Full post on Reddit. Final paragraphs:
And I know that sounds bad. I know! I know this basically all sounds like “you prefer 5E to these other games because you have to actually try to play them?” But the answer is actually yeah, exactly! It’s not that I’m checked out on my phone or something, but I’ve learned I’m not actually interested in thinking too much about my part at the table. I think being there at game night with friends is fun, but I mostly just want to be along for the ride until it’s time to roll some dice to hit something and let the other players figure out what to do otherwise, maybe get in some banter-in character in between encounters, and chill. In everything else I’ve played, I’m dead weight if I’m not actively participating. In 5E, I can just kind of vibe until it’s time to roll to unlock a door or stab someone, and I’m not penalized for doing that. The game is neither loose enough that it needs my constant input outside of combat, nor complex enough to need any serious tactical decisions. That’s a very comfortable spot for me!
So yeah. I imagine there’s a lot of players who would prefer other systems if they tried them, but I’m not one of them. And I imagine there’s actually a lot more people like me at tables than you’d expect! Hopefully this gives some insight into why someone would still prefer 5E over everything else, even after giving a lot of other games a shot. Thanks for giving me a chance.
Interesting reflective statement from a 5e player.
I don’t know, this doesn’t sound very reflective to me at all. The poster is just making a lot of general statements about games it’s not clear they’ve even played.
Every one of these games is as simple or as complicated as we want to make them. They can be pared down or beefed up at will. How much investment you need to make at the table is dictated more by who’s sitting around it with you than what’s printed in the book. And most of these games have much, much smaller books than 5e.
And the one that I play that doesn’t, doesn’t require any more investment than 5e if you don’t want it to.
With less popular games, though, you tend to get more fanatical player bases. It may be harder as a lone player to find a chill table. But if your already chill table is trying to convince you to try something else…
Like, no one needs to play apologetics for 5e. It’s the biggest TTRPG of all time. A case for it does not need to be made. The fans of every other game are just trying to sell their own interests to the largest known market for the genre, because they want people to play with, too. D&D does not need people to justify it in response.
He has been “playing one campaign or another since mid-2014”. Also, “Of the last three years, one was spent entirely on a level 1-10 campaign of Pathfinder 2E, with the other two years jumping between Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, and finally a Heart: the City Beneath campaign that’s ending next week.”
Also, he writes “with the exception of PF2E, all the other systems I’ve tried are less mechanically demanding.” So he seems to have at least a vague understanding of multiple systems. Enough to voice an opinion at least.