If you want something simple, you could try Peril in Pinebrook. It was designed to be used in schools to teach kids to play. It uses a much simplified set of rules and pre-generated characters. I'm going to be using it with my family in a few weeks
Since I didn't really have time to play D&D right now, I finally decided it was time to dig into Baldur's Gate, so I'm continuing my foray through that. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. Oh, and to be clear, in talking about Baldur's Gate 1: Enhanced Edition.
5e is fantastic. It presents the standard combat-centric D&D rules, and provides a lot of freedom for players and DMs to fill in whatever rules they find most enjoyable.
Levels 1-3 are designed for the express purpose of onboarding new players, so complaining that it doesn't fully represent D&D, is pretty silly - it's supposed to be simplified.
I will agree with the facts behind your comments on the skill system, if not the exaggerations. I would prefer a looser system, akin to those from Fate, Cypher or Daggerheart, to allow for more creative freedom.
D&D doesn't suck - it's a combat centric system, as it always has been.
From my understanding, hall effect sticks won't work in switch 2 joycons, due to magnetic interference from the attachment mechanism. Instead, they would need something else - I hear TMR would be resistant to the magnetic interference.
I'm still pushing through Legends: Arceus. I've just dealt with the frenzied Kleavor, and have been exploring some of the edges of the Obsidian Fieldlands. The level jump in some of those areas really caught me off guard. I'm really enjoying the exploration, though.
I've finally started Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a fun take on the standard Pokemon game, and I'm excited to see where it goes. I've almost completed the Scarlet DLC (just need 2 more group BBQs and the related legendaries), and I've been enjoying a bit of shiny hunting there, which isn't something I've ever enjoyed in the past. I hear it's even more fun in Legends: Arceus, which is very exciting.
Working in putting together my Pokemon Scarlet living dex, sans Violet exclusive singletons. I'm pretty close - need to nab another color of Minor and a couple pokemon that are genderless, and thus not breedable. I also have to complete some more group BBQs, for those legendaries. I'm deviating a bit to put together a couple of raiders to take on Mightiest Tyranitar, first, though.
I got it on PC. I have pretty successfully played it in a pretty low-spec PC - GTX 970. It was at medium graphics, and the computer couldn't play other videos at the same time, but it was still pretty solid.
Yeah - it really caught me off guard. After getting stomped by a couple of the Kitakami Ogre Club members, I decided to build a new, EV-trained team, which I don't generally do. I assumed, based on the levels in Kitakami, that we would be at around 80, but that unfortunately put me over leveled. The double battle surprise caught me off guard, but my level difference allowed me to out-muscle pretty much everyone. Until I got to the steel type E4 - she and her very unexpected strategy almost completely wrecked me. Wellspring Mask Ogrepon was my last fighter, and just barely managed to take out her last 2 mons - it was wild.
Still slowly working on the second half of the Pokemon Scarlett DLC, The Indigo Disk. I've really enjoyed show rolling these - spending a bunch of time just wandering around to see what Pokemon show up (especially in the terrarium), doing a bunch of random Tera Raids, and building EV trained teams. I've even caught 3 or 4 half-odds shinies as I've been wandering.
I am also working on my first couple games of Civilization 7. So far, I'm really enjoying it. Yeah, there are information presentation issues and a couple bugs, but I expected all of that when I bought it. This is a Civ title in launch, after all - 5 & 6 launched basically the same way. 7 does have some more issues with the UI than was normal previously, but that obviously stems from it being designed to support consoles. I fully expect those to mostly be ironed out in the next few months
I'm working on a few games right now, but I have a 4-month old and very limited time.
I'm in the middle of the Pokemon Scarlet DLC, and what to finish that up
I've started a new farm in Stardew Valley because it's really easy to play for 5 or 10 minutes and then put down. I haven't played yet with 1.6, so I'm excited to see what's new.
I've also started gathering the supplies to start a new build in Minecraft, which I really want to make some progress on
I can't speak to how well 5e would work with dark sun, but 5e is very much about epic heroism. Levels 1-3 exist entirely as an introductory system to avoid overwhelming new players - IIRC, there are official suggestions to just skip them if playing with experienced players. Additionally, they are designed to go incredibly fast. The meat of the game really starts after that, and the characters quickly catapult to functional super heroes.
I'm taking a break from Animal Crossing to try and finally finish Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. We'll see how far I get this time. It's got a lot of classic RPG feel that I really love, and the Ghibli animated cutscenes are gorgeous, but I'm really not used to having to "watch" my games, so we'll see.
The oldest system I have would be the NES. My brother received it sometime before I was born. I'm just holding onto it for him, though - it doesn't get played right now. I actually intend to clean it all up and retrobright it before sending it back to him... eventually...
The oldest system I have that still gets occasional use would be my Gameboy Color, which I received, with Pokemon Red, for Christmas when I was 8 or 9. Unfortunately, I need to find a better plastic polish, to take some light scratches out of the lens, and until I do, it will remain disassembled... I've also been contemplating using the board for a complete boxypixel overhaul, but there's something about still having my full original GBC that I'm having a problem getting over...
Continuing with my wizard's island in Animal Crossing, although I'm more just putting my daily time in right now. I finally worked up the drive to continue on my Minecraft chateau build, so that's eating most of my creative energies right now.
I'm not super sure. If I recall correctly, we've known for a while that something was going on, because surface hearing alone couldn't account for all of the water evaporating from oceans, but we couldn't tell what. In defense of humanity here, the concept of photons interacting with something as comparably massive as molecules is kinda wild. We were caught way off guard when the photoelectric effect was announced, and that's photons interacting with whole atoms instead of just elementary particles. The idea of the photomolecular effect is thus even wilder.
If you read the article, it's pretty clear. Instead of the energy of the photons being used to heat the water molecules to state change, that energy is used to break the molecular bonds between small groups of water molecules, and those groups are small enough to then be picked up by the air and evaporate. This way, the energy contained in a photon is converting much more liquid water to water vapor than if that same amount of energy was actually used to excite the water molecules, as in a microwave.
If you want something simple, you could try Peril in Pinebrook. It was designed to be used in schools to teach kids to play. It uses a much simplified set of rules and pre-generated characters. I'm going to be using it with my family in a few weeks