in mind and that is what they ran. Most players never took issue with this IMO, but YMMV.

Anyway, not everything has to be a system built for the DM to establish the narrative on IMO. But I know some groups who prefer that and often I will roll randomly to determine the weather for an encounter, the time of day, etc.

 

[Oofta]

I can multitask some thing pretty much perfectly. Like for example I can draw and listen at the same time, and they do not impede each other in any meaningful way. But yeah, having two perspectives running simultaneously and them not interfering each other seems like a very different thing to me.

Sure, I do that all the time. But one is relatively passive such as listening, the other is active. I can listen to people while typing, if I already know what I'm typing. Used to bug my wife when I was writing boilerplate simple code and she would ask me a question. But when you really need to focus on something, there's a cost to unloading one buffer and loading up the next. That or you're one of the 2% or so of people that can truly multitask.

 

[TwoSix]

I just have hard time imagining it not interfering. Like during combat, sure, we are still immersed in our characters to a point, but it is much more shallow than during an intense social scene with little or no mechnics, as people's thoughts are occupied by the rules.

I mean, I can’t be more clear than as to say that the things you are saying HARM your immersion are the same things that HELP mine. And I would hope that my years of posting around here give some evidence that I’m relatively thoughtful about roleplaying.

I’m certainly not saying that you’re wrong about how these techniques affect you; these disparate responses simply show why different game styles exist in the first place.

 

[ezo]

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, per se. But it is absolutely a play style question to ask why the DM would frame the scene in such a way that the PC can't engage with some sort of action resolution, like picking the lock.

Again, nothing is stopping the PCs from trying to pick the lock.

The worst the DM could do is set the DC impossibly high for picking or breaking down, make the AC/HP so high it is impractical to destroy the door, etc.

If your answer is "Well, they obviously don't have enough time because their pursuers are close", I understand your perspective, but it's fundamentally at odds with @pemerton's preferred play style.

For myself, that would never be my response. At worst my response would be: "Sure, you can try to pick the lock, but the thug is right on you and attacking you, so you have disadvantage on the check."

Now, if another PC can intervine to protect the lock-picker, then no disadvantage.

Otherwise, how the scene plays out depends on how it was framed (see my eariler post).