I think it feels fiddly to people who already know a thing or two about mechanics, but most of the fiddliness can easily be ignored or barely paid attention to and you can still manage to play and have fun.

I mean, this is true, but if you ignore enough rules you’re essentially playing a different game. I talked to someone once who “played DND” but didn’t use skills or spell slots, and I think they just let casters interpret spells based on the names. That’s so different it’s arguably a different game. Or at least as different as a Chihuahua and a husky.

. It’s a lot easier to just hit straight brick walls in games like pathfinder or shadow run where the player is so lost they just can’t play.

I agree with this, but note those systems are far more crunchy than DND. Something like Fate goes in the other direction, and I think is why it’s better for fast games.

Though as an aside, a downside of Fate is it’s so open it can cause a tyranny of the blank page effect. DND puts you in a pretty small box, and that can be helpful for people. The small decision space is a positive for some kinds of players. Though if you were doing Fate, you could just tell people to pick from some core ideas similar to character classes.

but 5e is pretty damn good at it while also being popular enough that people have heard of it and are interested in trying. That last part is just as important as being technically good on paper.

This is also undeniable. Someone who’s going to half-ass it will drag down a game in any system.

I think we agree more than we disagree for what it’s worth. Check out Fate though. It’s free ( https://fate-srd.com/ )