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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hence the need for democracy and the peaceful transference of power.

In the context of D&D, there is an increasing sense of egalitarianism where players have equal weight in the narrative.

The social power rules can describe intent. For example, that the purpose of rules is for players to "fun", and players should choose actions that bring "delight", is hardly a math equation. But it does serve to formally define what the game is for, and how to play it. It isnt for the DM to fantasize an world that players are unable to contribute to. Heh, "here is my museum, please, look around but dont touch anything".

That said. I feel it is a useful model to have the players play their characters (including supporting characters in bastions etcetera), while the DM plays the setting. Just as the characters adjust and adapt so too does the setting. I like curated settings (as long the players can interact with it meaningfully). I hope these dedicated settings can remain while the power balance shifts around a little bit.

Where is the textual evidence of that "increasing sense pf egalitarianism"? As has been said, the play loop remains the same.

 

[Oofta]

Hence the need for democracy and the peaceful transference of power.

In the context of D&D, there is an increasing sense of egalitarianism where players have equal weight in the narrative.

The social power rules can describe intent. For example, that the purpose of rules is for players to "fun", and players should choose actions that bring "delight", is hardly a math equation. But it does serve to formally define what the game is for, and how to play it. It isnt for the DM to fantasize an world that players are unable to contribute to. Heh, "here is my museum, please, look around but dont touch anything".

That said. I feel it is a useful model to have the players play their characters (including supporting characters in bastions etcetera), while the DM plays the setting. Just as the characters adjust and adapt so too does the setting. I like curated settings (as long the players can interact with it meaningfully). I hope these dedicated settings can remain while the power balance shifts around a little bit.

I just glanced through my AD&D 1E DMG and guess what? They talk about things like trying to ensure that while the game has challenges, you still want them to succeed. That the goal of the game is to have "hundreds of hours of fun and excitement to many eager players!" Almost as if it's always been recognized that if you don't have players that are enjoying the game you don't have a game.

At the same time I have yet to see anything about players having a different role in the narrative of the game in the new books. You can repeat that it's there as much as you want and if it's what works for you, fantastic. But if there has been a rebalancing of narrative control I haven't seen it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Hence the need for democracy and the peaceful transference of power.

Democracy has been tried. It failed, because popularity contests are even less likely to produce good leaders than random genetics, and there is no system that cannot be leveraged by bad actors.

 

[abirdcall]

I just glanced through my AD&D 1E DMG and guess what? They talk about things like trying to ensure that while the game has challenges, you still want them to succeed. That the goal of the game is to "hundreds of hours of fun and excitement to many eager players!" Almost as if it's always been recognized that if you don't have players that are enjoying the game you don't have a game.

At the same time I have yet to see anything about players having a different role in the narrative of the game in the new books. You can repeat that it's there as much as you want and if it's what works for you, fantastic. But if there has been a rebalancing of narrative control I haven't seen it.

I would say that 3e saw a change in narrative control that 5e reversed.

It had a simulationist approach where characters made checks rather than the player describing what their character actually does.

They could say that wall is stone, wet, and with handholds so it has X DC because it says so in the books.

And the DM was not supposed to just say that the characters succeeded or not, it was up to rolling dice.

 

[Yaarel]

Democracy has been tried. It failed, because popularity contests are even less likely to produce good leaders than random genetics, and there is no system that cannot be leveraged by bad actors.

Democracy is successful, and persists.

In my view, democratic traditions are under strain, because the extreme wealthy effectively bribe and hire politicians. So the power leans toward a plutocracy. The wealthy exercise power via paying for election ads and so forth. It is hard to say things are getting "worse", because the original US government was literally a plutocracy − something like, only land owners could vote. Plus the slavery nonsense.

Probably democracy is still creaking forward, but there are real threats to it.

Dictatorship causes wars.

 

[Oofta]

I would say that 3e saw a change in narrative control that 5e reversed.

It had a simulationist approach where characters made checks rather than the player describing what their character actually does.

They could say that wall is stone, wet, and with handholds so it has X DC because it says so in the books.

And the DM was not supposed to just say that the characters succeeded or not, it was up to rolling dice.

I'm not overly concerned about how the player describes what their PC is doing, I think every table should figure out what works best for them.

But I'm looking at my 3.5 DMG right now and they talk about different styles of game including what they call "Deep-Immersion Storytelling" where "A whole game session may pass without a single die roll".

 

[abirdcall]

I'm not overly concerned about how the player describes what their PC is doing, I think every table should figure out what works best for them.

But I'm looking at my 3.5 DMG right now and they talk about different styles of game including what they call "Deep-Immersion Storytelling" where "A whole game session may pass without a single die roll".

Sure, but I think they put that in there because the default play was the opposite of that.

It was a step away, but it wasn't another world away.

 

[Umbran]

Democracy has been tried. It failed, ...

Democracy is successful, and persists.

Mod Note:

Rhetorical question: Who the HECK do you two think you are, that you feel this is appropriate for this site?

Both of you are done in this discussion.

Do not test us on the no politics rules right now, folks.

 

[Oofta]

Sure, but I think they put that in there because the default play was the opposite of that.

It was a step away, but it wasn't another world away.

But it was still there, part of the core advice for DMs. The guidelines have always been just that, guidelines and nothing more.

 

[abirdcall]

But it was still there, part of the core advice for DMs. The guidelines have always been just that, guidelines and nothing more.

Every edition has the DM ultimately in charge of the narrative but on a gradient 3e is the one that steps away from that the most.

We were supposed to create NPCs using PC rules. That is wild.

I found the players who had the hardest time learning 5e were ones who started with 3e for this reason.

All this to say that I disagree with the idea that D&D is moving toward shared narrative and game control because it has actually shifted away from that.