I hear you. Started out with roguelikes before moving on to gamebook-like CRPGs. Along the way I created a couple of rule systems that I published as such. Mostly it was about being able to play my own games. With procedural generation, even if it's repetitive, you can't rely on memorization, and instead play each game like the first time. Also, art is still involved, in room / enemy descriptions and premade map fragments, or tiles where applicable. In my case, all this resulted in a fair bit of theory writing, too. All in all, to me RPGs were satisfying games to make, and the bulk of my creative output, too. Never thought about the last one before.