The actions of Wizards during the OGL and subsequent mistakes the company made drove many away from either the game or the hobby itself. Wizards "fired" a lot of customers during that time, and many of them are not interested in staying in the hobby, or even staying with any version of 5E that "looks and feels" like the game.
Shadowdark and Dragonbane took many players.
Other games absorbed the rest.
Those who remained in 5E stuck with D&D, and a fortress mentality emerged to prevent player loss. Many in that community won't consider Open 5E alternatives to the game since it reduced the mythical "people they have to play with" - even though D&D is a majority of the market still, and losing half of their players would not significantly impact people's "ability to find a game" online. Locally is another matter.
The MCDM RPG and Daggerheart's expansions have yet to drop, and they have built-in fan bases to sustain them from their creators' popularity. If you are in the D&D content creator space, you either take your fans and write a new game, or continue watching interest drop and stick with the largest market.
I like Tales of the Valiant. I have five shelves of third-party books for 5E that I won't use with D&D 5E or 2024, but they work just fine with ToV. There is a ceiling for ToV hype and excitement now, pushed down by YouTubers who dissed the game as 'nothing new' - but that is precisely the point. We need a system that will remain in place, just as it was in 2014, and be solid with an open and perpetual license going forward.
For me, D&D is not on my shelves anymore. I have better.
And it has to be more than "the Creative Commons" version of the game, which does not even include enough subclasses and character option support to even be considered a game. New players need books and adventures to buy, and a system to gather around. When D&D 6 rolls around, I doubt it will resemble 5E much at all, and 2014 compatibility will likely worsen. I have 10 years of 5E books from 2014-2024 that I still want to use, and ToV is the off-ramp I need.
Granted, I am currently simplifying my 5E library, and I will only keep the best.
But I get why people leave 5E, and I have even found happiness in other games. GURPS remains one of my go-to systems for fantasy and science fiction, still. GURPS is the easiest path to a "realistic, gritty fantasy" that I love experiencing, where 5E tends to be larger than life with overpowered characters. In GURPS, my characters must survive in a world that seeks to wear them down and kill them, fighting against the elements, nature, monsters, and a social world that is just as deadly as the wilds.
In 5E, I can't specialize and build into survival or social skills like I can in GURPS. You get one skill for each, and if you are proficient, that is as good as it gets. Skill rolls in D&D are terribly simplified, and the game is primarily for combat encounters. You can't specialize or buy deep into a skill. Your character is stuck on rails as they level. If I am good at the Survival and Nature skills, that is it, I am good at it all.
Typically, in 5E, one skill roll sets up a camp, gathers food, firewood, shelter, and everything else. It does not matter, and in terms of "playing an adventure," you will want to aggregate it all anyway.
In GURPS, I can specialize in fishing, hunting, trapping, shelter building, weather sense, scrounging, tracking, plant knowledge, and numerous other skills that turn survival into its own game. I could always create a Survival! (bang skill) which covers them all, but I prefer forming a team of experts and having this in-depth list of skills that transforms the parts of the game I love playing into a deep, meaningful, and enjoyable game of skills and subtasks.
I can also improve in areas where I am weak, such as shelter building, which becomes critical for survival, so I am investing points in that. If someone else wants to be the fishing expert while I'm over here building a shelter, then we can share the load and better utilize our time. You can't do that in D&D. You are either good or not, and there aren't many ways to remedy that without multiclassing and taking the whole thing (and potentially messing up your build).
GURPS is more of a simulation. While hunting for berries, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to make more skill rolls to stay out of trouble (or find something new), or encounter a goblin looking for the same thing you are. Yes, this can happen in 5E, and it should, but the game does not train you in that style of play or gamemastering.
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