Why play Wizards-era D&D? - Another Question From A Dark Forest

 The dark forest questions continue.   This one comes from a D&D skeptic.  Specifically, "why play Wizards-era D&D?" (3rd through 5th edition, plus Pathfinder, perhaps 13th Age, and other games in the orbit).  The idea is that since encounters are meant to be balanced, and characters are meant to be balanced, that really you're just marking time as you level up. Reaching 20th level is a foregone conclusion, and levelling up and getting more treasure is the only real reward in the cycle of play, so why play it at all?

I think there is something to this question.  Although Wizards-era DMGs are, in my view, extremely good at certain things, they are less good at addressing the question of where the Challenge in Challenge Rating really is, and certainly do not suggest the sort of "well, you strolled into the dragon's cave at first level, guess you all got eaten" play that was common in map-based play prior to 3e.  To some degree that type of play is denigrated as balanced encounters are seen as the main type of encounters to be had.  There is something to this observation. It doesn't come out of nowhere. Here is my response.

97 author recommendations from a dark forest

I'm on a dark forest server where people a lot of times talk about books but it's always nerd shit, sf and fantasy, sometimes horror, etc. You know, the dominant form of books, film and entertainment during my lifetime. Anyway, I decided to help these dorks out with my own highly personalized recommendations of Normie Books Regular People Like To Read.  Significant responses are collated at the bottom of the post.

This is just a recommendation list, anyone who attempts to recognize this as Discourse will be forced to write a 5000 word essay on how Understanding Media applies to Booktok. Also note that this is from a random stroll through my kindle library, it isn't typical of my shelves (or really of my reading.)  There's lots of shit you can't get on Kindle still!

How reading this type of stuff helps your sf and fantasy gaming more than reading sf and fantasy is left as an exercise for the reader.