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]

I have! Often and vigorously!

My point now is that when the setting takes precedence over the characters, I think that the description of “setting tourism” fits. And I don’t see how anyone can see it as problematic when it literally describes what they want out of play.

So I am not saying that the setting is more important than the characters, nor I think making them opposites like that even makes sense. But I think the setting should have reality, it should have integrity, it should have teeth. It should feel like a real place that exist independent of the players, people in it should feel like real people with their own goals and beliefs, and the GM should advocate for the setting with honesty and integrity. And none of this is "against" the players, or even the characters, except in sense that characters might face adversity. It is to offer framework which they players can understand and which the characters can wield and push against. It is to make things feel real by treating them as real.

 

[TwoSix]

If all decisions are made using "mechanics", why have a DM? What mechanics do you propose? I roll the dice if I'm uncertain. But if I have decided that a soldier in an invading army doesn't have useful information I don't see a need for a roll.

What "mechanics" do you want? Especially for what could easily be an improvised chase?

The DM has to frame the next scene, and establish consequences for a negative result.

That's how I've played D&D (3.5, PF, 4e, and 5e) for the past 15 years, and it works just fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Depends. If you're doing OSR through a sandbox module, maybe I wouldn't use that term. If you're running through your standard WotC adventure or Paizo AP, I almost certainly would.

I guess I wouldn't know. I do the former all the time (not always OSR, but sandbox), but not the latter. Not my style as a DM.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Of course making your mark isn't a given. It depends on what you do and how the setting reacts. You know, the play loop.

Not sure what species choice has to do with this. Feels like a different agenda.

That's not the point. The point is whether the DM is even going to let those be possible because they're protecting their setting.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I really wish you would stop using the term setting tourism to describe a style you don't personally care for. Characters existing in a neutral setting is not setting tourism as long as the actions of the PC affect the setting.

I own a small business, a little corner store to be exact. Had a tourist urinate on my floor while buying beer. He affected my setting.

 

[TwoSix]

I really wish you would stop using the term setting tourism to describe a style you don't personally care for. Characters existing in a neutral setting is not setting tourism as long as the actions of the PC affect the setting.

Disagree. If you know that the adventure is going to go from Chapter 1 in the module to Chapter 7 in the end (unless you TPK or something), then that's setting tourism.

If you're not driving the bus, you're a tourist on the bus.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Doesn't mean they can't improve.

It doesn't, no. But improve in the sense and situation you are using it here is subjective. Not everyone agrees with you.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Why do Enworlders think saying that someone's opinion is an opinion is the ultimate gotcha?

 

[Oofta]

The DM has to frame the next scene, and establish consequences for a negative result.

That's how I've played D&D (3.5, PF, 4e, and 5e) for the past 15 years, and it works just fine.

Play any way you want. I just want people to stop saying that anyone who doesn't follow a specific style is engaging in adversarial DM and that is only "Out to win". Because the vast majority of us are not. We're out to have a fun game with our friends and framing it as DM vs player is really unfair.

 

[Oofta]

I own a small business, a little corner store to be exact. Had a tourist urinate on my floor while buying beer. He affected my setting.

Eww.