A good post.

I personally find DND unsatisfying for many reasons (little to no degree of success, static magic system that encourages hoarding, the primary defense is all or nothing avoidance, very coarse progression, some character concepts are simply not representable, etc)

But what is even more annoying than that is when players respond with "but you can just change the rules!". I know! That's true of any pen and paper game! It's not some unique property of DND. But sometimes I don't want to do the work of designing a system, and I almost never want to play some stranger's pre-alpha homebrew.

Beautifully written. There's a treasure trove of great concepts and mechanics that other systems have, which people would absolutely love if they were willing to try them over DnD. It's not just about playing something "better", it's playing something different.

I've been recently pushing my friends to move onto other systems. One of them is interested in running Fabula Ultima, for example, because he really likes the Fabula Points system (the ability for players to shape the narrative by spending points obtained during roleplay).

Me, I'd love to run Shadowdark, but only two of us like it, so that's not gonna happen anytime soon :(

Btw, there's a typo in your article:

Let me be clear, I don’t want GURPS levels of crunch. I don’t want to calculate the an integral of the area of my bagpack to know if my encumbrance to see if I can carry an extra torch.

Ryuutama, for example, is literally called “the Japanese Hayao Miyazaki RPG.” It’s about travel, exploration, and gentle adventure. The mechanics reinforce that with weather systems, caravan management, and a focus on journey over destination.

(...)

SRS (Standard RPG System) games in Japan take this even further. Instead of trying to model physics, they model drama. You don’t have “climbing skill”, you have I’m the agile thief with a heart of gold as a mechanical tag that pays off when it’s relevant.

At this point I'd like to see someone walk us through a selected list of Japanese systems