D&D 5E The Adventuring Day XP budget makes sense when you consider it is a budget for you to stock your dungeons

[FallenRX]

I was building a dungeon, and i kinda just realized it while making it, the "Adventuring Day" Budget, is just a budget for filling out your dungeon basically, you just pick monsters to fill out that budget, make a dungeon, add some traps/hazard, place treasure, and then add some details. Thats 5e Prep really.

Honestly thinking about it that way recontextualized a lot of 5e's design for me in an interesting way, which is this game is really designed around dungeons, the adventuring day is just trying to explore that dungeon really, with monsters moving around the environment, and some hourly random encounters thrown in(And restocking rooms using the random encounters). A lot of the game makes sense in that context really. It particularly feels made for an old-school kinda dungeon crawl in a big environment with a lot of loops and routes. Now note, this doesnt mean you need to rail your players into every encounter(The game only really expects a minimum of 3 encounters that burn some daily resources really). But mainly thats kinda what the adventuring day is designed around.

But it also made me realize you can abstract this to do a bit more with it on a larger scale, like making a wilderness pointcrawl where the dungeon is kinda this, and also minimize with some effort the adventuring day to about 3-4 encounters per day too.

 

[Charlaquin]

100%. Remember, 5e was playtested primarily with the Caves of Chaos from Keep on the Borderlands. While it’s certainly capable of handling things other than dungeons, the mechanics were absolutely designed for classic dungeon delving play, and so much of the design that can seem odd at a glance makes perfect sense in that context.

 

[iserith]

Yep. Do more dungeons. Maybe include some dragons from time to time.

 

[robus]

Precisely. It’s a design guide.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I was building a dungeon, and i kinda just realized it while making it, the "Adventuring Day" Budget, is just a budget for filling out your dungeon basically, you just pick monsters to fill out that budget, make a dungeon, add some traps/hazard, place treasure, and then add some details. Thats 5e Prep really.

Honestly thinking about it that way recontextualized a lot of 5e's design for me in an interesting way, which is this game is really designed around dungeons, the adventuring day is just trying to explore that dungeon really, with monsters moving around the environment, and some hourly random encounters thrown in(And restocking rooms using the random encounters). A lot of the game makes sense in that context really. It particularly feels made for an old-school kinda dungeon crawl in a big environment with a lot of loops and routes. Now note, this doesnt mean you need to rail your players into every encounter(The game only really expects a minimum of 3 encounters that burn some daily resources really). But mainly thats kinda what the adventuring day is designed around.

But it also made me realize you can abstract this to do a bit more with it on a larger scale, like making a wilderness pointcrawl where the dungeon is kinda this, and also minimize with some effort the adventuring day to about 3-4 encounters per day too.

Absolutely this. It's like, what, a five room dungeon? Fill it out with extraneous things that might tell a story. I do love the easiness of the prep of spend some points, make an interesting few fights, and then wrap up the rest of the set design

 

[aco175]

I tend to build my day off the amount of time I have in a gaming night. This is about 3 fights with a couple other segments for some roleplay or a trap or riddle. About a 5-room dungeon.

 

[Krachek]

The sole problem with Xp budget rule is that some expect a precision of +- 2% when in fact it is more like +- 50% and often more.

 

[Minigiant]

100%. Remember, 5e was playtested primarily with the Caves of Chaos from Keep on the Borderlands. While it’s certainly capable of handling things other than dungeons, the mechanics were absolutely designed for classic dungeon delving play, and so much of the design that can seem odd at a glance makes perfect sense in that context.

The core issue in 5e's adventure mchanics is that the demographics of the people who playtested it and the material that was playtested which informed its design is different form the demographics of the people playing it currently and games they like to play today.

 

[Jolly Ruby]

This! Also, you can stock your dungeon with one treasure hoard of the appropriate tier for each adventuring day worth of XP, and by doing that the number of adventuring days from level 1 to 20 alings perfectly with the number of expected treasure hoards.

 

[Charlaquin]

The core issue in 5e's adventure mchanics is that the demographics of the people who playtested it and the material that was playtested which informed its design is different form the demographics of the people playing it currently and games they like to play today.

I’m not sure I would describe that as an issue with the mechanics. The mechanics do exactly what they were designed to do, and they do it quite well. But, I don’t disagree with your greater point; 5e managed to attract an audience that isn’t especially interested in what it was designed to do, and is now stuck in an awkward spot where the audience as fallen in love with the square peg and doesn’t want the corners to be cut off of it. They can squeeze it through the round hole if they tilt it just so, and that’s how they like playing with it.