(To continue the sweaty nerd trend of this thread:) No, not even close. 5e is somehow both bloated and complex while being simultaneously being too constrained in what actions you can take for anyone not familiar with it, and mostly gets by via name recognition and becoming synonymous with "TTRPG" these days.
There's tons of PBTA games and similar that are much simpler for people to pick up in a single night of gaming, ones where all of your character's creation and rules fit on a total of maybe 4 pages. My current favorite is Monster of the Week, but there are lots of other good ones out there.
I really enjoyed running a one shot of Thirsty Sword Lesbians.
I guess maybe when I said it was the best introductory, I also included (in my head) the massive online following for 5e, making the meta of gaming a little easier for people with no experience with table tops.
(To continue the sweaty nerd trend of this thread:) No, not even close. 5e is somehow both bloated and complex while being simultaneously being too constrained in what actions you can take for anyone not familiar with it, and mostly gets by via name recognition and becoming synonymous with "TTRPG" these days.
There's tons of PBTA games and similar that are much simpler for people to pick up in a single night of gaming, ones where all of your character's creation and rules fit on a total of maybe 4 pages. My current favorite is Monster of the Week, but there are lots of other good ones out there.