Dungeons and Dragons

So, I never played 4E, and mostly because it read so much like a videogame. And to be honest, I also feel like 5E still has that problem, though it's not as bad. All the discussion on balance to the nth degree also reads to me a LOT like videogame design issues.

Personally, I think 3E really was / is the best edition of D&D. I looked at original D&D, way too limited in a ruleset - which kind of makes sense, it was sort of a beta before AD&D. I played AD&D 2e for like 5 years before 3e came out, and it was OK, especially as you house ruled in some stuff and added some of the other books, but it was also arcane (THAC0 anyone?) and you tended to really need to have various pages of rulebooks memorized or be able to find them quickly. It was the most GURPS like D&D I've ever played if that makes any sense.

3e really fixed like all of that. Everything is a d20 roll, and there's some basic guidelines that are easy to get for the new DC concept (instead of looking up tables of saving throws etc). The open license meant LOTS of content, and it also meant that it didn't die when a new edition came out, it evolved into Pathfinder (I gather, I haven't actually looked at Pathfinder), and as I understand it, people can release new d20 compatible stuff TODAY if they want. It also had the benefit of the (sadly aborted) d20 modern, so you get some of the similar stuff as in GURPS with a simpler ruleset IMHO. That had some amazing ideas IMHO. However, in all of this, it's paper based really and you can have skills, feats, mix and match from all over to what fits your game and world.

This leads to why I never went to 4e and what annoys me still about 5e. 4e had all the classes so focused on balance that fighters just were mages by different style if you will - from what I read anyway. And they pretty much stripped out anything not focused on tactical combat, which TBH is probably the least interesting reason to even play a tabletop RPG - play a game about that like a wargame, or a videogame.

And I still really dislike the "streamlined" skill system in 5e. It's just atrocious IMHO - less skills, fixed skill based on ability points - they're basically a bunch of saving throws but with 20 categories, fixed by class or feat proficiency... It just feels like you can't have a unique character if every class X is going to have about the same skill numbers based on level (because you assume you'll target abilities to be similar for a given class)...

IDK, I also think these new versions of D&D feel a lot like the new versions of Windows post 7 - we're not changing anything but the superficial face of the game, and coming up with a reason to charge you to rebuy something that you presumably already like and has been working for a long time. I could see obvious improvements up to D&D3e, but not since then.