Picking a ttrpg system (or a computer game engine) is about finding something that does as much of the work you don’t want to do for you. If a system doesn’t do much of the stuff you want it to, find a different system. If it does a bunch but has just a few things you don’t like, it may still be worth spending some time fixing the parts you don’t like. Or if the parts that are bad are also the parts you want to do for yourself anyway, then go for it.

There’s arguments about systems because different DMs have different design strengths, weaknesses, and goals, and what you’re looking for in a system changes from person to person.

And then the meta-rule for engine selection is, the best system in the world doesn’t matter if no one plays your game. So if your party is only interested in D&D or rules light systems or whatever, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Old man yells at cloud. Just because the groups/campaigns he may have played in the last 20 years apparently felt limiting and anti-improv, doesn’t mean that that’s some kind of trend and things were better back in the good ol days/

Wait, you guys’ pacts end in death?

Yeah but you’ve already visited that location once, so everything that isn’t nailed down is already gone!

I think a lot of atrocities come from our need to be accepted by the people around us. Especially with fascists, whose group identity is based around excluding and hurting the outgroup, they’re stuck in a constant cycle of egging eachother on. One fascist says “lets beat up a black guy”, the others nod, and the person who feels most vulnerable to getting kicked out of the group tries to prove he belongs by saying “Nah, let’s KILL a black guy” repeat ad nauseam.

I do love watching shuttle launches, but I’m not sure I’d call a bunch of public domain NASA footage the best opening sequence ever.

“Shut up and help me carry these rotting baskets Wyll”

Besides, are you even really an adventurer if you don’t swipe the silverware?

Hot take, but I think the martial/caster power imbalance is imaginary, and has been even in 3.5.

It comes from people doing thought-experiment characters, like Pun Pun, rather than actual play. You can have a caster player say “I use this series of spells in such a way as to break the game” but in practice it happens far less often than “I murderhobo the NPCs to break the game” and is easily dealt with the same way. If your caster is just playing like a normal person and fireballs a dozen goblins or whatever, the barbarian great cleaves a dozen more, everyone has fun, all is good.

No, sometimes one of the bins moves between the bed and chair.

My players THINK my kobolds have an elaborate and well-developed society but actually eee he’s just a lil guy omg lookit how cute he is