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.

 

[hawkeyefan]

The artifact turning out to be a fake is a classic genre trope so that is entirely fair play.

It certainly is a trope. The incomplete hypothetical provided made me feel like it was problematic. It would very much depend on how this was determined, and if it was possible for the players to learn about it, and other factors.

The locked door I would prefer to be a challenge to get through quickly (see: chase scenes in The Matrix).

Yeah, that’s mostly what was missing in the example… some use of rules of some kind to give the players a chance to get away. Without that, it’s just the DM deciding what happens straight through.

The kobold matter sounds like it might have been sloppy improvising.

Maybe. If I find myself in a situation where I’m struggling to improvise, though, I don’t punish the players for that. I work through it… I take a moment, or I ask the players what info they’re looking for to help spark an idea. Or maybe I rely on some procedural element like a rumor table or similar.

As a player, if a GM handles things the way the GM in the example did, it’s a red flag for me. I expect it’s more likely to happen repeatedly than it is to be an isolated matter.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Deities may be a bad example because they always factor in a big way in my world. Religions are major movers and shakers. if someone wanted to play an exile from a fallen Kingdom, then I might find something because it's a big world. But all of my established history is based on the Gods.

Yeah, that would be way easier and would work for me. Plenty of fallen kingdoms around, and even inventing new ones is not such a big deal.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

We'd have to fight about a definition of "agency" again to settle that question. "Tourism" carries a strong implication players don't have any; regardless of their prompts/actions they'd get the same exposition.

Yep. The implication is passivity and lack of agency. And if it is used to just describe games that truly are like that, then fine. But it is used more broadly.

 

[Emerikol]

Another thing I've noticed is that the players who want to play the unicorn in your setting are often the players you half wished had showed up. They aren't these really great immersive players that you might want to go out of your way to make happy. Those players almost always see the setting and embrace it fully. They create characters that resonate with the setting.

 

[Emerikol]

Yep. The implication is passivity and lack of agency. And if it is used to just describe games that truly are like that, then fine. But it is used more broadly.

I agree it is not an ideal term. I think maybe just traditional style setting first gaming. A major motive is exploration and interaction with the setting. It's also true though that unlike with tourism it means you get to interact with the setting and you can impact it in significant ways depending on your actions. The game though is never twisted or bent to revolve around you as there are thousands if not millions of NPCs out there living their lives too. But if you become a hero in this land it's because you won out and became a hero for real. The deck wasn't stacked in your favor.

 

[tetrasodium]

Living in florida might give me an unusual view of tourists, where the heck do tourists go that the tourists themselves lack the agency to decide where they go & what they do on their vacation/visit/trip? Is tourist being used as a substitute for something like "guided tour attendee" that you might see at a zoo or museum?

IME they go where they want do what they want wear bikinis in 60degree weather drive slow use their hazzards in heavy rain to blind folks & panic buy things that shouldn't be bought in prep for any tropical storm that needed no prep

 

[TwoSix]

I wouldn't unless it was a very small move from what I have. Instead of asking players for setting specific background ideas I just ask them for more abstract guidelines. Then we meet and I go over various options that fit what he wants. I typically though when recruiting will do enough advertising to telegraph the style of game and flavor of setting I'm running.

At this point in my gaming career, I'm generally only interested in strictly predefined settings in two cases.

1) It's a previously defined property that the majority of the players are familiar with, and thus using its tropes enhances the connection to the fiction for the group. (This might be something like Star Wars, or Alien.)
2) It's a relatively compact concept that also connects its diegetic concepts into novel mechanics. (Here I'm thinking something like Dolmenwood, or Break! RPG.) If you flesh out fantasy pantheon #204135 with some new classes, spells, and feats to really hook me into the setting, I'm way more enthused to explore it.

 

[TwoSix]

We'd have to fight about a definition of "agency" again to settle that question. "Tourism" carries a strong implication players don't have any; regardless of their prompts/actions they'd get the same exposition.

We did that a few years ago, no reason to do that again!

 

[TwoSix]

Living in florida might give me an unusual view of tourists, where the heck do tourists go that the tourists themselves lack the agency to decide where they go & what they do on their vacation/visit/trip? Is tourist being used as a substitute for something like "guided tour attendee" that you might see at a zoo or museum?

Yes, that's 100% how I'm using it. "Tourist" as people on a guided tour.

 

[TwoSix]

Another thing I've noticed is that the players who want to play the unicorn in your setting are often the players you half wished had showed up. They aren't these really great immersive players that you might want to go out of your way to make happy. Those players almost always see the setting and embrace it fully. They create characters that resonate with the setting.

One of my number one rules of optimization is "If your DM makes some homebrew races and/or classes, play those. There is no way they're going to be underpowered."