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You know, when I got into AD&D 2E, it wasn't The Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk, or Planescape, or any of their other settings that hooked me. The lore was meaningless to me. It was imagining a world with those rules. The almost singularly unique Vancian magic system. It's peculiar saving throw tables for each class. Even the unique power curves of each class. It was a departure from every RPG I'd ever played (limited almost entire at that point in time to Zeldas, Earthbound and Final Fantasy III/VI, but still very little even since). It was a level of granular crunch that made AD&D feel radically more real than any game I'd played before which were overtly just games.
It wasn't until much, much later I came to understand what hooked me was the verisimilitude of consim (conflict simulator) crunch. They make the endeavor a worse game in absolute terms. Weird, nitpicky, counter intuitive, easily forgettable rules. Except they hold the key to reminding the player this game is based on real events.
I think my favorite example is Red Winter. It had a 56 page "Playbook", about 30 pages of which are historical notes, designer notes, optional rules and strategies. Among the optional rules are things like the Finns capturing Soviet LMGs, the Finnish commander Pajari possibly having a heart attack, and the Soviet's being so poorly rationed, if they overrun a Finnish field kitchen they become irrevocably distracted by the sausage.
Now I know AD&D is not simulating anything as real as Red Winter. But it's rules, to my eyes at least, come from that same place. And I think this is supportable by the fact that AD&D emerged out of consims. And I adore it. That rule aesthetic has been totally lost from nearly every after, which strived to be better games first and foremost. I guess it should come as no surprise that it's attracted, or cultivated, a radically different type of player than back in my day.
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