A point to remember here is that the table of the XP per DAY is not a mandatory thing. It gives you a more like a maximum threshold for the amount of XP that a character can handle in a day. Any DM is free to "slow down" its adventure by programming the encounters in such a way that the amount of XP per day is as half, or even less, as declared in that table.
A point to remember here is that the table of the XP per DAY is not a mandatory thing. It gives you a more like a maximum threshold for the amount of XP that a character can handle in a day. Any DM is free to "slow down" its adventure by programming the encounters in such a way that the amount of XP per day is as half, or even less, as declared in that table.
This, my progression would be slower because my short rests are 8 hours and a long rest is 24, my setting's weeks are further structured into 4 days each (20 days to a month etc.) this turns the adventuring "day" into 4 day adventuring weeks, so you would progress a little slower, assuming the DM pushed the encounters to challenge you. But part of the reason I do that is because it's hard to justify so many fights between the game's normal long rests, and it feels like a huge slog if I just make everything dungeons with multiple encounters in a row- I dig a 2-3 Encounter dungeon set up, based around shrot rests, with a full adventure between long rests, and frequently, level ups. I actually use milestones and give them a level for every singular adventure completed- travel time, resting, etc. All contribute to the in-game time passing, if you want to push it more you could use the variant rulesi n the DMG for week-long rests and slower healing.
A point to remember here is that the table of the XP per DAY is not a mandatory thing. It gives you a more like a maximum threshold for the amount of XP that a character can handle in a day. Any DM is free to "slow down" its adventure by programming the encounters in such a way that the amount of XP per day is as half, or even less, as declared in that table.
You can half the xp, you can't really slow down the encounters as they are what the Party can handle in a day and anything less really means you have to increase the difficulty of the encounters themselves or make everything super easy on the PCs.
This is somewhat unfair to lot of spellcasters and depending on how the game goes, could make you have to wait a day in order to gain a spell that is needed rather than 8 hours. I'm not sure how well I like having short rests extended and keeping PCs from being able to switch spells known without waiting an entire day.
By halving the XP, I meant halving the XP that the party earns in a day. The official encounters builder says that the party can manage 6 encounters (medium difficulty) before a long rest. You can plan your adventure by having 2 or 3 encounters a day. Slightly more for a dungeons. This way you level up very slowly.
By halving the XP, I meant halving the XP that the party earns in a day. The official encounters builder says that the party can manage 6 encounters (medium difficulty) before a long rest. You can plan your adventure by having 2 or 3 encounters a day. Slightly more for a dungeons. This way you level up very slowly.
Right, which is what I disagreed with. Lowering it to 2 or 3 encounters per day makes all those encounters mostly cakewalk. You can make them harder encounters, but that isn't really keeping the PCs from earning the xp that they would be and means you have to make some places artificially small. The only real solution I see is lowering the xp earned from killing a CR 1 creature from 100xp to like 50xp divided by the party, not having 50% less CR 1 creatures that day.
I think Suddenly Night hit on the salient point: a shift towards an epic, save the world kind of story line. Personally, I don't really mind this shift. I think it was 4th that kind of clarified the mindset for me that the games I run are the "heroic stories." Yes, in the real (fantasy) world that these stories take place in there are people, heroes even, that progress slowly, that may save a village then go a year without doing anything more noteworthy before embarking on another quest (I know, exaggeration). But are those stories the most interesting? In the same world, there are instances where fate conspires to bring together powerful heroes who are charged with stopping an incredible disaster. I look at my games like a focusing lens, scanning the pages of mythical history and stopping on that moment to explore that one story of those incredible heroes and changed the world. To me that's the interesting story and the 5th edition advancement and method of story lines focuses on that.
By halving the XP, I meant halving the XP that the party earns in a day. The official encounters builder says that the party can manage 6 encounters (medium difficulty) before a long rest. You can plan your adventure by having 2 or 3 encounters a day. Slightly more for a dungeons. This way you level up very slowly.
Right, which is what I disagreed with. Lowering it to 2 or 3 encounters per day makes all those encounters mostly cakewalk. You can make them harder encounters, but that isn't really keeping the PCs from earning the xp that they would be and means you have to make some places artificially small. The only real solution I see is lowering the xp earned from killing a CR 1 creature from 100xp to like 50xp divided by the party, not having 50% less CR 1 creatures that day.
Not necessarily. A lot of things can go wrong with a single Medium or Hard encounter. Halving the XP earned by the party in a single encounter may make the player feel that they are doing a lot of work for very few XP points.
By halving the XP, I meant halving the XP that the party earns in a day. The official encounters builder says that the party can manage 6 encounters (medium difficulty) before a long rest. You can plan your adventure by having 2 or 3 encounters a day. Slightly more for a dungeons. This way you level up very slowly.
Right, which is what I disagreed with. Lowering it to 2 or 3 encounters per day makes all those encounters mostly cakewalk. You can make them harder encounters, but that isn't really keeping the PCs from earning the xp that they would be and means you have to make some places artificially small. The only real solution I see is lowering the xp earned from killing a CR 1 creature from 100xp to like 50xp divided by the party, not having 50% less CR 1 creatures that day.
Not necessarily. A lot of things can go wrong with a single Medium or Hard encounter. Halving the XP earned by the party in a single encounter may make the player feel that they are doing a lot of work for very few XP points.
Its still the best way to solve the problem without making the encounters trivial or really easy in order to not go above a certain xp amount.
I tend to draw out time between encounters, because even though the fight may be short (a full round is only 6 seconds) the characters wouldn't be fully ready to go right after that. I agree that playtime is short, but you can add in a lot of non-combat encounters to make it take longer and have less of a focus on dungeon-crawling, or have downtime come into how you rp the session. It's all down to your preferred style of play and the DM in question.
As a DM, you can build that into a campaign. Use the story milestone xp variant instead of straight xp based on monsters or awarding on non-combat encounters. Or just run the game whatever way you want. You're the DM, you can do that.
I like the xp tracking because it allows everyone to know how much they've progressed at the end of each adventure. If they level up, we go over the new skills and abilities they have and go through a training session that teaches them those skills. I'm not a fan of having characters learn things in the middle of an adventure if there's no one around to teach them. It feels to video game-y instead of being a proper story. That's something you could include as well, as it would slow down time spent adventuring and now they need to find someone who will teach them their new skills.
Having only ever played/DMed 5e, I really wanna try long term recovery and real time ageing. I can see how the paradigm shifted to the more speedy way to play. People rarely care how many in game days their Skyrim character has played, and the quicker one can heal the quicker they can grind. Now the D&D's popularity has reached such heights, it's not surprising that it geared itself towards that sort of concept, but the idea of getting to track the dates of your adventure LOTR style sounds awesome from both a player and DM standpoint. I may have to put it past my group and see if they're game.
I really like Agile_DM's take on this. I've been playing since the Red Box Basic Set days, and still occasionally play in a 1e game, while DMing and playing in 5e games on a more regular basis. The rules definitely can speed up the pacing, but it's more about the social contract surrounding that particular game.
In one game (1e, level 8... 10, something?), another party member and I had the idea to build a stronghold on a road we had just cleared of bandits. We ran with the idea of building an inn for income, which steamrolled into a casino/ amusement park/ keep/ everything that could make us wealthy and strengthen our political standing with the major towns on the trade route. Some major downtime would be involved. We spent 10 minutes discussing this, most people laughing, some rolling their eyes but chuckling still. The rest of the party wasn't interested, even remotely. So we sent letters to the major cities to gain title to the property and hired an architect to design it and moved on. Everyone happy.
In a 5e game I'm playing in, we're currently 3-4 level. We had just finished a milestone in an ongoing campaign. We took a week of downtime. I repaired some armor I found in a dungeon (blacksmith background) and got some plate mail out of it. Our casters transcribed a couple spells they had found ( By the RAW, both of these activities probably should have taken more time/money. DM made the call). One party member did some thieving, and the DM used these activities to give us additional story hooks we could follow. We all gained something: items, relationships with NPCs, more investment in our characters, etc. The DM announced this possible break towards the end of a session, we spent 10-15 minutes discussing it at the table, texted back and forth a little about the details, RPed a couple important bits at the beginning of the next session, and were on our way. Everyone happy.
It now has me thinking of projects my character would undertake given future downtime. So I now feel invested in the character and see the possibilities of this more. If you want to see what a person values, look at how they spend their time. Downtime can help mold a character, fill out their personality, help you grow them in a new direction. Granted, I enjoy the RP pillar of D&D quite a bit. Some of the people I play with don't. For me, downtime can be rewarding, even if it just helps my character gain depth. The spells, items, reputation, whatever, are just carrots to get others on board. And if they're not interested, oh well. But I don't really see a player getting pissed if a DM says that "some time has passed." If that player doesn't want do downtime activities, they don't have to do so, but it can give others a chance to pick up a new language, skill, connection, hook, etc.
As I see it right now, downtime is more about depth than advancement, but it can provide both. It is all about what kind of fun you and your group want to have. About the social contract at your table.
* CoS just finished: 9 months of weekly play. Killed Strahd on day 11 at lvl 10.
* Elanon -- 10th level on day 57 with 20 days spent researching at a library on future adventure research.
* SKT -- 5th lvl, 5th day and Hill Giants raiding Greenfield's.
Back to me original point. 5e is possible, using RAW to advance past, but that short calendar timetable has a negative impact on role playing!
In SKT, my mage has seen more, knows more, and is near powerful as Naxine, but why would Laeral Silverhand trust me more/as much as her agent she has known for years?
"Save the world" campaigns have been mentioned, and we DM's have probably made the race the bad guy scenarios that makes this worse. But I also wonder if modern age has forgotten that even they best BBG's sent messages but courier and their plans are more often months than minutes...
TL:DR changes, esp long rest, makes it possible to go lvl 1-20 too quick and DMs should try to slow it down or role play and sorry suffers.
I think the beauty of 5e, is how easy it is to include an adapt the old rules.. like ageing, etc... I use a lot of elements of 4e, because my players love the strategy...
2nd edition felt like a drag... Sorry 5 years to get level 5... Bullshit... 5e is supposed to take about 40 weeks from level 1 to 15. Considering my players are level 9 and have been going on for about 15 weeks now. That is pretty accurate and very far from your 3 weeks to 10th level. Which literally means they got 3 levels per weeks. Thats insane if you actually did that.
5e is also much closer to 1st edition. And it seems to me like you should play the grit version of the rests. From dmg they say long rest is 8 days. Short rest is 8 hours. Now that gets closer to what you want. So why not just play the gritty rules from dmg.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
I really enjoyed a 5e campaign wherein the only change to the rules was that Short Rest = 8 hours sleep and Long Rest = 1 week. TONS of RP, building connections, and 'growing roots' in that particular campaign. (And we were really forced to be realistic about our limitations; if you can't clear out that cave in 1 day, you'd either be comfortable trying to sleep surrounded by the enemy or get more creative!) We used the crap out of the various "Downtime Activity" sections of the various handbooks!
Since this was necroed, I might as well chime in. We've seen the same thing in Video Games. Younger generations don't want to sit down and meditate to regain mana like we did in Everquest... much less hand craft arrows (heck, you really can't even do that well with the basic 5e rules... you can use a carpenter or woodworker's mallet but Fletcher is a dying last name). I think 4e worked well to do two things that brought D&D up to bringing in a younger crowd. Tactical tabletop (love it or hate it, the first few times you play it was fun... and then you realize how much of a time sink it is) and video game style progression. Faster in, faster out.
I've also had perspective in WoD where there was no level progression... I think we went the better part of a year on weekly sessions before we got an in-game break where we could actually spend experience points. That was brutal. In looking through many modules, I am seeing that a fast progression is expected. I have also had games where it felt like we leveled up every night. I too like a bit longer between so that you build relationships more. I certainly see the benefit to it. I think most DMs are too worried that their players won't like them if they don't hand out new shiny things regularly, so, it can have an impact on how campaigns are crafted. And if you want to follow a published adventure, I think you would have to intentionally slow the pace down as many of them expect things to happen in short order or people will die.
As for making short rests equal to a day and long rests equal to a week... that is very unfair to your spellcasters (except maybe the wizard). There still needs to be balance. And there are good tension points built around the current short / long rests as you progress through the adventures. I can't imagine some of the modules faring well with those being modified. You can't have lives in danger and expect PCs to survive when the pressure of not resting means they never get to use abilities that are integral to success. Flat out, I wouldn't play a cleric if you told me I had to take a week to recover my spells. Suddenly warlock casters are the best thing going because cantrips are king!
I do like the Downtime activities... but realistically, I have to be an adventurer to support my Downtime habits. Downtime doesn't pay well (and I agree that it shouldn't), but adventuring pays really really well in the modules. So well, that there isn't a good reason to do any of the other. I do, however, think that rewarding players with land a castle is a good way to slow down progression. Suddenly, you have lots of other crisis situations that demand attention and pull them away from adventures. It is a huge money sink. It takes time and brings them into contact with a lot of people... even if they haven't had contact with that many of them before. And let's face it... how many castles are handed out at whim by monarchs anyway? Especially if you have a new crop of adventurers solving problems for a kingdom... that may or may not make it to higher levels... In that regard, I think the tools are there to provide opportunities for a DM to slow things down from the fast pace of module style adventuring.
All in all, I like the move away from the video game style that was 4e and the throwback to earlier editions without as much complicated math0s. I am seeing a larger pool or people that are interested in playing or at least aware of the game (though other sources have also helped this phenomena). I also find it the easiest edition I have ever tried to explain to anyone. So, if we lose some things in speed of progressions in today's fast paced society... at least we are expanding the audience. And over time, I think mature groups will find they want to enjoy the richer aspects of the game than speed leveling.
I'm sure 5.5 is coming... with all the books of 3.5 in expanded sections... or something like that. Though, in this case, I have actually seen quite a few of my older friends that haven't done any gaming in quite a long time embrace 5e because it feels more like the old editions. I've been very surprised. Some of them were die hard THAC0Spians... and mostly they know that the details are in the story, not in the rules.
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A point to remember here is that the table of the XP per DAY is not a mandatory thing. It gives you a more like a maximum threshold for the amount of XP that a character can handle in a day. Any DM is free to "slow down" its adventure by programming the encounters in such a way that the amount of XP per day is as half, or even less, as declared in that table.
This is somewhat unfair to lot of spellcasters and depending on how the game goes, could make you have to wait a day in order to gain a spell that is needed rather than 8 hours. I'm not sure how well I like having short rests extended and keeping PCs from being able to switch spells known without waiting an entire day.
By halving the XP, I meant halving the XP that the party earns in a day. The official encounters builder says that the party can manage 6 encounters (medium difficulty) before a long rest. You can plan your adventure by having 2 or 3 encounters a day. Slightly more for a dungeons. This way you level up very slowly.
I like the feature that Pathfinder has with Fast, Medium and Slow advancement options and that would be easy enough to adapt to 5e.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I think Suddenly Night hit on the salient point: a shift towards an epic, save the world kind of story line. Personally, I don't really mind this shift. I think it was 4th that kind of clarified the mindset for me that the games I run are the "heroic stories." Yes, in the real (fantasy) world that these stories take place in there are people, heroes even, that progress slowly, that may save a village then go a year without doing anything more noteworthy before embarking on another quest (I know, exaggeration). But are those stories the most interesting? In the same world, there are instances where fate conspires to bring together powerful heroes who are charged with stopping an incredible disaster. I look at my games like a focusing lens, scanning the pages of mythical history and stopping on that moment to explore that one story of those incredible heroes and changed the world. To me that's the interesting story and the 5th edition advancement and method of story lines focuses on that.
I tend to draw out time between encounters, because even though the fight may be short (a full round is only 6 seconds) the characters wouldn't be fully ready to go right after that. I agree that playtime is short, but you can add in a lot of non-combat encounters to make it take longer and have less of a focus on dungeon-crawling, or have downtime come into how you rp the session. It's all down to your preferred style of play and the DM in question.
As a DM, you can build that into a campaign. Use the story milestone xp variant instead of straight xp based on monsters or awarding on non-combat encounters. Or just run the game whatever way you want. You're the DM, you can do that.
I like the xp tracking because it allows everyone to know how much they've progressed at the end of each adventure. If they level up, we go over the new skills and abilities they have and go through a training session that teaches them those skills. I'm not a fan of having characters learn things in the middle of an adventure if there's no one around to teach them. It feels to video game-y instead of being a proper story. That's something you could include as well, as it would slow down time spent adventuring and now they need to find someone who will teach them their new skills.
Having only ever played/DMed 5e, I really wanna try long term recovery and real time ageing. I can see how the paradigm shifted to the more speedy way to play. People rarely care how many in game days their Skyrim character has played, and the quicker one can heal the quicker they can grind. Now the D&D's popularity has reached such heights, it's not surprising that it geared itself towards that sort of concept, but the idea of getting to track the dates of your adventure LOTR style sounds awesome from both a player and DM standpoint. I may have to put it past my group and see if they're game.
#OpenDnD. #DnDBegone
I really like Agile_DM's take on this. I've been playing since the Red Box Basic Set days, and still occasionally play in a 1e game, while DMing and playing in 5e games on a more regular basis. The rules definitely can speed up the pacing, but it's more about the social contract surrounding that particular game.
In one game (1e, level 8... 10, something?), another party member and I had the idea to build a stronghold on a road we had just cleared of bandits. We ran with the idea of building an inn for income, which steamrolled into a casino/ amusement park/ keep/ everything that could make us wealthy and strengthen our political standing with the major towns on the trade route. Some major downtime would be involved. We spent 10 minutes discussing this, most people laughing, some rolling their eyes but chuckling still. The rest of the party wasn't interested, even remotely. So we sent letters to the major cities to gain title to the property and hired an architect to design it and moved on. Everyone happy.
In a 5e game I'm playing in, we're currently 3-4 level. We had just finished a milestone in an ongoing campaign. We took a week of downtime. I repaired some armor I found in a dungeon (blacksmith background) and got some plate mail out of it. Our casters transcribed a couple spells they had found ( By the RAW, both of these activities probably should have taken more time/money. DM made the call). One party member did some thieving, and the DM used these activities to give us additional story hooks we could follow. We all gained something: items, relationships with NPCs, more investment in our characters, etc. The DM announced this possible break towards the end of a session, we spent 10-15 minutes discussing it at the table, texted back and forth a little about the details, RPed a couple important bits at the beginning of the next session, and were on our way. Everyone happy.
It now has me thinking of projects my character would undertake given future downtime. So I now feel invested in the character and see the possibilities of this more. If you want to see what a person values, look at how they spend their time. Downtime can help mold a character, fill out their personality, help you grow them in a new direction. Granted, I enjoy the RP pillar of D&D quite a bit. Some of the people I play with don't. For me, downtime can be rewarding, even if it just helps my character gain depth. The spells, items, reputation, whatever, are just carrots to get others on board. And if they're not interested, oh well. But I don't really see a player getting pissed if a DM says that "some time has passed." If that player doesn't want do downtime activities, they don't have to do so, but it can give others a chance to pick up a new language, skill, connection, hook, etc.
As I see it right now, downtime is more about depth than advancement, but it can provide both. It is all about what kind of fun you and your group want to have. About the social contract at your table.
Update -- here is what I have seen playing 5e
* CoS just finished: 9 months of weekly play. Killed Strahd on day 11 at lvl 10.
* Elanon -- 10th level on day 57 with 20 days spent researching at a library on future adventure research.
* SKT -- 5th lvl, 5th day and Hill Giants raiding Greenfield's.
Back to me original point. 5e is possible, using RAW to advance past, but that short calendar timetable has a negative impact on role playing!
In SKT, my mage has seen more, knows more, and is near powerful as Naxine, but why would Laeral Silverhand trust me more/as much as her agent she has known for years?
"Save the world" campaigns have been mentioned, and we DM's have probably made the race the bad guy scenarios that makes this worse. But I also wonder if modern age has forgotten that even they best BBG's sent messages but courier and their plans are more often months than minutes...
TL:DR changes, esp long rest, makes it possible to go lvl 1-20 too quick and DMs should try to slow it down or role play and sorry suffers.
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
I think the beauty of 5e, is how easy it is to include an adapt the old rules.. like ageing, etc... I use a lot of elements of 4e, because my players love the strategy...
2nd edition felt like a drag... Sorry 5 years to get level 5... Bullshit... 5e is supposed to take about 40 weeks from level 1 to 15. Considering my players are level 9 and have been going on for about 15 weeks now. That is pretty accurate and very far from your 3 weeks to 10th level. Which literally means they got 3 levels per weeks. Thats insane if you actually did that.
5e is also much closer to 1st edition. And it seems to me like you should play the grit version of the rests. From dmg they say long rest is 8 days. Short rest is 8 hours. Now that gets closer to what you want. So why not just play the gritty rules from dmg.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
(sorry to necro)
I really enjoyed a 5e campaign wherein the only change to the rules was that Short Rest = 8 hours sleep and Long Rest = 1 week. TONS of RP, building connections, and 'growing roots' in that particular campaign. (And we were really forced to be realistic about our limitations; if you can't clear out that cave in 1 day, you'd either be comfortable trying to sleep surrounded by the enemy or get more creative!) We used the crap out of the various "Downtime Activity" sections of the various handbooks!
Saul - Reluctant Saviors of Luskan (5e)
Nat - Guild Living (4e)
Since this was necroed, I might as well chime in. We've seen the same thing in Video Games. Younger generations don't want to sit down and meditate to regain mana like we did in Everquest... much less hand craft arrows (heck, you really can't even do that well with the basic 5e rules... you can use a carpenter or woodworker's mallet but Fletcher is a dying last name). I think 4e worked well to do two things that brought D&D up to bringing in a younger crowd. Tactical tabletop (love it or hate it, the first few times you play it was fun... and then you realize how much of a time sink it is) and video game style progression. Faster in, faster out.
I've also had perspective in WoD where there was no level progression... I think we went the better part of a year on weekly sessions before we got an in-game break where we could actually spend experience points. That was brutal. In looking through many modules, I am seeing that a fast progression is expected. I have also had games where it felt like we leveled up every night. I too like a bit longer between so that you build relationships more. I certainly see the benefit to it. I think most DMs are too worried that their players won't like them if they don't hand out new shiny things regularly, so, it can have an impact on how campaigns are crafted. And if you want to follow a published adventure, I think you would have to intentionally slow the pace down as many of them expect things to happen in short order or people will die.
As for making short rests equal to a day and long rests equal to a week... that is very unfair to your spellcasters (except maybe the wizard). There still needs to be balance. And there are good tension points built around the current short / long rests as you progress through the adventures. I can't imagine some of the modules faring well with those being modified. You can't have lives in danger and expect PCs to survive when the pressure of not resting means they never get to use abilities that are integral to success. Flat out, I wouldn't play a cleric if you told me I had to take a week to recover my spells. Suddenly warlock casters are the best thing going because cantrips are king!
I do like the Downtime activities... but realistically, I have to be an adventurer to support my Downtime habits. Downtime doesn't pay well (and I agree that it shouldn't), but adventuring pays really really well in the modules. So well, that there isn't a good reason to do any of the other. I do, however, think that rewarding players with land a castle is a good way to slow down progression. Suddenly, you have lots of other crisis situations that demand attention and pull them away from adventures. It is a huge money sink. It takes time and brings them into contact with a lot of people... even if they haven't had contact with that many of them before. And let's face it... how many castles are handed out at whim by monarchs anyway? Especially if you have a new crop of adventurers solving problems for a kingdom... that may or may not make it to higher levels... In that regard, I think the tools are there to provide opportunities for a DM to slow things down from the fast pace of module style adventuring.
All in all, I like the move away from the video game style that was 4e and the throwback to earlier editions without as much complicated math0s. I am seeing a larger pool or people that are interested in playing or at least aware of the game (though other sources have also helped this phenomena). I also find it the easiest edition I have ever tried to explain to anyone. So, if we lose some things in speed of progressions in today's fast paced society... at least we are expanding the audience. And over time, I think mature groups will find they want to enjoy the richer aspects of the game than speed leveling.
Could you give me an example of a genre of entertainment that ever gained complexity or depth after 'streamlining' for a ' wider audience ' ?
The typical cycle involves pushing out the old audience in favour of a new much wider but shorter lived one.
I'm sure 5.5 is coming... with all the books of 3.5 in expanded sections... or something like that. Though, in this case, I have actually seen quite a few of my older friends that haven't done any gaming in quite a long time embrace 5e because it feels more like the old editions. I've been very surprised. Some of them were die hard THAC0Spians... and mostly they know that the details are in the story, not in the rules.