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.

 

[Emerikol]

On adversarial GMing:

Adversarial GMing is not, in-and-of-itself, some terrible thing. What is terrible is when adversarial GMing coincides with players having a compromised sense of how the gamestate moves from this state to that state.

That_sucks.

That may be true but I think genuine adversarial gaming is a bad thing in a roleplaying game with a DM like D&D supports. (in general).

The DM should of course roleplay the evil NPCs but he should be rooting for the players ultimately. That doesn't mean he plays the NPCs poorly. It just means he works to be fair and unbiased. The DM knows nearly everything about the setting but the NPCs do not. I try to sit down and evaluate the NPCs and their knowledge often rolling when in doubt before determining what they do in the game. If find having battle plans premade before the players engage is often a way to fight the game being adversarial.

So if the principles and play priorities that undergird what the hell we're all doing in the first place aren't clear...if the rules, procedures, action resolution, and incentive structures aren't clear or aren't stable...if the nature (stakes, prospective lines of play, etc) of a decision-point isn't clear...if a particular consequence-spaces isn't clear...if advancement scheme or authority distribution are suddenly turned on their head...

I think in general this is true. 100%. I think were we might depart is at the edges. Nobody wants a game that is total chaos as to how the world even works or a situation were the players sense rarely read true. What we do want though I think is a world where there is mystery and unknown. The DM is the caretaker of that and in some cases again at the edge the DM has to know things the players can't know. He can't explain himself or the whole thing is ruined.

That_is when adversarial GMing becomes a problem.

And the horror stories we've all heard or witnessed for decades are when adversarial GMing meets the above play dynamics.

I think in all honestly most bad DMing is because a DM is immature and just wants to have his way even when it's not for the good of the game. DM power is essential but it must be benevolent power.

I mean...nearly every game I GM is designed to be adversarial in nature. I'm the opposition. I'm pushing back hard. I'm trying to make PC lives dangerous and difficult...I'm trying to suss out what they're made of and who they are. I'm trying to suss out if the player can "turn this thing around" or not.

And its not like I'm soft or meek as a GM. I set things up to punish...and I follow through. PCs do not escape the abundance of games that I run "intact" (for any given value of intact).

But players don't have a compromised sense of how the gamestate moves from this state to that state. They know how the gamestate moves and they know that will remain stable and in-line with the particular system we're playing. So we don't sweat how hard I push or, put another way, how adversarial I am as a GM.

I just run the game fairly which is what I think you are getting at in the third paragraph. I am not trying to be hard. I'm as hard as the villains are. Sometimes a villain is dumb but very strong. That means if the group is clever they can get an advantage. Sometimes the villain is not that powerful but oh is she clever. I just play the bad guys as well as I think they deserve to be played. Sometimes I joke that the NPC union will strike if this or that decision is made. Not inside the games but just in casual conversation.

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I, personally, would apply "setting tourism" to most non-sandbox modules. If the expectation of play is that we're going to start in Chapter 1 and "X sessions later" get to the last boss fight in Chapter 6, that's setting tourism.

"Setting tourism" isn't some degenerate state; I imagine it's probably the most common playstyle across the entire spectrum of TTRPG tables.

It is the most common playstyle across the hobby. It likely isn't all that close, to be honest.

That's why I wonder if the use of it as a negative term towards DMs is a bit odd. Essentially, we are calling the majority of DMs bad at their craft because of the setting they choose to play in, or worse, the book they chose to buy.

I think we'd be better served, if we wish to dive into the topic of DMs lacking reactivity, to look at plot and not setting.

If setting tourism applies to all campaigns, why bother with the phrase?

Exactly.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Generally, it would mean making up the world for the specific campaign. Other than deciding we're using "X system", the players bring the dishes and the setting is a potluck buffet.

Well, I'm not doing that. I usually first build the setting and then invite people to play. And neither are most people, I assume, as otherwise they would not buy ready-made settings.

 

[Oofta]

In what other game would this be acceptable? If you make no mistakes in Chess, you’re not going to lose. If you make no mistakes in football, you’re not going to lose. Maybe a draw would be the worst outcome?

Where are you getting that idea? Sometimes the opposing team is just simply more competent and it doesn't matter how well you played.

I think this idea fails to register a lot because people get so caught up in portraying a world that they forget they’re also playing a game.

I mean… if I’m pitching a perfect game, and I get to the last batter and the count’s full, and I throw a fastball that hits the inside corner of the plate and the umpire calls it a ball… I’m gonna be annoyed, to put it mildly.

I don’t want a game that’s unfair.

Bad stuff happens because I fail? Or one of my fellow players messes up? Or because of some procedure? Okay, that happens!

But if bad stuff happens just because the DM wants it to? That’s crap.

Bad stuff happens to the protagonists in all sorts of fiction for dramatic purposes. This idea that nothing bad should ever happen, no bad outcome should ever be possible if the players execute a plan is just foreign to me. I don't always expect to win the day. If I never win the day that's different. But without failure, success becomes boring.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And for some playstyles, that's OK. In others, it isn't.

That's true of virtually everything we talk about. Like most else, this comes down to personal preferences.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But, from context, it's glaringly obvious that is not how @Manbearcat used the term. I only took the time to call it out because it seemed people were missing it.

Yes, but this is again some weird attempt to redefine language so that "adversarial" doesn't mean what everyone thinks it means. I don't understand why people do this, especially people who then complain that people antagonistically misunderstand them! Stop trying to use words to mean different things than everyone else, that might help!

 

[Emerikol]

Again, it’s not about players not being able to handle failure. It’s about when no mechanics are used to determine the outcome of an uncertain action, when the DM just decides how the uncertain thing goes.

I agree if the DM just says, "You fall off this cliff you got too close" that sees very arbitrary. Some kind of roll should have been made. This example with the fake treasure though doesn't seem like that at all. The DM placed a fake treasure for some in game reason. Sure if he turned it fake right at the end then that is bad. You've been willing to accept that the DM preplanned it that way as a premise. As such, I don't see that example as valid. I can see some examples were you are right so I don't want to reject what you theorize entirely but some of these examples just don't fit.

 

[TwoSix]

Unless the players are also cooking the meals I don't really see a functional difference.

"I want to play a cleric of the sun god. I'm envisioning the sun god's church as being pretty much monotheistic, and antagonistic to the churches of other gods."

Would you allow that pitch in your already defined setting? I would (and honestly be pretty enthused about it), because any setting cosmology I've already defined in my head is pretty much tissue paper strength.

 

[TwoSix]

It is the most common playstyle across the hobby. It likely isn't all that close, to be honest.

That's why I wonder if the use of it as a negative term towards DMs is a bit odd. Essentially, we are calling the majority of DMs bad at their craft because of the setting they choose to play in, or worse, the book they chose to buy.

I think we'd be better served, if we wish to dive into the topic of DMs lacking reactivity, to look at plot and not setting.

I literally said in a post a page or two back that it isn't negative. Are people not reading every post before they reply?

 

[DinoInDisguise]

I literally said in a post a page or two back that it isn't negative. Are people not reading every post before they reply?

I must of missed it. My apologies