I will bet you YOUR life savings that you cannot make such a game. After playing and running RPGs for 40 years I know I stand a 0% chance of losing this bet.
I'm a member of Gamblers Anonymous, so I refrain from betting nowadays. haha.
It would not be hard to win this bet. Though I don't have time at this moment to fully flesh out a ruleset, here's a first draft:
As for the ND&D Rulebook:
A research team reads through the hundreds of D&D novels, short stories, and comic books, and gleans sentence-by-sentence descriptions of all the Actions which have been depicted in the D&D Fiction Multiverse. If the Action was performed in various novels by different characters, all those cut-and-pasted example sentences are grouped under a single Move. And the Moves which are race-, class-, or level-specific (e.g. cast Fireball), are also grouped. I mean, there are certain "tropes" which are associated with all or most Halflings in the D&D novels.
These grouped lists of novellic Moves serve as character creation tables. Or advancement tables for character level-specific Moves.
(The book and page number are listed beside each sentence.)
To create a character, the player picks a certain number of these Moves. (Say, three or five or whatever number we decide best models a 1st-level character in a D&D novel.) Or the player rolls them randomly, based on race and class.
Within the various cut-and-pasted sentences which are listed under each Move, any proper names are enclosed in brackets ([Drizzt] [Raistlin] etc), reminding the player to substitute their own character's name instead. Also if the description could apply to other weapons within a particular damage type, the specific weapon is enclosed in brackets [mace (bludgeoning)], to remind the player to substitute their own weapon instead. These sentences serve merely as inspirations when the player narrates their Move. They can narrate it pretty freely, like in Feng Shui RPG.
So on their character sheet, there's a list of "Feng Shui / Dungeon World"-style Moves, which are taken right from D&D fiction. There might just be one sample sentence (a quote from a D&D novel) on the character sheet - the whole list of quotes would be found in the ND&D sourcebook.
To level up: after completing each ND&D adventure, your character just gets one more novellic Move.
As for rules - there's still a bit of quick dice rolling. Like maybe a d20. Maybe the six stats. That's about all. ("The Black Hack Lite")
That's a rough sketch of ND&D Rulebook.
***
As for an ND&D Adventure Module:
The key scenes and plot points of a particular D&D novel are gathered. For example, The Crystal Shard or Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
(An ND&D module wouldn't necessarily have to be based on a D&D novel; the same could be done for any existing D&D adventure - it's just that for ND&D, a module's playtime and presentation would be boiled down into a novel-length size and form.)
The DM describes the Challenge of each scene. The players declare what Moves they're doing. They roll a single opposed d20 versus the DM or something. And then the result is described based on on the margin of success or failure. Like Feng Shui or Dungeon World or FATE or something. And that's the end of the fight scene.
On to the next scene. Note that there are alternate scenes depending on how the battle went. But no one will fail any worse than Drizzt or Tanis would fail...because they're the heroes of the story.
Cut scene. DM exposition about what happened in the meantime (travel, exploration). There's suggested boxed text for this (more-or-less based on the actual text from the novel), which the DM of course can modify.
On to the next scene.
etc.
The End.
ND&D is just less "granular" than 5E (or any edition of D&D so far). That doesn't mean it's impossible or not fun. If we'd been raised in an alternate universe where D&D was even more "granular/crunchy" than it is today, then those people would think that 5E would be "impossible" and "not fun." If D&D required the characters to declare their Action every second, and to roll for every footstep, and to play even travel time and downtime in second-to-second "realistic" rounds, and even have to declare when they're taking bathroom breaks in the dungeon, and for how many seconds those breaks last, and to keep track of calorie intake when eating rations (sounds like Rolemaster - haha), then 5E would sound "impossibly vague" and "not fun." Posters would be saying the same thing about 5E that you're saying about ND&D.
Also, I have played a number of 5E Solo Adventures. I admit that I'd best also learn the best practices of various diceless and ultra-lite RPGs, and also "relationship-based" RPGs such as Smallville Cortex system...since (for example) in the novels, Regis has nearly as much "screen time" as Drizzt even though Drizzt is way more powerful from a mechanical/combat perspective. It's like having Lois Lane and Superman have similar screen time in the same story.
I'm not saying I personally have all the resources to make ND&D yet, but I'm sure it can be done.
At the very least, even if you just took the existing 5E rules, and boiled down all combats into a single die roll, that would be a step in the direction of novel-like quickness.
