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]

When I GM (whatever game it is), I "play to win," and "I play to perpetually put PCs in tough spots that they (through their players) have to get out of (until the game is over)." And it doesn't matter, because the games don't contain the circumstances that allow me to win by fiat so that adversarial approach to GMing never coincides with players having a compromised sense of how the gamestate moves from this state to that state.

Yeah, not buying this. I think you've run Blades in the Dark for example? This is the sort of game you mean by this? If the GM was genuinely adversarial, it would be trivial to make the players lose and even kill their characters. The GM sets the position and effect and decides the outcome of failure. And of course they still just frame basically everything. Yeah, nope!

 

[Micah Sweet]

This looks like you agreeing with what I wrote above, Micah.

So...you agree that people smuggle in those component parts I mentioned above to "GM plays to win" and that is why they land on that particular formulation of Adversarial GMing.

When I GM (whatever game it is), I "play to win," and "I play to perpetually put PCs in tough spots that they (through their players) have to get out of (until the game is over)." And it doesn't matter, because the games don't contain the circumstances that allow me to win by fiat so that adversarial approach to GMing never coincides with players having a compromised sense of how the gamestate moves from this state to that state.

Now the cost, to someone like Micah Sweet, would be "yeah but I have to deal with a transparent, table-facing game and consistently work under the cognitive circumstances of having a game layer in mind while I'm playing my PC...that impinges upon my (Micah Sweet) particular needs for immersion."

And that is fine. We've circled back to the beginning of cognitive orientation to play paradigms and the reality that costs and tradeoffs and individual particulars always must be accounted for in leisure activities.

Yeah, I wasn't disagreeing. I was providing an explanation for why the discussion is the way you say it is. I still feel this all comes down to conflicting preferences.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I have to be ready, because my games have no roads and no map.

How do you play without a map? Make things up as you go? I've never been comfortable playing that way.

 

[Oofta]

For me, it means that the setting is there for the characters.

And that means ... what? I keep seeing a lot of vague words that sound good but don't really say anything whether that's your intent or not. We have a world that's there for the characters and systematic way to make decisions without any real explanation.

I also disagree. I have a persistent campaign world. It was not designed for any one group of players or PCs. I sometimes have multiple groups inhabiting different parts of that world. It doesn't revolve around anything, it exists and there are hopefully fun challenges and adventures to be had. It's affected by what the PCs do but it is not designed for anyone but what I think an interesting fantasy world would look like.

 

[Manbearcat]

Really?


GM plays to win is not saying the GM is out to win? I mean that would be pedantically correct and maybe I'm just missing the entire point so correct me if I am. But otherwise? It's been quite clear, if we aren't doing a narrative story type game, we're adversarial DMs.

Do you seriously not understand what I wrote Oofta?

The only person that exchange (and beyond it) cites as being an Adversarial GM is ME CITING MYSELF (plainly) AS AN ADVERSARIAL GM.

It explains the disagreement over the concept of Adversarial GMing is about smuggling in particular priorities and system dynamics to the concept of Adversarial GMing. In no way does it indict you or anyone else as being an Adversarial GM.

How in the world is this your takeaway from that passage?

/boggle.

Let me be clear:

Trad GMs with Sim priorities are not inherently Adversarial GMs (like me). The way they maintain that status is through not playing to win (because they trivially can win via system and authority over offscreen setting).

 

[TwoSix]

GM plays to win is not saying the GM is out to win? I mean that would be pedantically correct and maybe I'm just missing the entire point so correct me if I am. But otherwise? It's been quite clear, if we aren't doing a narrative story type game, we're adversarial DMs.

@Manbearcat said they themselves are an "adversarial DM" because they push the characters hard during play, ideally hoping to test the character's beliefs and desires as stringently as possible.

But, game groups who accept that the DM has nigh-unlimited world-building power would often frame "adversarial DMing" instead as the DM using their broad latitude to place the PCs in unwinnable or untenable situations.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Perhaps they want to explore and actively interact with, even change/make their mark on, the setting through the actions of their characters? I wouldn't describe that as "setting tourism".

Sure. But others would, and have explained what they mean. So let’s discuss the qualities of such play rather than constantly complaining about a way to reference it easily in discussion.

I mean, I really don't understand what is complicated about this. In my game the players certainly have several times searched or tried to perceive something that simply was not there. So they didn't find it there! I'm sure there could be more elaborate examples, but that's the most common one. Oh, they also tried to kill fire-based creatures with a fireball. Didn't work, because I had sneakily pre-authored them to be immune to fire! Seems like pretty normal and basic stuff to me.

If you don’t see the differences between these types of elements and a DM blocking reasonable player actions by nothing other than fiat, then I’m not sure we can make any progress.

 

[Manbearcat]

Yeah, not buying this. I think you've run Blades in the Dark for example? This is the sort of game you mean by this? If the GM was genuinely adversarial, it would be trivial to make the players lose and even kill their characters. The GM sets the position and effect and decides the outcome of failure. And of course they still just frame basically everything. Yeah, nope!

You know I've run it.

Since its release in 2017, I would be surprised if any individual on the planet has run it more than I have. So I'm slightly more confident in my credibility on that system than I am in yours.

If you think setting Position and Effect is some kind of killshot of GM fiat, then you really don't understand that game...like at all. You clearly don't understand the GM constraints (both systemic procedures and the table-facing principles that must be indexed every time you set them) on setting Position and Effect.

You cannot possibly give me an example of doing what you're describing that isn't a violation of (a) the actual procedures of setting Position and Effect, (b) the GMing principles that undergird it, and (c) the fiction that serves as binding input on play. But if you'd like to take a crack at a hypothetical, I'd gladly entertain it.

 

[TwoSix]

How do you play without a map? Make things up as you go? I've never been comfortable playing that way.

I mean, I sometimes have a world map.

If I'm forced to DM online, I have a small library of generic location maps I can use as needed.

But other than that? No. I picture the scene in my mind and then explain it to the players.

 

[TwoSix]

And that means ... what? I keep seeing a lot of vague words that sound good but don't really say anything whether that's your intent or not. We have a world that's there for the characters and systematic way to make decisions without any real explanation.

I also disagree. I have a persistent campaign world. It was not designed for any one group of players or PCs. I sometimes have multiple groups inhabiting different parts of that world. It doesn't revolve around anything, it exists and there are hopefully fun challenges and adventures to be had. It's affected by what the PCs do but it is not designed for anyone but what I think an interesting fantasy world would look like.

As an example, in one of my current games a player asked to play a half-orc/half-leonin. That's certainly an interesting hybrid race I had not considered before, but race is pretty lightweight mechanically so we cobbled together a definition and the player was really happy.

Since I had that character, as well as 2 other players playing half-orcs, I decided that orcs and orc-hybrids were a fairly prevalent race in the setting, and made a lot of NPCs that showed up orcs and half-orcs in the future.

I was able to do that because the setting was just a loose framework designed to support the characters. Even if I was playing a more structured setting like Eberron, making a change to racial populations or adding a new race is something I consider pretty trivial.