The other day a guy in my group straight faced said something like "The beauty of D&D is we can make up and try out some rules for, like, a chase scene. If we don't like them we can be like ok that didn't work let's try something else."

My dude that is not a unique property of D&D. That's true of any pen and paper game. The fact that D&D provides lousy rules for things and we have to stumble around trying to come up with something that works is not a strength

This is why I like Pathfinder. The core of the game is still to make a ruling if you need to to keep the game moving, but there is so much more mechanical support for the things the players might want to do.

For the love of god, try games that aren't 5e or Pathfinder

This makes no sense. No one's telling you to publish your rules for WotCs benefit. They're saying you don't need to feel beholden to rules you don't agree with. You're not working for WotC, you're "working" for yourself.

Thank Desna there are some sane people left playing ttrpgs