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I'd say that unified core mechanics is what I'd consider to have been modern in the 1980s - and even D&D has been on this style for half its life; it was one of the major changes made by 3.0 while even in the 90s 2e felt archaic

It depends what your goal is. Virtue, possibly not? Fun, yes. Interesting stories, definitely.

In all honesty you need to find better games. One of the things I look for in a game I'm considering for a campaign is whether there at least appears to be depth and I can see options that are non-trivial. And one of the other things I look for is whether actually engaging what's there would...

You outright stated that you thought that D&D could handle GrimDark better than Daggerheart and listed optional rules that are mostly not fit for purpose for GrimDark. Daggerheart is a good flexible game where the default mode of play is similar to D&D. But out of the box (and Daggerheart is...

Says the person trying desperately to prove that D&D can do everything as well as Daggerheart. It's not that Daggerheart is good at this (it doesn't even have real injury rules or a combat death spiral or costs for its easy to access magic), it's that D&D, especially 5e, is actively and even...

I never said either was Mork Borg - and Mork Borg is positively uplifting compared to Grey Ranks. Just that D&D is very bad at it while Daggerheart is mediocre.

Exhaustion in D&D is neither easier nor better. Even the 2024 exhaustion rules are faffier and less flexible than Daggerheart's (never mind 2014's utter random mess of conditions) and it is clearly bolted on to the side of the system rather than putting pacing yourself significantly under the...

And it means you can't use abilities that cost stress, which is also a big deal

Long rest variant - like DH except that the Age of Umbra rules are more restrictive. Exhaustion rules are IMO much more annoying and bolted on compared to stress. Disease/contagion/curses - why not DH? Madness? Mental stress - psychic damage? Really? Again you've had to go looking to find...

And death is always the least interesting thing that counts as a long term consequence.

This. I don't think that DH is a GrimDark system. But it provides significant tools that support attempted GrimDark play in ways that D&D is entirely devoid of. I'm trying to think of a less GrimDark system than D&D 5e that allows for the possibility of death. I'm grading on a curve here.

I think that immersion is 100% to do with how comfortable the players at the table are with the system and should always be treated as a personal matter. This doesn't mean that some mechanics don't make immersion harder in the same way that some materials for seats make comfort harder. If you...

But a Scar isn't an ordinary setback; it's permanent.

It depends which scale you're grading on. If grading on a D&D-curve then I'd say it can do better grimdark than any D&D. But it's not CoC or WFRP.

I think that most non-D&D games have better players than D&D simply because with D&D being the default game to want a game other than D&D means that the players are much more likely to (i) know what they like and (ii) have put the effort in to try different rulesets. And these are two good...

The difference is that someone can externally verify if you are following game mechanics because they are procedural. "Be a fan of the player characters" on the other hand is good advice - but means different things to different people. If you look at fan fiction most of it is written by fans -...

Here I think that there are multiple groups who call themselves Trad RPGers. Continuing or Modern Trad RPGers who know what they like and are happy with those games. Many of them (like you) also play modern RPGs Continuing Trad RPGers with neophobia who stick to their games because familiarity...

It depends where you count the bounds of "Traditional" play. I'd argue (and have argued) that The Forge and Narrativism were an attempt to make a set of game rules that supported what was written on the back of books like Vampire: the Masquerade and what good storytellers (and 2e DMs) did...

And mine is that different games are different. MCing Apocalypse World is very different from GMing a PF2E Adventure Path is very different again from an old school dungeon crawl and each provides you with very different tools. Theory can't be comprehensive enough to cover all possibilities...

For the record I'm pretty sure the breakout game that did this was (as so often with modern gaming trends) 2010s Apocalypse World. Which called the GM the Master of Ceremonies, took away their dice, and gave procedures and agendas.