5E: Have All the Best Players Left the Building?

I like the Open 5E implementations like Level Up Advanced 5E and Tales of the Valiant. Still, another part of me sees so many re-invigorated classic games and OSR communities with tons of players and plenty of renewed interests that I need to ask the question of 5E:

Have all the best players left the building?

I know the 5E market is enormous, and everyone keeps saying that. However, I am seeing a dramatic increase in participation and activity in non-Wizards groups and games. The tide outside D&D is rising, and many great players are there.

"Best," in this case, refers explicitly to "players interested in the classic old-school playstyle."

Or, best for me and my tastes.

The best for you will be different.

Many of the best 5E players who still carry that torch of the old ways have left 5E and taken their toys to play in better places. We see the "New OSR" beginning to form, with excellent, OGL-free interpretations of B/X but tweaked to play better than the original. Where the early OGL games put "rule for rule" compatibility first, these new games are beginning to put "world building" or "fun" first, such as ACKS2 or Dragonslayer.

For me, the best players are going to games like these. They are hot right now—even Castles & Crusades is hot, and getting de-OGL'ed.

5E is in a strange, slow decline. I see the player base focusing more on identity (cute/cozy RP, romance, safe story play, bucket list experiences, etc.) than gameplay or classic dungeons, and 5E is dying as interest in the pandemic fad wanes and people move on. Granted, there is nothing wrong with those play styles, but they just don't interest me (and don't play well in solo play). Are Open 5E games compelling enough to capture attention, or are they just a middle finger to Wizards for a tiny fraction of players? When the 2024 books come out, will there be enough good players left to form a classic-play community of 5E gamers, or will most of them have moved on?

And will Open 5E hold interest?

I don't see it.

D&D Beyond is so huge it is like Facebook. D&D will live forever, but I have no interest in the games, gamers, or adventures. D&D is like McDonald's; it is there, but I won't eat there, and it will always be around.

My hardest-hitting 5E killers are GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy. For all the "build options" 5E professes to give you, it pales compared to anything powered by GURPS. Even Pathfinder 1e is a weak replacement for what I can do in GURPS; I can muck around for 5-6 levels in 5E or Pathfinder 1e to sort of maybe get a character I imagine or have the character I want, working correctly in every aspect - combat, exploration, and social - in GURPS right when I start playing.

GURPS has put my 5E books into storage. Add to that, I have a new interest in the Chaosium games too. 5E will not find much time on my table anymore.

This hurts, but I get far more enjoyment from character crafting and combats in GURPS than anywhere else. I could sell all my 5E books and not miss a thing. Chaosium has the great d100 system and the Runequest and Call of Cthulhu worlds.

I am running a "GURPS-Finder" game with my Pathfinder 1e books and enjoying seeing the iconic characters come to life in ways I never expected. The game feels like classic PF 1e but takes on an edgy, realistic, grounded feeling I love. Gone are the leveling, commoditized magic item economy, artificial hit die scaling, CR-based challenges leveling up with the characters, videogame-like, every-increasing gold piece reward, more damage every level, and scaling world. It is replaced by a flatter power level based on realism, a very character, story-driven, and "people, not levels" world.

1,000gp is still worth a lot, no matter how far along your character is.

I love the flattened power level in GURPS. Everything is dangerous. The monsters are the most challenging part of the conversion, and my experiment won't last long. Level-based games are not my thing; they feel too much like video games.

If I sell all my 5E books—even Open 5E—it will be because of GURPS and Chaosium games. 5E takes two shelves of core books and third-party expansions to give me a workable set of options, and it can't even come close to what the GURPS core character book gives me in options and builds (or even the 130-page digest-sized Dungeon Fantasy adventurers book).

For all the "pillars of play" support A5E provides, GURPS does it all the better in a unified system that does not require all this "class support" for the particular subsystems. ToV will probably only support this expanded play once the GM's Guide comes out in September, and then again, this will be an add-on system instead of something unified in the main rules. PF 1e and 2E? Same story. Books and books of options that don't give me what I have in point-buy systems.

Outside of GURPS, I like Castles & Crusades. I had this in storage but pulled it out. It is still a great game that feels like the best parts of AD&D with all the junk removed. This game is very comfortable to me and plays off 4x6 cards. Of all my level-based games, this is the one I am keeping.

Other than that, I am getting into an amazing world with Runquest.