Talmek;6723919The narrative role playing aspect of 13th Age combined with the simplicity of the rules seems to be our group's biggest draw away from 5e right now. My entire group is aligned that the narrative aspects and the combined storytelling is what we are looking for said:
For us, our group liked 4e, and 13th Age did a nice job of taking good bits of 3.5 and 4e and making a coherent whole. Especially nice is wholesale ditching of rules that are just not worth including and replacing them with narration (grappling, pole-arm tricks and gridded combat). You could also make a good case that it's better supported that 5e is too. The recent Stone Thief campaign and the year's worth of free playable campaign (which I think takes you through all the level ranges) combined with a mix for things like Book of Loot, 13 True Ways, and 3rd party items like Thule and Midgard may well outweighs WOTC offering.
5e still just seems OK. No issues with it, just that it doesn't seem to hit any particular need. our group has played and enjoyed it at cons, but we;ve enjoyed other things more, so for us, it's not really any reason NOT to play it that is in question, rather lack of reason TO play it.
Preferred systems:
* 13th Age for faster, narrative high fantasy
* Numenera for sci-fi/fantasy exploration adventure
* One Ring for Tolkienic fantasy
* Trail of Cthulhu for cerebral horror investigation
* Call of Cthulhu for randomly dying in a fun way horror
* Night's Black Agents for modern espionage
* FATE for most anything where we want to focus on narration
Still on the lookout for a non-operatic sci-fi system. Bulldogs, Mindjammer, Alternity were OK. Must look into Eclipse Phase ...