Thoughts on D&D5e

I remember being excited for D&D 5th edition. At the time I hadn't D&Ded since AD&D. I'd noticed in passing the 3rd, 3.5th, the Pathfinder eruption that seemed to blow away good old D&D, and even the 4th fourth edition. I'd glanced at the book for 3.5 but that was it, I was playing other things at the time.

So, and I don't know why, 5th ed was all over the social networks, podcasts talking about it, youtubes promoting it, and I caught that old D&D bug once again. I'd heard the complaint that 4th had been too boardgamey and that 5th was going to correct it. But alas money was short, and I couldn't afford to buy the books.

Then a few months ago, I finally get my hands on the 5th ed PDFs. I literally opened the DMs guide scanned the first 5 or so pages before closing it down. Why'd I do that? Page count. there was simply too much for me. Those books were going to take something like 24 solid hours of reading to get through. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I realised then that I've lost my will to invest what little time remains to me on reading huge tomes of PDFs. A recent purchase of mine was the newest Dune RPG, and I am a Dune nut, read the books multiple times, watched the films loads too... but the page count for a ... game, felt daunting. I have since got through it and it took a while with breaks to read other things, but that's more because its Dune, than because its an RPG.

I believe there's a strong movement in the RPG industry to push the big expensive hardbacks with notable page counts, the "new" shiny etc, and its not for me. I recently saw the Japanese RPGs that come in the fiction-novel  form factor, and those intrigued me, but then I see page counts in the 500 range...

Conclusion of sorts, I like clever shorter games ( like Cowpunchers ) , and big glassy art is a draw but not needed to get my purchase, and more importantly.to get me to read, I need lower investment of time.

Edit: You know those times you're trying to look up how to do a thing a quick thing, and all you get is 10+ minute videos where they hide the instructions to make you watch longer.... these big flashy RPGs are like that.