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]

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.

Well your initial presentation of this problem was poorly done. That is a bad DM. Leave that DM. I still don't surround him with the player committee and try to force another resolution. That DM just gets fired.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Okay.

Why do you expect a player, engaging in good faith, to be a petulant jerk over a disagreement with you as DM?

 

[Emerikol]

Okay.

Why do you expect a player, engaging in good faith, to be a petulant jerk over a disagreement with you as DM?

Questioning in game what the DM is saying is happening IS being a petulant jerk. Especially if the DM says no and some sort of rebellion is carried out. In my world of player ethics there is no rebellion that tries to overthrow a DMs ruling that is justified. The rebellion is saying "we've had enough of your bad game management and we are going". The players can't possibly know each time if a DM is ruling poorly or well. But after long enough they can start to think he is doing so based on his history of rulings. Often times, the players figure out why the bad guys did what they did by the end of the adveture and then they realize it would have been stupid to throw a fit during the game.

Maybe depending on the nature of the disagreement discussing it later could be appropriate. But if it is about something outside the purview of the players like NPC motivations, world events, etc... then even then it is not appropriate.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Questioning in game what the DM is saying is happening IS being a petulant jerk. Especially if the DM says no and some sort of rebellion is carried out. In my world of player ethics there is no rebellion that tries to overthrow a DMs ruling that is justified. The rebellion is saying "we've had enough of your bad game management and we are going". The players can't possibly know each time if a DM is ruling poorly or well. But after long enough they can start to think he is doing so based on his history of rulings. Often times, the players figure out why the bad guys did what they did by the end of the adveture and then they realize it would have been stupid to throw a fit during the game.

Maybe depending on the nature of the disagreement discussing it later could be appropriate. But if it is about something outside the purview of the players like NPC motivations, world events, etc... then even then it is not appropriate.

So. Just so we're completely clear here.

Any question--any question at all--is automatic evidence that the player is a problem.

That's where we're at here. Speaking up, at all, doing anything whatsoever that isn't instant deference, is now proof positive that the player is a problem.

And people question why I have a dim view of all this!

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

No you really are not saying that because what you are saying is broad and really only goes one way. The post you quoted was narrow in how it was about who at the table gets to be responsible for world building and who gets to explore that world. Declaring my PC had valid ID as a former slave would have been world building so I threw the fork to the gm. Had the gm said no I did not have said ID i would have walked the path of exploring the immediately obvious choice of exploring the world built by the gm and some what needed doing to obtain said ID (do an adventure dealing with rebels for the powers that be). As a result of throwing the choice to the gm we were able to do our shopping dive into the adventure from a very different angle and ultimately gave have a lot more influence in how we handled the rebel movement in thay∆

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.

No. I can think of no way the singular statement of "I don't know... Given my background, do I have ID?" Rises to the level of "conversation". It's a mere question at best. The rest of your post largely depends on drawing a bunch of conclusions from that inflated question and running very var very fast with them.

It was a question because I honestly didn't know if a former slave who showed promise in wielding the arcane should have ID marking him as a thay citizen.

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..."

No I would probably roll my eyes. What I did not talk about is the not previously relevant way my thay former slave wizard had fruitlessly declared in town after town (rarely with good results( that he was an arcane scholar from thay who was xxxx up until that point sometimes the locals had something useful in response, more than once they had "heard /know about your kind and thought we should all take a barh then go freeze deep in the forest where good respectable people won't be disturbed by that good deed"

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?

I would very much be skeptical if a background element so significant not showing up until a point where it could completely trivialize a problem. "I'm a wizard from Thay" is not how one establishes a good image for themselves to much of FR.

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

There can very much be issues because the answer determines if ID is so widespread that even a former still kinda slave who had not yet completed the graduate work they set out to accomplish that the same might apply to any random nobody at the bottom of that society's boot. That's. Choice I want the gm to make for world building reasons not me as part of the very first customs gate type interaction with authority that we had in thay.

This is also something I never said.


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!

That was part of one statement not two. The "you" referred to whomever decided such a thing.

∆ it's not and was not subtle, think about what kind of rebels there are in thay and what they are rebelling against

 

[Xetheral]

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

Understood. My response assumes that the existence of the door and its locked state is being generated on the fly.

In the specific paragraph you quoted I was describing a hypothetical combination of context and DM intent in which I wouldn't find your example to be railroading, namely one where the locked state of the door was determined on the fly based on other explicitly or implicity pre-established fiction, such as the neighborhood crime rate. I did not mean to suggest that the locked state of the door itself had been predetermined. I apologize for not being more clear.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't know if they were or not. I know you are sure they weren't. Why are you so sure? Did the DM tell you that they had an agenda to make sure no interrogation would yield information?

 

[Micah Sweet]

"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.

Who said you can't ask questions? Sometimes you have to let a call stand in the moment, but after the session you can talk about it more come to an equitable solution (probably. Maybe not always).

 

[TwoSix]

Questioning in game what the DM is saying is happening IS being a petulant jerk. Especially if the DM says no and some sort of rebellion is carried out. In my world of player ethics there is no rebellion that tries to overthrow a DMs ruling that is justified. The rebellion is saying "we've had enough of your bad game management and we are going". The players can't possibly know each time if a DM is ruling poorly or well. But after long enough they can start to think he is doing so based on his history of rulings. Often times, the players figure out why the bad guys did what they did by the end of the adveture and then they realize it would have been stupid to throw a fit during the game.

Maybe depending on the nature of the disagreement discussing it later could be appropriate. But if it is about something outside the purview of the players like NPC motivations, world events, etc... then even then it is not appropriate.

If the DM makes a call that precipitates multiple players having "some sort of rebellion", then the amount of trust necessary to run a game has already been lost.

If a player has a disagreement with a call I've made, then we stop the game for a minute or two and hash it out. If the players don't have buy in to the framework of the game and my decision-making, then there's really no point in continuing the game.

 

[Emerikol]

So. Just so we're completely clear here.

Any question--any question at all--is automatic evidence that the player is a problem.

That's where we're at here. Speaking up, at all, doing anything whatsoever that isn't instant deference, is now proof positive that the player is a problem.

And people question why I have a dim view of all this!

You are creating a straw man. Asking a question for clarification is not being a jerk. Challenging the actual ruling inside the play session is being a jerk. Arguments during play are counterproductive and lead nowhere but lost play time. If the question is mechanical then take it up at the end of the session. If the question is setting consistency then the same.

The DM explaining what is seen is never as good as actually seeing something so I expect some back and forth about what is seen at times. That is normal.