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.

 

[Manbearcat]

I won't speak for @Crimson Longinus , but the way your post read to me was, "some people just know how to play the way I prefer. Some people don't and maybe can't. A third group can be taught to play the way I prefer, sometimes.

Is this what you meant to say?

Micah...totally weird framing here. This framing and interpretation centering on preferences is completely divorced from my place in this conversation.

"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.

Alright, so let me see if I've got what you're asking. You're asking if my prior post is trying to introduce the following:

People who can't or choose not to integrate meta considerations into their cognitive space while playing a character invariably leads to a play agenda that features passive Setting Toursim.

I can easily and decisively say "no, that isn't what I meant nor what I said." In fact, that first paragraph in that post discusses people who enjoy Setting Tourism or GM Storyteller play (or the former infusing the latter) as well as challenge-based play and Narrativism. Given that Narrativism and challenge-based play that isn't Pawn Stance demands the integration of meta considerations alongside character perspective considerations, that pretty well kills stone dead that italicized hypothesis above.

I mean, I'm one of these people. I don't run Setting Tourism or GM Storyteller play. However, on the rare occasion that I get to play, I'm quite happy to play a challenge-oriented game or a Narrativist game and certainly happy to play a trio of sessions of a Cthulhu scenario set in haunted Victorian London or something with an extremely skillful Setting Tourism + GM Storyteller GM where my role is mostly performative + exploration-centered where I'm trying to trigger GM reveals and exposition dumps.

---

Unrelated, @Oofta , a few things:

* I don't think you're representing that research correctly. It isn't that people can't multitask at all, it's that there is a measurable decline in productivity per unit of time and in safety when people attempt to perform multiple demanding tasks that stress executive control.

* I dispute that the experiments in question apply to what we're talking about here because, again, the research is measuring the cost to productivity and safety rather than measuring a participant's ephemeral sense of the quality of their immersion while performing simultaneous tasks around goal-switching and rules-activation.

* Further still, like so many of these experiments, I'm very skeptical that such research would replicate with the kind of confidence necessary to draw a conclusion that only 2 % of the human population don't have measurably labored executive control such that productivity and safety are substantially harmed when forced to undergo any subset of multiple tasks around goal-switching and rules-activation.

* Finally, I would like to see an experiment run where automaticity (the ability to perform a task without conscious thought or attention, and is the result of consistent practice and repetition...like reading the sequence/body position requirements inherent to a difficult climbing route while actually deploying the technical and physical skills inherent to climbing...or driving in complex traffic day-in and day-out...or defending against position loss and a submission while trying to advance your own position while grappling...or reading term papers and marking them while thinking about and modeling a complex problem or maybe finger twirling your pen) of a particular task has been long since downloaded by a participant in the experiment and therefore only the second task around either goal-switching or rules-activation puts executive control under actual duress.

 

[Oofta]

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.

Just an example on why you should talk to your players about what they find rewarding. If it helps you to paint the picture of the world by contributing to the narrative that's great. As long as you realize it doesn't work for other people.

We should just all remember that there's no one size fits all.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Alright, so let me see if I've got what you're asking. You're asking if my prior post is trying to introduce the following:

People who can't or choose not to integrate meta considerations into their cognitive space while playing a character invariably leads to a play agenda that features passive Setting Toursim.

Yes.

I can easily and decisively say "no, that isn't what I meant nor what I said.

Cool.

In fact, that first paragraph in that post discusses people who enjoy Setting Tourism or GM Storyteller play (or the former infusing the latter) as well as challenge-based play and Narrativism. Given that Narrativism and challenge-based play that isn't Pawn Stance demands the integration of meta considerations alongside character perspective considerations, that pretty well kills stone dead that italicized hypothesis above.

No it doesn't... I think there's some sort of inductive fallacy going on here that I'm currently too tired to unpack.

I mean, I'm one of these people. I don't run Setting Tourism or GM Storyteller play. However, on the rare occasion that I get to play, I'm quite happy to play a challenge-oriented game or a Narrativist game and certainly happy to play a trio of sessions of a Cthulhu scenario set in haunted Victorian London or something with an extremely skillful Setting Tourism + GM Storyteller GM where my role is mostly performative + exploration-centered where I'm trying to trigger GM reveals and exposition dumps.

I mean I find the whole term "setting tourism" offensive and derogatory, and I really do not recognise it as a common playstyle at all, so I think it just weird how you talk about it like it was a usual thing. I still do not understand why you even brought it up. Like what it has to do with anything?

 

[Pedantic]

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 don't want to touch the Nar point, but I'm unpersuaded this is a necessary feature of a Gamist approach. I think it's perfectly possible to finesse either or both the mechanics or characterization to align the incentives of a player with the incentives of their character, thus that both make the same decisions.

It mostly seems to me that people don't actually like doing that in practice very much, either because they don't particularly enjoy gameplay (in the sense someone playing a eurogame would use the term), or because they aren't interested in the characters for whom it's workable.

 

[Xetheral]

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?

From my perspective, whether or not this qualifies as railroading depends on both the larger context and the GM's intent.

At one extreme, if the GM deliberately lured the PCs into the alley by falsely giving them reason to believe the door was unlocked because the GM wanted to run a preplanned fight in the alley, then yes, I would definitely characterize that as railroading.

At the other extreme, if the GM did not give the players any reason to believe that the door was unlocked, and determined that it was locked as a result of previously established (or reasonably inferrable) setting details (e.g. the PCs are in a high-crime area), and the GM didn't care one way or the other about whether there was a fight in the alley, then I would definitiely not characterize that as railroading.

In between those two extremes, the details would control whether or not I considered it railroading. Broadly speaking, if the GM is trying to make sure a preplanned battle occurs, then I'm likely to lean towards calling it railroading even if the GM didn't do anything to lead the PCs to believe the door was unlocked. By contrast, if the GM doesn't have anything preplanned, then I'm not likely to call it railroading even if the GM is considering meta factors (e.g. "pacing-wise, now would be a good time for a fight", or "this alley would make for a cool fight scene") when trying to adjudicate on the fly whether or not the owner of the building actually locked the alley door.

That said, there are exceptions to the above. If the original interaction with the "ruthless killers" that lead to the chase was entirely player-initiated (maybe the PCs decided to lure the killers away from some other target?) I'm not likely to label as railroading anything the GM does at that point to adjudicate events the PCs are driving.

Another exception could be if the PCs had trusted an NPC to leave that door unlocked, not having succeeded in learning that said NPC was in cahoots with the killers. Then I would argue there is no railroading, even though the PCs falsely believed that the door would be unlocked, since the false belief stemmed from in-game events.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes.


Cool.


No it doesn't... I think there's some sort of inductive fallacy going on here that I'm currently too tired to unpack.


I mean I find the whole term "setting tourism" offensive and derogatory, and I really do not recognise it as a common playstyle at all, so I think it just weird how you talk about it like it was a usual thing. I still do not understand why you even brought it up. Like what it has to do with anything?

Yeah. I also find the term "setting tourism" offensive and derogatory, which is why I characterized @Manbearcat 's comments as catering into their preferences.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There is a reasonable chance of know it might know those things, I agree. But it is just as likely it might not:

(i) remember where it entered the city from. People get lost and turned around in cities easily when they are not from them or moving quickly (like a kobold strike force).

(ii) depending on the location, region, etc. the names it knows things by might not be at all how the PCs would know them.

(iii) as part of an attack force, it should reasonably be able to tell you "many", but why would it know just how many there are? perhaps numbers or even their concept are foreign to the kobold culture (a stretch and more homebrew admittedly).

However, again, all this depends on just how smart the kobold is, what rank it has within its... well, ranks, etc. So, while I agree it is entirely reasonable to hope you might get such intel from the kobold, there is no guarantee what you will actually get.

I know when I DM and players capture creatures (a very common practice as I am sure you can imagine!), I run the entire gambit for how much the PCs will learn. Sometimes nothing, sometimes everything (with detailed maps!), and most the time in between.

And how is what the kobold knows determined?

If the DM just spontaneously decides it knows nothjng useful, that seems like poor DMing to me. Call it railroading or not, it seems crappy.

If the DM is going to make every attempt to justify this… like your (i) to (iii) above… then hasn’t the DM already decided the outcome?

I mean, instead of interrogating a prisoner, imagine the PCs were attacking a combatant. If the GM gets to just decide how it goes… no application of to hit rolls or ACs and so on… that would seem like poor GMing, no?

I understand that, but IMO I don't think you can reasonably expect every action to you take to work in your favor, do you? You don't expect every plan to work, every attack to hit, etc. right?

Attack rolls have very clear success and failure results. If I don’t roll equal or higher than a creature’s AC, then I miss.

So why not apply similar rules to an interrogation?

Agreed, but you don't seem to understand---or at the very least just don't agree---that you did not (i) fail action resolution. You succeeded in capturing a kobold (the action) but the resolution just wasn't what you expected. That is not failure.

The action in question is interrogating the kobold. They learned nothing… the interrogation failed. No rules were used to determine the outcome… it was just the DM deciding in the moment. Or perhaps deciding weeks before and actually writing down “if the PCs try to capture and interrogate any of the kobolds, they don’t learn anything of use!”

It’s a railroad.

So, my apologies if you've already replied in to a similar response--there are a lot of posting going on.

This is not railroading, this is building up the suspense of the scene and a viable DM tool. The locked door is PART of the challenge in the scene! How do you get through it? Pick the lock, break it down, what? Can you do so before the killers arrive? Can a few PCs hold of the killers while another gets the door open?

Timing can be an issue, certainly. Do the PCs have a round or two to get the door open? If not, and the killers are just there the next round after discovering the door is lock, then the door becomes an option in the scene, not an escape from it.

Now, there IS a point where it can be railroading--the PCs MUST fight, there is no escape, certainly, and if the DM says:

• "The DC for the lock is 100, good luck!" or
• "The door is adamantine and has 10000 hp and AC 50, good luck!" or
• "You open the door and find the entrance has been bricked up... good luck!"

then yeah, that is pretty lame IMO.

But in such a case, yes, the DM should just inform the PCs "You round the corner and the alley is a dead end. Hot on your heels the killers arrive at the entry to the alley just behind you. You see some boxes, crates, and a garbage bin, which can provide you some cover. Roll initiative."

If that’s what the GM wants, why introduce the chase and the choices for the players? Why go to all that trouble? If the fight MUST happen… if the DM is so set on it that every but of judgment they apply to the game pushes thjngs toward the fight… why go through the motions? Why bother letting the players think the fight can be avoided?

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."

But then the fight is already happening, so picking the lock at that point doesn’t seem to hold the same appeal.

If the DM decides the situation… the layout of the city street, the presence of the alley, the presence of the door, whether it’s locked, how far the pursuers are, and when they will catch up… and can’t find some place in all of that for something more than “DM decides” then I’d say they have a lot to learn as a DM.

Your insistence that if there is not some systemic method that the DM must abide by when making a decision or it's a railroad is the issue.

How is it not? It’s a string of DM decides that leads to an inevitable outcome. Why not pick up some dice at some point and play a game where the players also have some say? And the system has a say, too?

I mean I find the whole term "setting tourism" offensive and derogatory, and I really do not recognise it as a common playstyle at all, so I think it just weird how you talk about it like it was a usual thing. I still do not understand why you even brought it up. Like what it has to do with anything?

People post all the time about how much they love to “explore the setting”… that’s all setting tourism means. It’s an incredibly common playstyle.

Why it was brought up was to contrast with an alternate style of play where the focus of play is not to explore a setting.

 

[pemerton]

I think the counterpoint of the other posters is that the action of being blocked, of pursuing a false lead or a red herring or an impossible plan, is not only virtuous in play but necessary for their playstyle. Because the act of adding in a fail-state triggered by pre-generated fiction demonstrates the primacy of the setting needs over dramatic needs or player resolution.

Basically, the setting lacks verisimilitude if pre-generated fail states can't be discovered in play (because those states "make sense" to exist in the fiction).

But the example that prompted all this - the Kobold example - is not pre-generated fiction. The players aren't exploring some pre-established world that includes cognitively incapable Kobolds. It is the GM making something up on the spot to block the players' declared action.

I don't see how that is consistent with playing to explore. I mean, on the occasion that I'm actually describing, it sounded the death knell for that endeavour.

 

[pemerton]

So, my apologies if you've already replied in to a similar response--there are a lot of posting going on.

This is not railroading, this is building up the suspense of the scene and a viable DM tool. The locked door is PART of the challenge in the scene! How do you get through it? Pick the lock, break it down, what? Can you do so before the killers arrive?

That is not the example that I posted:

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.

I did not talk about the locked door as a challenge.

The example I gave had the GM telling the players that the door is locked, and that while their PCs are trying to open it, the pursuing killers catch up.

Do you agree that that is bad GMing, and railroading?

 

[pemerton]

In your situation, you wanted to capture a kobold to get information (the reasonable assumption). You developed the plan, and carried out the plan (capturing the kobold == me getting to the store), but the kobold was unable to provide you with information (no milk).

Purely due to an arbitrary decision by the GM, to make the Kobold incapable of answering questions, so that we - the players - couldn't pursue our plan of gathering and acting on intelligence.

you don't seem to understand---or at the very least just don't agree---that you did not (i) fail action resolution. You succeeded in capturing a kobold (the action) but the resolution just wasn't what you expected.

The action that failed was the attempted interrogation.

I understand that, but IMO I don't think you can reasonably expect every action to you take to work in your favor, do you?

If the GM just makes up arbitrary fiction to make actions fail, I consider that railroading.

Because the player then knows they still don't have the agency to control their character as they wish since the DM can kill the PC off without any hope of salvation--again, and again, and again.

This is no different from knowing - which I and my fellow players did know- that we have no agency to control our characters as we wish, since the GM can just declare failures again, and again, and again, making up whatever fiction they want that will explain why our PCs do not succeed at anything they attempt.