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.

 

[pemerton]

IMX, when you ask a player "Tell me what the barkeep at this tavern that you want to question looks like", some players light up at the chance to be able to add those details, and others are hesitant or uncomfortable. And except for a few absolute novices, exposure does not change the relative comfort level.

With respect, this seems a red herring. Capturing and interrogating a Kobold has nothing to do with answering a question from the GM about what someone looks like.

I am not talking about "player narrative control". I am talking about the GM making up fiction as they like so as to control success or failure of players' declared actions, in order to channel play along a pre-determined path. That is the death-knell to playing to explore a world. All it permits the player to "explore" is the GM's story.

 

[pemerton]

Fair enough. I suppose at that point the question turns to whether or not the GM adjudicated the interrogation and its results in a principled fashion. I don't see any clear evidence one way or the other in your posted example, however, just your very clear feelings about the result.

I've already told you (and everyone else in the thread) that it wasn't principled. Although I realise that, for some reason I can't fathom, everyone thinks that I'm wrong about what happened, and that the GM was in fact acting in a principled fashion.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Let me go back to the example:

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 describe 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.

How do we know the pursuers are too close? (There is no map.)

Why does the GM tell the players about the door? (As opposed to the box in the alley, or the puddle in the gutter, or the sound of an air-conditioning unit down the street?)

In making the door salient, and then blocking - by sheer declaration - any attempt to engage with it, the GM has railroaded the players. It's not just at odds with my preferred style - it's at odds with principle exploration of the setting.

It's not at odds with GM story-time. Contrary to popular belief, I've played and enjoyed story-time (with Call of Cthuhlu as the system). It is enjoyable if (i) the story is good, and (ii) the GM doesn't pretend to offer choices that aren't there. (Such as the door, in my example.)

If the GM wants a fight with pursuers in the alley, just frame that! If the GM is worried the players won't enjoy the fight, the solution is to come up with better ideas for conflicts, not try and present the lack of enjoyment as a "consequence" of the fiction for which the GM is not responsible.

 

[pemerton]

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.

The example, as set out by me, specified that there is no map and key.

 

[clearstream]

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.

My experience mirrors what is described below

Yeah, the dynamics of this cognitive orientation to play are interesting. There is clearly both an aspect of nature and nurture here. I've run games for people who:

* Can trivially and naturally onboard Gamist priorities or Narrativist priorities and seamlessly hold meta-priorities in one hand and experience and engage with a conceptual first person cognitive loop for their player character in the other hand. These same folks overwhelmingly can also play the type of exploration-centered Setting Tourism and GM Storyteller games where their role is overwhelmingly performative color + declare actions to trigger GM reveal/exposition dump just fine. Some of them absolutely prefer one particular set of priorities and systemization to the others while there are some among that cohort who are quite happy to play any of the three.

* I've GMed for players who fundamentally cannot do that bolded above and trying to help them rejigger their cognitive orientation to play such that they can becomes a total lost cause. I should note as well that I've seen both sides of this; people who, earnestly try as they might, authentically cannot rejigger their cognitive orientation to play...and those that absolutely refuse to even accept that, in principle, it's possible to do so (therefore short-circuiting the effort before it even gets off the ground).

* I've GMed for players who absolutely, 100 % learned how to do that bolded bit while being unable to do so for a certain amount of their gaming life. Success rate is hard for me to say. I'd put it south of 50 %, but north of 1 in 5.

It appears that the cognitive cost to "hold meta-priorities in one hand and experience and engage with a conceptual first person cognitive loop for their player character in the other hand" is increased when it goes against norms. Over the course of developing cognitive capability, I believe such 'normalization' effects are distinct from practice effects, although that seems like one obvious confound.

I have an ongoing D&D 2024 campaign at present set up to see what's possible. A common requirement for cognitive change is perserverance, particularly at the limits of comfort (brain plasticity can be provoked by burdening cognition). I've found about 2/3rds of players become engaged and persevere. Those who have not might be best described by the closing line of @Manbearcat's second category... adding that their investment in overcoming such entrenched norms is visibly low to negative. There's some kind of feedback loop between "I'm happy with how things are", and "I don't want to entertain change/don't believe change is possible."

D&D as a ruleset doesn't offer any particular barrier to this kind of play. It's more modes of play associated with D&D that do the work. As I've tried to point out (for years, at this point), words assumed to undergird DM power can be utilized to effect the opposite.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

When is trust a one way street?

Oh, I dunno, the numerous times in this very thread people have said that the PCs not only may not know why the DM ruled on something a particular way, but that they may never know, and thus the player cannot ever expect an explanation.

That, to me, sounds like a pretty blatant non-one-way-street. The players are not ever allowed to expect accountability.

I trust my players not to cheat unless and until proven otherwise.

Okay. Do you trust your players to behave respectfully and engage in discussion in good faith?

Because if so, then the answer to the question you keep asking--"what do you do when there's a disagreement?"--is disagreements of the kind you're talking about don't happen, because you trust your players to play in good faith and the players trust you to play in good faith.

The vast majority of times, it all works out. Every once in a great while it doesn't. But here's the thing. There will always be a bad egg here and there. But the DM is outnumbered by players, for me, it usually ends up being 6 to 1. So if 1 in 600 players is that bad egg then I'm going to run into them on average every 100 groups I DM. The player? They'll have to have 600 DMs.

Except that, due to the shortage of DMs, it's often the case that a single DM runs multiple games. So although the numbers are on the players' side...a single bad DM may negatively affect MANY more players than a single bad player affects different DMs.

Obviously I don't know what the real number is, but the point remains. There are players who are abrasive, who cheat, who are glory hogs who make the game less fun for their other people at the table. If you're unlucky enough to get together with a group with a bad player odds are only 1 in 6 that the person at the table who is problematic is the DM.

Only if every DM only DMs one game, and every player only plays one game.

If every DM does, say, 2 games on average? Suddenly you have a 1/3 chance of the DM being the problem player. We cannot assume "all else being equal" because we already know that all else isn't equal.

 

[Emerikol]

Presumably when you play the game, and declare actions for your PC, you expect the fiction to change so as to incorporate those actions and their consequences.

And presumably you have ideas about what sorts of consequences you want the fiction to include: eg if you say "I open the door", then presumably you intend that the fiction include an event of your PC putting their hand to the door, pushing it open, etc - and then your PC seeing what is on the other side of it.

These are all shaping the fiction.

Yes and as I've said many times, I'm fine with actions from actor stance. I do something to see what will happen. In a fantasy game, I do though expect sometimes when I do something it may not turn out as I expect. I don't get out of shape if when I try to open the door it won't budge. I assume there is something keeping it shut. I react to my input from the world. I don't act crazy and say what the world (the DM) is telling me is wrong.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

No because that extends both ways.

That's...literally what I'm saying, so I'm really hoping you're not turning this into yet another "OH SO THE PLAYER IS PERFECT????" response.

Because I did not say that. I very consciously did not say that.

I'll use an example from a frostmaiden game I got ito play in before running or even reading it. I was playing a wizard from thay with the fosl of a graduate proving adventure type motivation. Eventually we teleported the to thay for some much needed long overdue shopping where the group got stopped at a "papers please" sorta identification checkpoint where another player asked if my wizard from Thay had ID only to have me say to the gm "I don't know... Given my background, do I have ID?". The GM took the answer in an interesting direction I wouldn't have considered and we as a group were able to explore the setting in interesting ways because of that trust I extended.

So...what you're telling me is...

You had a conversation. You and the DM worked together to come up with something. The DM probably did not tell you every single possible factoid that could have been told, but you were included, and you (specifically and willingly) asked them, "Do I have that?" You were open to a variety of different answers, and as a result, a good solution was found.

This is, literally and exactly, what I've asked for. Every single time. I have never once asked for anything that wasn't this. I have never implied I wanted something other than this. Genuine reciprocity and dialogue.

Consider a hypothetical: you are an observer and someone else is playing the Thayan wizard. The party is stopped by border guards and asks for ID. The Wizard's player says, "Oh! I'm a Thayan, that's my background. I should have papers, right? I mean...I would have had to know about this sort of security check...it'd be incredibly stupid to leave home without my papers..."

Would you think this player was being "distrustful"? Would you consider them to be throwing some kind of petulant tantrum because they pointed out their position on this and that a contradiction of that position would be, on its face, unreasonable? Would you say that this person is "ruining the game" because they went to Thay and expected that being Thayan would, y'know, have an influence on going to Thay?

Other times I've encountered similar situations with no strong preference but an idea and tossed that trust over to the gm only to find that I was ok with the idea not fitting or appealing to the gm & their prep or plans.

If you have no strong preferences, how can there be any issue in the first place? This is a complete non sequitur.

Deciding that you can never trust the gm

This is also something I never said.

and expect total trust from them as a result

You are now putting words in my mouth. Please stop doing this. I have never--not once--said anything even remotely like this. You can go back and check my posts!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Whether or not that's an acceptable or tenable position seems to be subjective. Some folks seem to be fine with it. And they're not all DMs.

"You will trust everything I do, and you will never get any opportunity to question what I do" is, on its face, not a reasonable or appropriate arrangement. I thought that was obvious.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yes and as I've said many times, I'm fine with actions from actor stance. I do something to see what will happen. In a fantasy game, I do though expect sometimes when I do something it may not turn out as I expect. I don't get out of shape if when I try to open the door it won't budge. I assume there is something keeping it shut. I react to my input from the world. I don't act crazy and say what the world (the DM) is telling me is wrong.

And when it's something where you cannot see or even potentially know what it is, but the DM assures you no, your spell just blows up in your face this time, just trust me on this?

Because that's literally something I was asked. Within the past 48 hours.