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.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

That's wild. As a player I would have of course just rolled with it, as to me it is plainly obvious that this is a setup for something. No sane GM would do this sort of thing otherwise. And I've definitely done similar stuff as a GM. But yeah, perhaps a first game with stagers is not the best possible place for such.

 

[Emerikol]

It depends on what "the benefit of the doubt" means.

In my experience, the vast, vast, vast majority of games are a DM asking a group of people to be players, whether putting up an ad, asking friends, doing organized play, whatever. It is quite rare (as in, not quite unheard-of, but so rare as to be generally not worth bothering) for players to gather and hope that a DM elects to run a game for them.

That's why you get things like a "pitch"--that's the DM proposing something hopefully tempting, so that players will bite. Since this is far and away the most common mode of play, it is the DM hoping the players choose to buy in. As a direct consequence, it is also the DM needing to prove that that player buy-in was, in fact, justified.

The DM needs to be given the space to do that! I don't question that at all. And, of course, because trust is a two-way street, that does in fact mean that the players have some (and I really do stress some) obligation to go along, even if it's not always clear the whys and wherefores. But the players need to be given a reason to continue attending, session after session. They need to know that their time is being well spent. Hence: the DM must earn the players' trust and enthusiasm. They cannot demand either; to demand them is to destroy them. (Just ask any child on Dad's perfectly-planned vacation how they feel about Mandatory Fun.)

Then I don't think we are a million miles apart on this issue. I think you want to interrupt the game on the spot if you feel it is warranted and I don't. I agree, if trust is the right word, that it is gained or lost over time and eventually a bad DM will become known as one.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Indeed, well said.

And here is related sage advice from the highest possible authority:

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm hoping (hoping!) that if an enemy spellcaster casts fireball on the party from 300 feet away, and you tell the DM "I'm pretty sure that the range of fireball is 120 feet", they don't scream at you "DON'T QUESTION MY AUTHORITY!"

I mean, that's sure as hell how it seems from half the participants in this thread. A "Viking Hat" DM that doesn't get immediate deference responds with a boot.

The correct response is either a) "My bad, let me re-do that action." or b) "Yes, that is indeed normally true that fireball only goes 120 feet." And for b), I am 100% expecting that in my authority as the scene-framer I can create NPC capabilities that go beyond the normal constraints for spells of abilities, and that I have narrative reasons for doing so.

Okay. I have specifically avoided using enemy actions as an example for a reason: namely, that they are not necessarily known to work the same as PC ones. (I'm not at all the kind of person who demands that NPCs work by the same rules as PCs. I think that way madness lies, in terms of game design, but that's definitely off-topic.) Hence why I keep using the, again fully real actually-asked-on-this-forum, example of a PC casting a spell and it blowing up in their face, as in, literally an explosion that causes them harm, without any prior warning and with zero explanation from the DM (beyond, as noted, "trust me.")

 

[TwoSix]

what's your judgement on a situation where it wouldn't create a failure state if it had been encountered under different circumstances from different decisions? if the locked alley door only was only a failure state because it was encountered while being chased by guards, thus giving the players not enough time to attempt to pick the lock?

Depends. Why was the door mentioned in the first place? Was it because there was a door on the map? Or did the DM just add a door because they felt it enhanced verisimilitude?

 

[Manbearcat]

No, it is not my claim! I made no claims, you did; I tried to clarify what they were and I still do not know!

But not sure this is going anywhere, I change the gears a bit. Why you present "challenge-centred play or narrativism that features meta considerations" and "passive setting tourism" like this? Like they were the only options, completely leaving out what majority of RPG play actually is, which is the players overcoming challenges and shaping the course of the story via the actions of their characters, so that there is not much need for meta considerations? Like why this colossal excluded middle?

Because I have absolutely no interest...whatsoever in talking about the entirety of TTRPG play! That wasn't the point of my entry into the conversation!

Again.

1) The conversation seemed to be putting exploration into one giant bucket, thereby running together very distinct forms of exploration in TTRPGs. As it should be clear at this point, like so much other TTRPG conversation/analysis that runs together concepts or mystifies play, I think this is not good for the health and heterogeneity of our hobby.

2) I demonstrate these important distinctions in TTRPGs by citing two forms of exploration that diverge from each other significantly in both (a) the priorities of the participants in play and (b) in the way system is designed and implemented to facilitate those priorities.

I only need to discuss two forms of exploration (and no more) that diverge in order to demonstrate that exploration needs to be disambiguated.

That is it.

That is the whole deal.

At this point I have no idea exactly how we got here...but I'm pretty sure it starts with people escalating to offense-taking unnecessarily and inferring the worse possible interpretation of a pretty freaking benign collection of words. I also know this sort of nonsense is exactly why I've reduced my posting dramatically.

This is ridiculous that we're here.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Well, the main problem with this is that it wasn't an "uninformed" kobold. It was literally a "insufficiently intelligent to be able to speak coherent sentences" kobold, despite the fact that multiple PCs could speak the kobold language (and, thus, kobolds can speak language!), and the party had previously interacted with kobolds who could speak.

Which, with that context, it becomes a lot harder to see this as anything but "the GM pre-authored a failure," my guess would be because he didn't anticipate that approach and realized it might result in an anticlimax* if he went along with it. So he improvised, and went with the first reason he could think of for how that approach would definitely fail....even though that reason conflicted with established setting information. Rather than own up to the mistake, or level with the players and attempt to resolve the problem, he dug in his heels and stuck with it for the whole rest of the session.

*GMs in general really need to get over their fear of anticlimax. It is not nearly as bad as people claim, as long as it's relatively uncommon....and if it is somehow actually commonplace, the GM should be looking at where they're messing up.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

I mean obviously the possible outcomes are predetermined, it is a computer game! But there are a lot of them and it is about much more than the ultimate ending, the players actions affect all sort of things along the way, so the participation is not passive at all.

 

[TwoSix]

Okay. I have specifically avoided using enemy actions as an example for a reason: namely, that they are not necessarily known to work the same as PC ones. (I'm not at all the kind of person who demands that NPCs work by the same rules as PCs. I think that way madness lies, in terms of game design, but that's definitely off-topic.) Hence why I keep using the, again fully real actually-asked-on-this-forum, example of a PC casting a spell and it blowing up in their face, as in, literally an explosion that causes them harm, without any prior warning and with zero explanation from the DM (beyond, as noted, "trust me.")

I would agree that if that happens unilaterally, with no chance for any sort of PC reactivity, then it's extremely poor scene framing and is definitely on the borderline of "unprincipled play".

If some sort of Passive Perception-type check was allowed and failed, it's a little better but still not good at all. It's not "leave the game" bad, IMO, but definitely a mark against the DM.

 

[Oofta]

That's wild. As a player I would have of course just rolled with it, as to me it is plainly obvious that this is a setup for something. No sane GM would do this sort of thing otherwise. And I've definitely done similar stuff as a GM. But yeah, perhaps a first game with stagers is not the best possible place for such.

I agree that I would read the note. I can't imagine doing otherwise. Without knowing what the player was thinking I would say that it's likely they weren't a player I would want in my game.

On the other hand I did have a DM once just randomly kill off a PC about 30 seconds after we stepped into a dungeon. We didn't all storm out, but perhaps we should have based on how the rest of the session went. That DM didn't run a second session.