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]

So, imagine a group of people sitting around a table, "playing to explore". What they want to explore is stuff like: where are the Kobolds coming from? How are they entering the city? What are their numbers?

And so they come up with the idea of capturing and interrogating one of the infiltrating Kobolds.

And the GM blocks their exploration by presenting the Kobold in such a way as to stop any of that information being obtained.

I'm always operating under the assumption the DM is acting in good faith. In this case, from what I know, the DM could have been acting in good faith. Meaning the DM is not obligated to have a kobold give up information. As a player you just assume you know the whole story when at least in my game you would not. So actions like you took, couldn't be justly motivated by that one event. This DM may be a habitual loser. I don't know. Plenty of them are out there. But we are arguing what the DM can or cannot do. The DM is absolutely under no obligation to cave to players demanding the world behave a certain way.

Those people might become rather annoyed!

Some do. Some don't.

Moral of the story: @Oofta, @Micah Sweet and other posters, who are trying to argue that either your are "playing to create" or else the GM is free to make up whatever fiction they want, are not correct. "Playing to explore" is just as dependent on the GM playing with integrity, honouring the established fiction, following action resolution procedures.

Unless "playing to explore" is just a euphemism for "listening to the GM's story-time".

Maybe it's just your example is bad. Maybe this DM runs a completely inconsistent world at every turn and it lacks verisimilitude. Of course to me your only answer is to leave the game not overpower the DM and force him to your will. Any DM allowing that is not worth having as a DM.

That one example though doesn't make your point. In that exact case, the DM is not obligated to allow the Kobold to give up any information. The DM runs the NPCs. If you hate how he runs NPCs then by all means find another DM but don't try to argue that is not his job.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It may be that you can't get there.

Don't make it personal, please.

When I consider the amount of work I put into a campaign, it's hard for anyone to think I'm doing it for anything other than to have fun. And for DMs with my play style, the fun of the game is exploration and discovery as much as anything. It's the notion the world is a real place which is verisimilitude. It's not a real place I know just like Middle Earth is not a real place but if done well we can escape to that place and really enjoy it.

Being perfectly honest, I don't believe someone "deserves" trust simply because they did a lot of work. It's good that you do that, but like...if we're supposed to take the "the players vote with their feet" thing seriously, you doing that work is the bare minimum for players to willingly give you their time. You aren't entitled to your players' time just because you did a bunch of work. Nobody is entitled to anyone's time.

As with any situation, you start with no special trust or distrust, which means you have to prove that any trust you're asking for is justified. If you're going to make the extreme request of, "You have to accept whatever I throw at you, no matter what, even when it means ripping your character features away from you without explanation" (which real people have asked me repeatedly, most recent example referenced below), yes, I'm going to consider that a pretty severe red flag. I don't see how this is somehow me being some weird broken person who cannot trust. It's just expecting that when someone demands authority and implicit trust, they actually, y'know, SHOW me that they merit that trust, as opposed to just smiling congenially and saying, "Don't you trust me?"

Just as "But I totally AM cool!" is the quickest way to erode your street cred, "But you HAVE to trust me" is one of the quickest ways to erode trust.

Since a DM can do anything inside his campaign, why would he ruin it? His goal is to create a great experience and invite players into a world of discovery. I realize temperamentally some people aren't suited to DMing but for those that are it's great.

Why do you think that a person would think the things I've described are "ruining" it? They see it as defending some essential part thereof. That's the point. It's irrelevant to say "essentially nobody would knowingly and intentionally ruin their game," because they don't intend to ruin it, but their actions ARE campaign-damaging.

And yes! I really genuinely do think someone saying, "Nope, your spells simply blow up in your face, no I won't tell you why" is a pretty big red flag. (This is a real example of something that was explicitly asked of me in another thread just yesterday by @Micah Sweet.)

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm always operating under the assumption the DM is acting in good faith.

Then why do you not make the same assumption of players?

 

[Emerikol]

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.

One event will never make me decide a DM is bad. It's not enough info. If the DM runs a world though where my actions rarely result in an expected result, I would leave that game for lack of interest. I would never though tell that DM he has to do what I say.

The PCs state their actions and the DM states how the world reacts. If the DMs world turns out to be a garbage world then you move on.

 

[Emerikol]

Don't make it personal, please.


Being perfectly honest, I don't believe someone "deserves" trust simply because they did a lot of work. It's good that you do that, but like...if we're supposed to take the "the players vote with their feet" thing seriously, you doing that work is the bare minimum for players to willingly give you their time. You aren't entitled to your players' time just because you did a bunch of work. Nobody is entitled to anyone's time.

I agree. If I do a poor job DMing, the players would leave I expect. So far though I could run games three days a week and fill them. So I turn people away. People that otherwise I think would be good players. So I am absolutely not going to put up with a troublesome bad player.

As with any situation, you start with no special trust or distrust, which means you have to prove that any trust you're asking for is justified. If you're going to make the extreme request of, "You have to accept whatever I throw at you, no matter what, even when it means ripping your character features away from you without explanation" (which real people have asked me repeatedly, most recent example referenced below), yes, I'm going to consider that a pretty severe red flag. I don't see how this is somehow me being some weird broken person who cannot trust. It's just expecting that when someone demands authority and implicit trust, they actually, y'know, SHOW me that they merit that trust, as opposed to just smiling congenially and saying, "Don't you trust me?"

I'm saying that I come to a game expecting the DM to DM. This means when I say something like an action, I expect the DM to respond. I don't expect it always to be what I thought was going to happen. Still if I think this DM is arbitrary and not striving for fun then as you say above, I would vote with my feet. What I wouldn't do is try to run that DMs campaign.

Just as "But I totally AM cool!" is the quickest way to erode your street cred, "But you HAVE to trust me" is one of the quickest ways to erode trust.

It is the implied assumption of D&D. You can't win against a bad DM. Just leave. Hopefully you will find a good DM that plays as you like and everyone can get along. If though you are coming into a game at a convention where you don't know anyone (something I only do to learn rules and never to really have fun), then there is an initial trust. Otherwise you can't play the game. If the DM abuses that trust then you find another game.

Why do you think that a person would think the things I've described are "ruining" it? They see it as defending some essential part thereof. That's the point. It's irrelevant to say "essentially nobody would knowingly and intentionally ruin their game," because they don't intend to ruin it, but their actions ARE campaign-damaging.

And yes! I really genuinely do think someone saying, "Nope, your spells simply blow up in your face, no I won't tell you why" is a pretty big red flag. (This is a real example of something that was explicitly asked of me in another thread just yesterday by @Micah Sweet.)

But I can very easily contrive an explanation for the spells blowing up that telling the player would absolutely not be what should be done. This may be rare but if I were playing in a game with a regular DM I liked I would start trying to figure out why in game I was having this problem. If it was some random DM that I had hardly met and who I already thought was a jerk then sure I might move on.

I think this saying is pretty apt:
What the DM says goes, but if he says enough stupid stuff, the players go.

 

[Emerikol]

Don't make it personal, please.

All I meant here was that your capacity for trust in a D&D game might be different from mine which seemed evident from the discussion.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

I wouldn't say it's related, no. It's a discussion that's forked off from the kobold example.

 

[Oofta]

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.

You haven't shown us it wasn't handled in a principled fashion, and I'm not really sure you could for a 1 time event. In order to declare that the DM was railroading us I would need several events, not one. All you've shown us is that you came to the conclusion that it was not principled. Also, I can't speak for anyone else and I'm not saying the DM handled this correctly. It's your harsh judgment of the DM and their style based on a one time event over them making a decision you didn't like. There are frequently times when a DM makes decisions based on information the players do not have. Even if the players know everything and disagree with the DMs call, that doesn't necessarily make the DM terrible if it's a rare occurrence. Sometimes reasonable people disagree.

There are times when the PCs do everything right and they still don't achieve their goal. What, if anything, would make that end result what you consider a principled decision by the DM?

 

[Oofta]

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.

So? They trust me to run an enjoyable, engaging, challenging campaign. If I'm doing that, at least most of the time, then their trust is justified. If it changes, we need to have a conversation. Just like I don't look at every detail of how they created their character or question their every motivation or decision.

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.

That's total and utter BS and does not match how people work. Reasonable people sometimes disagree. Would you allow a rogue thief to cast a spell that has a casting time of 1 action off a scroll as a bonus action? Yea or nay? The Thief/Rogue True Strike thread is over 300 posts now with no resolution.

It's fairly rare that player and DM have a mismatch but it does happen. In games I'm involved with I don't remember the last time there was an argument or long discussion in game because we all accept that the DM makes the final call.

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.

Eh. I think the shortage of DMs thing is overblown. A truly bad DM won't retain players. Why would you play in a game you don't enjoy? Great and good DMs may be fairly rare, but the way a mediocre DM gets better is by DMing and by the players given them open and constructive feedback. If someone can't find a DM they like and really want to play, they step up and DM. It's what I did long ago.

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.

You're still more likely to have a bad player than DM.

 

[Emerikol]

Then why do you not make the same assumption of players?

I do assume good faith by the players. I am very strong against cheating but I do not worry about it until it becomes super obvious. Then I permanently ban the cheater.