>>96024552
>but 5e's aesthetic journey has been extremely drastic in comparison
Oh yeah, I definitely agree with that and I think it's been kinda forgotten too with the passage of time. I remember when 5e launched it was marketed as sort of a synthesis with older AD&D and 3e but over time once Critical Role started breaking through to a different audience Wizards pivoted hard into making it more of a weird storydriven roleplaying experience when D&D has never really suited that kind of play in any of it's editions.
>New fans don't even use 5e to dungeon-crawl.
To be fair, 5e isn't really good for this. The core rulebooks never gives you proper procedures for dungeon crawls, something that the old playtests weirdly enough had all the way into the final playtest, and the adventures they publish feels like they only include dungeons because that's something that's expected rather than because they want to create a dungeon crawl. Apparently the new introductory adventure for 5.5e doesn't even key the dungeon which is bizarre but apparently the new 5e audience doesn't even like 5.5 so history repeats itself I guess..