I feel your pain. There is a sharp disjunct between games that are fun to read and fiddle with (lonely fun) and those that are fun to play. I look at the production values and detail in things like 3e’s Manual of the Planes and drool — I want to dig into it and create a game to play right now. I just don’t want to use those rules.

Recently I’ve found some relief, partly by recognizing that most of what was fun in there was what I did and not strictly what was in there. They are imagination pumps and I can get that elsewhere. Or use these ones to fuel a different game.