Not gonna disagree with you re: D&D. Its funny, I see people playing "hacks" or "homebrews" of d&d that strip it to the bone, no feats no weapon damage, just roll a d20 and higher is better. And those players won't consider running a different system actually designed for that style.
At least we can all take pleasure in the fact that in Japan, instead of D&D being the de-facto RPG, it's Call of Cthulhu.
That always puts a smile on my face.
And despite everything going on in the industry right now, D&D is still an enormous, inescapable gravity well. I would say even more so than 20 years ago. We have more games and better games than ever, but I had an easier time finding groups to play not-D&D then versus now. Across multiple cities.
I have over a thousand role playing books in my collection, was very involved in The Forge when it mattered, have been a vendor at the biggest RPG conventions and know lots of authors and artists in the industry. probably half of the popular systems out there right now I have played with some of their creative teams --- not exactly a clueless normie here.