> I never fully understood the rules
I played from the early 80s through early 90s. Mostly AD&D 1e but earlier on the red/blue boxes and later on 2e.
Recently I've taken to reading r/adnd for nostalgia reasons. One thing become abundantly clear real fast, no one I ever played with ever truly understood the rules. Even the "rules lawyers" among us. And I played with a large variety of people from different friend groups, to different game shops, and even some smaller cons.
We understood the key details for the parts we actually used, but we weren't intentionally avoiding the rest, we just didn't understand that they existed. There's just so much minutia in those rule books.
This also makes me chuckle when I see newer players come into r/adnd as part of the OSR movement. Because they *do* seem to assume that all of these rules were commonly applied. But my anecdata would say otherwise. I originally assumed that these newcomers to the old rules would be playing a game I found alien as they'd be bringing in newer sensibilities, but instead I suspect I'd find it alien as they're more likely to be sticklers for the full ruleset!