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.

 

[TwoSix]

Okay.

Do you agree that the fact that you need to say, "I promise you that it's for a good reason" is, in and of itself, an appeal for trust, meaning, it is something you understand is (to use a crude metaphor) "cashing in" your trust points?

For sure.

 

[tetrasodium]

I don’t know what you mean by “actually going to the dark and openly wearing it on his sleeve for others to see.”

Paraphrased terminology, swap heart to Evil

Spoiler: Shakespear coined it in Othello

Iago:
It is sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Definition of WEAR ONE'S HEART ON ONE'S SLEEVE

to show one's emotions very openly… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

Might predate him, no idea[/URL]

The research involved multiple adventures (he asked no questions & just rahrahrah cool lets go). I wanted to be clear to him and everyone else at the table it would not be a capital E Evil deed fitting the darkest pages of ye'old Book of Vial Darkness rather than mere dark is not evil... In fact one of the adventures was explocitly to recover a literal page from said book.

spell involved a sacrificial altar he and the group recovered from the blighted (and now much more dangerous) necromantically active crypts used by a necromancer they dealt with early in the campaign (ie back in level 1-5ish range) and a "wraith blade" the party had taken from a... umm... revanent? uperghoul? wraith? in an adventure somewhere prior to the "hey can my cleric research a way to get a familiar..." question? . s.. The blade itself inflicted necromandtic damage on any living creatures attempting to wield it... All of these were obtained through the guidance of a literal demon (arcanaloth) who they met in what was described as "a shady magic crackden kinda place in a bad part of town★" that was only found after he said he was cool with the research & results going in a dark(evil) direction.

How did he fail? Did he not want to play an “evil” character? What did you give him as a familiar? An imp or something?

It would have created a bloody gore encrusted skeleton made from the transmuted soul of a live humanoid. He got everything he asked for with no real personal cost to his PC (ie no but it reduces your $whatever or you need to take Y class/feat/etc). Why he thought any of the pulled aside "are you sure?" efforts from the GM and collection of capital E Evil steps would result in an imp or a "cute owl" is beyond me.

★and they came across the same store in more than one town with the same demon shopkeep each time just to dispel any doubts about it being bad news.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, what happens when the DM does a thing that could be 1 or 2, but it's really obviously very consequential, and it has a clear, immediate, significant negative impact on the PC(s), and the thing it's doing specifically and directly contradicts clear, basic, publicly-shared rules of the game, like the text of a spell or a class feature?

Because that's example I gave. This out-of-the-blue "nope, the rules don't matter, past precedent doesn't matter, you just have to trust me as DM that a spell blowing up in your face for no discernible reason is 100% okay." Which, again, this is not something I made up. It's something another user on this forum asked me about.

I still don't see a reason to assume bad faith on the DMs part in that scenario, although I can certainly understand the player being frustrated.

Sometimes that happens.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay.

I think a DM needs to earn that major display of trust before they do those things.

I flatly reject any argument which claims that the DM deserves that trust automatically simply because they decided to run a game. The DM needs to prove to me that I should stay at the table--I don't need to prove to that DM that I'm worthy of playing at their table.

That's the impasse, yes. These are contradictory preferences, and neither is more valid a want than the other.

There is IMO really nothing to be done.

 

[Maxperson]

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?

Maybe he rolled randomly on the fly and it came up locked. Maybe he has a thing where every 4th door is locked and you happened to have bad luck. Maybe there's a rule that alley doors have to remain locked and you haven't discovered that yet.

There are reasons that might not have been railroading. And reasons that it might have been. There's no way to tell which it is just from what you wrote there, though.

 

[Emerikol]

Not unless you presume bad behavior. It can also be standing up for yourself. Something I rather value.


Spending half an hour whining and moaning about something? Sure. Standing up for yourself and challenging something you consider a pretty obviously bad call, on the other hand, is extremely important--because no DM is perfect and sometimes they really do get things wrong. I get things wrong all the time, and I rely on my players correcting me when I make mistakes. I'll never not make mistakes, no matter how hard I work toward doing better; that doesn't mean I don't, it just means I'm not fool enough to think that my efforts will guarantee mistakes never happen.

Maybe it's because as an experience DM it happens rarely enough that it isn't worth stopping the game over. I suppose a brand new DM in training maybe you'd allow or a bit more of this especially if the players are veterans. I don't recommend though putting the neophyte in as a DM.

For me, responding to challenges generates more challenges. yes DM learn your game and don't make a zillion mistakes. When you do make one though, let's not derail the game.

But even if I entertain your approach, it would be a question and an answer and not a lengthy discussion right? So that will still be better than some who might derail a game for an hour. I've seen it happen in some games. It was never worth it.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I would point out, also, that saying a certain style of play is not "challenge-centered" is in no way derogatory or some kind of attack.

I mean, case (ii) described above is a perfect encapsulation of what happens in Baldur's Gate 3, and that's on the short list of greatest cRPGs ever made!

Well, how challenge centred it is probably depends on your difficulty settings! But what BG3 definitely is not, is passive setting tourism or storytime. Even though as a computer game the options presented are obviously more limited than in a game run by human, the choices the players can make impact the course of the events and the fates of the characters in a big way. And that's why it is a great computer RPG; it actually comes to very close to what is normal and expected in the tabletop RPGs, the choices of the players mattering and moulding the story.

 

[TiQuinn]

Paraphrased terminology, swap heart to Evil

Spoiler: Shakespear coined it in Othello

Iago:
It is sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, 'tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Definition of WEAR ONE'S HEART ON ONE'S SLEEVE

to show one's emotions very openly… See the full definition

www.merriam-webster.com

Might predate him, no idea[/URL]

The research involved multiple adventures (he asked no questions & just rahrahrah cool lets go). I wanted to be clear to him and everyone else at the table it would not be a capital E Evil deed fitting the darkest pages of ye'old Book of Vial Darkness rather than mere dark is not evil... In fact one of the adventures was explocitly to recover a literal page from said book.

spell involved a sacrificial altar he and the group recovered from the blighted (and now much more dangerous) necromantically active crypts used by a necromancer they dealt with early in the campaign (ie back in level 1-5ish range) and a "wraith blade" the party had taken from a... umm... revanent? uperghoul? wraith? in an adventure somewhere prior to the "hey can my cleric research a way to get a familiar..." question? . s.. The blade itself inflicted necromandtic damage on any living creatures attempting to wield it... All of these were obtained through the guidance of a literal demon (arcanaloth) who they met in what was described as "a shady magic crackden kinda place in a bad part of town★" that was only found after he said he was cool with the research & results going in a dark(evil) direction.

It would have created a bloody gore encrusted skeleton made from the transmuted soul of a live humanoid. He got everything he asked for with no real personal cost to his PC (ie no but it reduces your $whatever or you need to take Y class/feat/etc). Why he thought any of the pulled aside "are you sure?" efforts from the GM and collection of capital E Evil steps would result in an imp or a "cute owl" is beyond me.

★and they came across the same store in more than one town with the same demon shopkeep each time just to dispel any doubts about it being bad news.

So what was his reaction to all of this, and what did he alternately want to do?

 

[TwoSix]

Okay.

I think a DM needs to earn that major display of trust before they do those things.

I flatly reject any argument which claims that the DM deserves that trust automatically simply because they decided to run a game. The DM needs to prove to me that I should stay at the table--I don't need to prove to that DM that I'm worthy of playing at their table.

I would disagree here. I start off by giving the DM the benefit of the doubt, but if they ask for trust and don't follow through, then obviously I'll consider my options.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, we'll definitely check the text of a relatively rarely-used spell or class feature as needed. But I'm not doing a deep dive into forums or Sage Advice or something like that.

Personally I've never seen any value to Sage Advice or the like. Jeremy Crawford isn't at my table.