When I first picked up the Nobilis RPG, I read it cover-to-cover, the margins were always crammed full of stories and examples that really helped develop the setting and ideas and contextualize everything. I think the majority of RPGs that I've picked up have been read back to front... because what else are you going to do on your first pass?
I'll definitely agree that it's good to have books that work as decent reference manuals, especially for rules heavy games... but... have you tried to use the indexes in the 5e books - the PHB index is an experience and a half.
I do think that the 4e DMG had a lot of practical DMing "advice" that got dropped for the 5e one sadly. Stuff about how to tell a fun story and organize a full campaign.
Are you asking which edition is the best one? You'll probably get some heated responses (and I'm gonna get some too for my recommendation) but I think 5e is the best one to adapt to a videogame. The system is pretty "dumbed down" for lack of a better term than what I've seen of other systems.
Disclaimer, I'm a brand new DM and only have in-game experience with 5e, but I've tried looking through some older editions, and maybe Baldurs Gate is to blame but none of them really made much sense to me.
Imo 4e is far and away the most analogous edition to a video game and it’s not close. That’s why a lot of longtime dnd players found the shift so jarring. It forewent a lot of the more RP and theater-of-the-mind focused parts of combat in particular and integrated systems that were inspired by tabletop war and tactics games. From a pure mechanics perspective, it was awesome and there was a lot to grab on to and really strategize/min-max. Some people didn’t like the trade-offs though. I think it is the most video game like in its core systems.
Pathfinder 2e has a lot of 4e DNA in it, and I routinely see people treating significant swaths of it as if it's a video game. Which, as a PF2e GM and player, is bizarre to me. People talk about playing it as if they're just exposing the mechanics to the air.
But if I was going to make a video game, 4e/PF2e are absolutely what I'd base the mechanics around. They're pretty tight systems, mechanically.
Ugh what was it….? I had a player saying he should be getting 4D8 hit dice HP at lvl 4 after we’d already gone through 1-3 properly, then reading the rule saying you get one hit die per level.
“Per level! That’s level 4 so I get 4!”
He would not give it up so I was like, “I guess it could be interpreted that way if you were trying really hard to gain an advantage, but earlier in the book it says DM has the final say and I say it’s one.”
I had a welding teacher that was always saying that he had read the dictionary twice. It felt like he was saying that as a way to show how he had a superior intelligence or something. It was pretty funny.
I mean I actually did but it just meant I had no friends and I wasn't allowed to watch TV. Also human knowledge was pretty basic then and each entry was pretty modest and outliney.
I think it would've been a lot better if I had run around outside or watched power Rangers
