Fair point. I think it would still take a lot of work, though, since Diablo includes a lot of fast-paced, high-powered stuff, while 5e kind of falls apart and turns into a slog at higher levels. To put it another way, it handles up to the heroic level fine, but the epic levels can feel like a drag, and WotC's solution was to mostly publish adventures that stop at level 15. Cutting HP would be a part of it, maybe streamlining some stuff, creating a different inventory system...

So it can be done. But the fact that it's not D&D also means there's a higher floor to how much thought was put into the game, you know? Sometimes designers put the work in, but sometimes they just pick D&D to be lazy or as a cash grab.

Speaking of Adventures in Middle-Earth, I haven't played it, but I heard the 5e edition is actually pretty good. You're right in that Tolkien's fantasy is way different from the high-fantasy superheroics of 5e, but I heard it had great rules for going on a journey, which 5e mostly glosses over (at least in practice).

Oh for sure! It's really just treating D&D as the default that I have a problem with, not using an existing system per se. Sometimes it works, but a lot of the time making D&D support a radically different style of play is a bad idea. It also tends to suggest that either the designer doesn't really know that much about RPGs, or the publisher doesn't care and just wants to cash in on what's popular. If they picked even another existing system, that at least suggests they're aware of other games, and probably picked something they thought was a good fit.

Again, this is just speaking in generalities. There are good games based on 5e. It's a red flag, but not a deal breaker.

Fuck no. Last time I bought anything diablo related was 3, and Ive been pirating Blizzard ever since. Fuck em