While I don't ahve emacs experience, I did recently learned VIM, and there is one parallel I've been surprised to learn.

For me, it wasn't Dwarf Fortress, but Starcraft. There's a pleasurable joy in being able to do complex actions based on just muscle memory, especially if the actions are complex. Learning VIM was fun not because it made me a better or faster programmer, but because it was joy to use and master - learning new "combos", being able to do them fast and without thinking, and there was always room for adding new moves and combinations into my repertoire.

In a way it has reminded me of Starcraft. When you get to the level where you've mastered the controls, the game becomes extremely different and pleasurable to play. Being able to turn your throughs, that require a complex set of actions, into reality just by pure muscle memory feels pretty good, and VIM scratches the same itch as Starcraft did in this sense.

The game looks super complex, seeing the programmers with their 200 APM, but once you actually learn to do the base actions through pure muscle memory, it's not that difficult - and it has surprised me how satisfying it is. And it's the same with VIM - I've had a rough start, but once I learned a few moves, it has suprised me how quickly have I internalized them and how good it feels.

I can imagine this being the case with any complex control scheme, purely on a physical satisfaction level.

Not a user of emacs but did use vim occasionally. I can say that number of key strokes that you have to commit to memory and the amount of RSI you get from it is roughly similar to DF. I use tilesets atleast not to go blind.