Shadowdark vs DnD 5e
I used to run D&D 5e for my group, but with a lot of OSR influence (not much regard for balance, rulings over rules, lots of creative problem solving, somewhat emergent storytelling, lots of dungeoncrawling, etc.). It worked very well and we had a blast playing it - and my players were often afraid and did not feel like superheroes - mostly because I didn't care for balance but was quite gracious when they tried to flee or circumvent an encounter creatively. However, there were some minor annoyances: Using spells felt rather predictable, and not magical at all. I felt like there was no good system to track carrying capacity and therefore (and due to to some spells and magic items) no meaningful resource management around rations etc. And I felt like the PCs were gaining too much power with each level up - the campaign ended with a TPK at level 5 but I felt like if they were to get even more powerful the opponents would all need to be ridiculously strong to pose a threat.
For these reasons we tried Shadowdark with a oneshot today - just a short dungeon from Shots in the Dark using level 1 characters. It was fun, but we felt that it did not significantly differ from our D&D sessions at level 1, except that we all loved the carrying capacity system (item slots) and the magic system (you can cast until you fail). Also, some of them missed the complexity of choosing abilities and tactical combat that you get in D&D on slightly higher levels.
What do you think: Is it worth a try to just port the carrying capacity mechanics (quite simple) and the casting system (might be unbalanced and complicated) to D&D? Or are there arguments to keep using Shadowdark based on the thoughts I described above?