I like rockets with drag. None of my rockets are designed for performance or high-altitude flights. I don’t have the eyesight for tracking high-altitude flights, and I don’t like searching for lost rockets or even walking very far to recover them.
My main approach to keeping rockets low is drag. And the main way to achieve drag is by increasing body tube diameter, so a lot of my rockets tend to be fat. I prefer drag over weight to keep things low, and one of the reasons for that is I like long-burn motors. Long-burn motors are generally for higher altitude flights, but if you can design a rocket to be light enough, but still have a lot of drag, you can use a long-burn motor to get it off the pad at a safe speed, and then the rest of the burn is spent fighting drag. Nice, long, slow flights that don’t go very high.
One way to do it is to use extremely lightweight materials, like foam. I’ve built a couple with foam rings covered in a cardstock skin, and one solid foam rocket.