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.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Ok. Is that idea a problem for you?

Yes.

 

[Manbearcat]

That was not the claim.


This would be "notX leads to notY", which you claim is false, and think X not leading to Y shows this. But that is obviously faulty logic.

I.e. that people who can integrate meta considerations are able to do setting tourism in no way proves that people not being able to integrate meta considerations would not lead to setting tourism.

So this is why I was confused, and assumed you were implying what you now say you were not.

Ok, I misunderstood where you answered my request to clarify the pieces of that initial statement which I then tried to put together to discern your claim.

So what is the claim?

Is the claim that people who can't or won't integrate meta considerations into their thinking when declaring actions for PCs don't like forms of challenge-centered play or Narrativism that feature meta considerations?

I mean...that is pretty noncontroversial! So if that is your claim...I agree?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes.

Then I refer you to my post about contradictory preferences above.

 

[Mort]

In my view, communication is key. As a Dm, you should tell the player "I know this seems frustrating, but I promise you that it's for a good reason and there will be a payoff later on in the adventure."

While true, IME, if a DM actually has to say something like this (because a player called them out), the situation is likely already lost.

If this is likely to come up, better for the DM to front load the explanation "Hey all, this adventure may get a bit nontraditional and the rules may be bent more than usual, everyone cool with that?"

Or, better yet, don't do anything to avant garde unless the players are prepared for you to be doing at least something different.

I've seen someone who I knew to be a VERY good DM flub this one:

Other than me, everyone at the table was new to him. DM chooses, the very first session, to pull a scenario where when a PC called out an NPC - rats swarmed the PC and "killed" him, no roll, no save.

The schtick was supposed to be - the DM hands the PC a note explaining it was all a dream sequence. He wakes up to see all the others still sleeping in camp.

But the player was FUMING, he literally tore up the note, without reading it, and stormed out. The other players were pretty mad too, the session came to a screeching halt, and even after the situation was explained, the campaign was scrapped.

 

[CreamCloud0]

So you're agreeing with me. The reason the players failed is because the DM pre-authored a failure state.

i would most likely present it myself as 'the GM pre-authored a neutral setting element, which when combined with player actions and/or the consequences thereof, resulted an a failure state.'

An uninformed kobold or locked door or fake relic isn't a result of attempting to make the players fail, it's a result of attempting to simulate the world being a living, breathing entity with multiple agents and forces all constantly and simultaneously influencing things and acting out their wills.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Right. If I felt I couldn't do that, I wouldn't be playing with that person in the first place.

 

[Maxperson]

I think you are talking about something different from most of the RPGs that I play.

When I talk about players shaping, I'm talking about them (i) declaring actions for their PCs, and (ii) those declarations being resolved by application of the action resolution rules, rather than the GM making decisions (including imaginative manipulation of secret/hidden backstory) so as to produce an outcome that the GM wants.

In D&D, combat is resolved by action resolution rules, rather than "GM decides", all the time. In classic D&D, player interactions with doors are resolved via action resolution rules, rather than GM decides, all the time. In almost all versions of D&D, if a player says "My PC goes <over there?" then that is just taken to happen, without the GM having authority to say things like "You try and make your legs move, but they don't - you've just suffered some sort of spontaneous paralysis".

It is possible to generalise this sort of approach to action resolution beyond combat, doors and walking. For instance, it can encompass social interactions, including interrogations.

What I am talking about to give one example I used, is action points. The players got 1 action point per level that didn't stack(in order to encourage use before the next level). They could use the action point to influence the narrative in some non-game breaking way. Add a blacksmith a PC knows to a town they are visiting, encounter a small village on the way between cities, have the shopkeep take a liking to them to offer them a discount price on goods, etc.

 

[TwoSix]

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.

Gotta hard disagree there. BG3 is absolutely setting tourism. You're playing a predetermined plotline where you can make some choices that give you different scenes at the ending. It's a classic adventure path.

Ultimately, I'm playing to unlock the scenes that are in the game. The fact that this playthrough I fought Orin first and allied with Gortash and romanced Lae'zel instead of Gale doesn't change that.

 

[TwoSix]

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

I don't either, but that's pretty tangential to the topic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

I didn't say I would assume bad faith.

I said that that would be a red flag. As in, that's the kind of thing which erodes trust. Another phrase I specifically used before, repeatedly.

Nothing makes me lose trust faster than doing a thing and then following it up with, "Don't you trust me?" Obviously a more diplomatic approach helps, but that's not what people have presented here. Diplomacy isn't even on the table. Obey or get the boot. That's what has (repeatedly) come up in this conversation.

Your example though is clearly either 1 or 2 above. It's not an ambiguity in the rule. There is not rule where your spell blows up in your face. So either something really setting specific is amiss and the DM really can't tell you or the DM is just abusing you.

I...never said it wasn't? What I'm saying is: What response is appropriate from the player? Is feeling a little bit less trusting a reasonable response? It would seem it is from other people here in the thread, who recognize that this is a pretty heavy lift, that the DM is (again, to use a crude metaphor) "cashing in" a LOT of trust points. The DM doesn't start owning the Fort Knox of trust points. Trust points are earned with time and effort, with demonstration. Springing something like this on an unsuspecting player early in one's relationship with a DM is, as I have said repeatedly, a red flag. It is precisely the sort of thing that would make me hesitant to give any more trust points.

A better question would be something you think is according to the rules but the DM is genuinely just appearing to have a misunderstanding. I doubt your example is that.

I mean, it was chosen specifically because it was a real thing a real person on this forum actually asked me within the past few days. As in, it was something that couldn't be dismissed as invented, or bovine feces, or just a player being histrionic, or me painting DMs as horrible demons from the bowels of Hell. Because, y'know, every time I give examples, they get dismissed for being one of those things. None of those excuses work here. That was the whole point.

But let's go with what you've said here. What happens if a DM appears to have a misunderstanding? Or if the DM appears to be doing a thing without realizing that the rules don't permit it? You've made it quite clear from past posts that any form of questioning whatsoever is not to be tolerated. Accept what the DM says or else. Is that not true? Do you permit players to speak their minds if they sincerely believe something is being done wrong? Will you accept the possibility that someone could challenge you, not because they're being a jerk, but because they think you've made an innocent mistake and wish to see that mistake corrected?

I think though ultimately you just don't play with jerks. A jerk is not a one time jerk.

I reject the notion that any human beings are inherently jerks for the same reason I reject the notion that any human beings are inherently possessed of any specific personality type.