Playing D&D
Pretty much same, but TTRPGs in general. I abandoned D&D after it became clear that Hasbro is going to continue making the game worse to squeeze money out of the fans.
I’m a bit out of date, but what prevents you from picking the edition you like the most and just sticking to it?
It depends on the edition, and whether or not you want to pirate or have access to new content or digital companion tools, either 1st or 3rd party.
4e is basically unplayable digitally now because of licensing issues for the companion technology. If you still have the books you could try, but it’s an edition that leaned heavily on the assumption that digital tools would be used.
5e scared off a ton of 3rd party creators with the proposed licensing changes last year, and their new 5.5 edition looks to not be very open at all in terms of creator content. You might as well play a spinoff system like the Kobold press 5e or the LOTR 5e.
3.5 and earlier is still possible but the content was mostly never digitized into a good online resource. You could still play pen and paper, but if you’re going back that far you might as well just play a more modern system that draws inspiration from the older D&D system like OSR or PF.
All that being said, it’s all still playable, it just doesn’t have much of a future if you don’t want to get sucked into enshittification, ads, and microtransactions that Hasbro has committed to transforming the game into.
Their kid was ill, their partner had a thing, they didn’t remember another event that they had previously agreed on, they said yes but they were thinking of another date, “is it for that game? I thought we were gonna play something else.”, that’s a long weekend week so they had out-of-state plans, etc… etc…
I sometimes feel bad for DMs.
Edit: If I say I’ll come, I will come, I’ll force myself. Otherwise laziness will get the best of me. Few things I own, better to keep my word.
