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.

 

[Oofta]

Since there a large number of possible fictions that could make sense, the question becomes "why not author a fiction that allows the character's actions to be the linchpin of play?"

And the number one reason to NOT do that is to create situations that prove that character considerations do NOT have primacy over setting agency.

If the kobold doesn't know anything, that's proof positive that the kobold's fictional state was NOT determined by the dramatic needs of the players, but rather by some supposedly neutral "simulative" process.

Where trust is required is that when the DM makes up a framing (like introducing a door), they are mentally using some neutral "simulative" process rather than acting antagonistically towards the players.

In my game if a captive is being questioned I'm going to try to figure out logically what that captive would know. In many cases it will have nothing to do with the meta narrative, especially if this is someone I didn't expect to be captured. But a random goblin in an invading army? Odds are they simply don't know much. Why would they? They were promised great reward or punishment for going where they were told, someplace they had never been before, likely under cover of night. It's not like they had google maps a globe of ultimate maps available.

If I add a locked door it's because I'm just doing my best to make the game interesting. Maybe I notice that Robin is bored and I know they love combat so I'm trying to spice things up a bit. Maybe I'm just tired and don't know what to do and I know combat will fill out the rest of the session. The last thing I would assume is an antagonistic approach.

Character considerations don't have primacy over setting. I've set up a campaign world, hopefully one the players will find interesting and engaging. But the setting? It's completely neutral and doesn't particularly care about this specific group of PCs.

 

[Manbearcat]

So, in other words, it "makes sense" if it makes the players happy and they don't see the outcome as failure?

Seems like railroading to me--just in the players' favor.

And why should all those things default to being in the player's favor? Just because they could?

These responses are not engaging with @hawkeyefan 's point at all; a point which has nothing to do with whether or not an outcome of a player's action declaration lands in the player's favor.

The point is simple:

* GMs who pre-author outcomes that result in a net failure-state are not doing a neutral thing in the slightest. Its not neutral in terms of the play itself nor the experience of the play.

* Those same GMs can't fall back on "but my choice of pre-authored outcome which resulted in a net failure-state made sense" because an alternative fiction and alternative gamestate can make just as much sense.

* Therefore "made sense" doesn't do decisive work here. So if "made sense" isn't doing the necessary work to validate the pre-authored outcome netting a failure state, then something else is happening. Need more information. That "something else" could be a number of things. Having a probing conversation about what that might be is productive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

this is the best answer I have ever heard. Yeah me and my buddies sit down, I thin I will rephrase it a little though,

We at the table matter more then setting. SO if any or all of us need a change to the setting, that is what we do...

Great! Being clear about what you want (as opposed to what you think is correct) is always best.

 

[Micah Sweet]

this is the best answer I have ever heard. Yeah me and my buddies sit down, I thin I will rephrase it a little though,

We at the table matter more then setting. SO if any or all of us need a change to the setting, that is what we do...

I would also say that the players are IMO more important than the setting, but the PCs are not.

 

[Emerikol]

And that's fine, but neutral "simulative" play is only virtuous for certain games and play styles.

If by virtuous desired and admired by players that is true. Some players want that style and others don't. Thus my often given advice that a very detailed session 0 is a great way to head off later trouble.

I think for many of us we are pushing back because the criticism is given universally. If the complainer said they were playing a narrative game where players create fiction outside of their characters, then I'd say the DM is off base as he didn't establish that the kobold would not talk. I think though that in D&D there is at least the common style and unless you clarify you should expect a lot of us to be thinking in those terms.

 

[ezo]

These responses are not engaging with @hawkeyefan 's point at all; a point which has nothing to do with whether or not an outcome of a player's action declaration lands in the player's favor.

The point is simple:

* GMs who pre-author outcomes that result in a net failure-state are not doing a neutral thing in the slightest. Its not neutral in terms of the play itself nor the experience of the play.

* Those same GMs can't fall back on "but my choice of pre-authored outcome which resulted in a net failure-state made sense" because an alternative fiction and alternative gamestate can make just as much sense.

* Therefore "made sense" doesn't do decisive work here. So if "made sense" isn't doing the necessary work to validate the pre-authored outcome netting a failure state, then something else is happening. Need more information. That "something else" could be a number of things. Having a probing conversation about what that might be is productive.

"Made sense" are their words, not mine.

 

[TwoSix]

Who said anything about "virtuous"? There's no moral judgement from me. It's what I prefer.

But for your style, that's the right way to play. If a DM played in an opposing style, you wouldn't be comfortable with it. If a player asserted an opposing style, they wouldn't mesh well with your games.

That's what I mean as "you view this as virtuous".

 

[Oofta]

If by virtuous desired and admired by players that is true. Some players want that style and others don't. Thus my often given advice that a very detailed session 0 is a great way to head off later trouble.

I think for many of us we are pushing back because the criticism is given universally. If the complainer said they were playing a narrative game where players create fiction outside of their characters, then I'd say the DM is off base as he didn't establish that the kobold would not talk. I think though that in D&D there is at least the common style and unless you clarify you should expect a lot of us to be thinking in those terms.

I would also note that by default D&D is simulative. I see nothing that changes that in the 2024 DMG. The DM creates the world, describes the scenes, the players act, the DM responds to those actions. Of course there are many styles of play and people should do what makes sense to them.

What I find annoying is this assumption this is at least implied that if a DM is not running a narrative game they are an adversarial DM. It almost feels like every locked door, every unhelpful captive, every McGuffin that turns out to be worthless, can only be done by a DM laughing cruelly behind the scenes as the players gnash their teeth in despair. That's simply not true, in almost every case the DM is just doing their best to make the game fun. Sometimes styles just don't match up.

 

[Manbearcat]

"Made sense" are their words, not mine.

Not sure what work you're intending with this response?

When someone says or writes "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" they're talking about the sense-making apparatus that is the GM's particular mental model of setting and extrapolations inherent to that model.

They're talking about the GM's personal sense of internal causality and plausibility. Those things are simply a referent for "(GM) sense-making."

Please don't tell me you disagree with that!

 

[TwoSix]

These responses are not engaging with @hawkeyefan 's point at all; a point which has nothing to do with whether or not an outcome of a player's action declaration lands in the player's favor.

The point is simple:

* GMs who pre-author outcomes that result in a net failure-state are not doing a neutral thing in the slightest. Its not neutral in terms of the play itself nor the experience of the play.

* Those same GMs can't fall back on "but my choice of pre-authored outcome which resulted in a net failure-state made sense" because an alternative fiction and alternative gamestate can make just as much sense.

* Therefore "made sense" doesn't do decisive work here. So if "made sense" isn't doing the necessary work to validate the pre-authored outcome netting a failure state, then something else is happening. Need more information. That "something else" could be a number of things. Having a probing conversation about what that might be is productive.

And my hypothesis is that pre-authored failure states have to be introduced in order to "prove" that the setting logic runs off of neutral "sim" algorithms.