Although Dungeons and Dragons featured quite a bit in my formative years of role-playing, it was never one of my favorites. I preferred the rules and setting of Runequest for my fantasy fix and its free flowing system soon replaced the ‘restrictive’ class and level structure of the original fantasy RPG.
There were plenty of other fantasy RPG’s kicking about and along side the aforementioned mighty Runequest. You also had the simpler Tunnels and Trolls and even more complicated RoleMaster and Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP) to fill the hole.
I ran more Basic D&D than I did Advanced and I am not sure I ever played a full game of 2nd Edition D&D. Everyone was playing 3rd edition in some way shape or form with the OGL that was d20, 3.5 just seemed to be a con but it did inspire Pathfinder and nobody I know liked the skirmish game that was 4th edition.
Then 5th edition came along and lit a love in me for D&D that had never been there before. I was enamored by the simplicity of the system and the flow that the game had when you ran it. The crunch for earlier additions that had caused me to gag was gone and the crunch that was left was simple and made sense in the context of the rules.
What I am most amazed about is that it has not only woken up this old role-player but suddenly my hobby is a cool thing. Gone is ‘you are all devil worshipers and freaks’ mentality that plagued my hobby, now there are vastly subscribed shows on the Internet of people playing role-playing games and there has even been an article about it in Penthouse for flips sake.
Also it has D&D Beyond, which if you have not had a look at is worth a gander. I pay a nominal subscription which allows me to share my content with my players, meaning that they have all the rules necessary for their characters in my games. Also, with the aid of an awesome plug called Beyond20, they can link those characters into either of my favorite VTT’s. Saving me from having to but the Players Handbook et al for every VTT I want to play D&D in.
We started running 5th Edition at RPGS, as we had a lot of queries from people asking if we played D&D. Since we did, the size of the club doubled, but it was not issue to run, because the game is so great.
I have run or played in multiple campaigns including Storm Kings Thunder, Tomb of Annihilation, Lost Mine of Phandelver, Curse of Straud to name a few.
As much as I love the game, I am finding that everyone is now an expert on the rules, which is fine, but I worry that people will forget it is supposed to be a Role playing game foremost, rather than Rule playing.