My sense of you is that you like to play games as RAW as possible to really appreciate the intricacies of what the game is doing–as opposed to unconsciously drifting, reflexively house-ruling, etc.

Just as play groups have different preferences in this regard, I suppose games, too, have been written with a spot on this continuum assumed.

I’m wondering if the sum total of the ‘social technology’ of most games eventually proves underwhelming, because the expectation (again, perhaps unconsciously) was that players /would/ be providing drift. The designers had some neat ideas, some average ones, put in a neat economy or two, but since almost nobody plays it totally RAW, the rough spots for any particular group are sawn off unceremoniously.

I’m reminded a little of trying to play GW games really competitively; it’s so unsatisfying, a) because there are all these little spots where the rules aren’t fully reconciled with one another, so it’s not obvious what the correct procedure is, and b) so few others seem to do that that there’s a cultural bias that gunning for a win hard enough that using the rules against your opponent is simply.. unsportsmanlike. The rules just weren’t made tightly enough for this kind of use.