Preamble
I intend to create this thread to collect and summarize my thoughts about the topic of what a role playing game is, why we play these games, and how to best develop them, especially by making use of current technology, namely the PC, and to a lesser extend, modern gaming consoles. I intend to show that the true point and meaning of role playing has been lost somewhere along the way of development of most current video games, and that this is not the only possible direction for game developers, even if a different direction might be aimed at a smaller market. I will discuss the principles of RPGs, touch the basic RP theory and include thoughts about older forms of role playing than video role playing games (or cRPGs for short from now on). The layout of this post will be as follows:
Seven major parts will provide the basic outline of this topic. In the first of these parts I intend to summarize what a role playing game actually is, in reference to the history of role playing games, recent developments, and the player base and typical 'fan' of this genre. The second part will describe the typical cRPG as we know it today, while the third one, in contrast, will show what my experience with current pen & paper RPGs is. The fourth part will be used to show the possibilities and limitations the PC as a platform offers, and what that means for role playing games. Directly related to that, the fifth part of this post will discuss the importance of multi player aspects in role playing, as well as the problems that come with it. In the sixth part, I will summarize my thoughts about immersion, and what that means for role playing. The seventh part will briefly discuss the RPG from a customers' perspective, and what the gaming industry and market mean to the developers of RPGs.
At the end of this post, I will provide a summary of my thoughts. This topic is then of course open for discussion - which I hope will be in a mature manner. I'd specifically ask posters to avoid one-liner replies that confirm or simply contradict what others have posted, as this adds nothing to the discussion. I'd also ask the gentle reader to actually take into account everything that has previously been stated in this thread and not repeat or ignore anything, for maximum efficiency of this discussion.
Also please note that all these thoughts are purely subjective and limited in scope. I do not claim to be perfectly informed, nor do I demand my opinion to be seen as anything close to universally right. I am simply stating a personal view on a very complex and controversial topic, and hope for a lively discussion.


I - The general Concepts of Role Playing Games
This first part of the original post will detail what I believe to be the core concepts of Role Playing and Role Playing Games. I will start with a brief look at the history of roleplaying and will try to explain its development somewhat chronologically.

i - The Origins of Role Playing

a.a - The Tabletop Strategy Game
One of the core elements of currently popular role playing games surely lies within this related genre of tabletop games. When most people think of games to play on the table, they will of course associate that idea with typical board games. The classic board game is, in its basic concept, related to sports, in that several parties (teams or single players, rarely less than two) try to achieve a goal. Obstacles are normally in their way, either by game design itself, or by competition, as the other parties will interfere and try to achieve the goal first. Monopoly is a very typical example of the genre of typical board games: The goal is to achieve as much money as possible, to the point of having an actual monopoly in the fictional 'city' on the board, by eliminating all competitors, which are the other players. This goal can be achieved by using the elements of the game board and direct interaction with the other players - some elements of the game will influence all players to the benefit of none, even, and are typical 'obstacles', such as the prison element. A random factor is also involved, as movement on the game board is dictated by throwing dice. A different type of tabletop games, however, has emerged probably in the late 19th to early 20th century, the most common variant of which, the 'Warhammer' franchise that became popular in the 1980's, enjoys great popularity to date. It is rumoured that this type of tabletop strategy game was developed at first by actual military officers more than a hundred years ago to simulate battle scenarios (while such games were of course incapable of accurately simulating actual combat or strategies, they could be used at least to train the strategical way of thinking that is also important in actual warfare - with that definition, perhaps even board games along the lines of chess, which have existed for centuries before, might to some degree fall in this category), but it wasn't just generals who were interested in this. By the middle of the last century and later, attempts have been made to sell this type of game to a larger market - eventually with great success.
It is generally seen as a fact that such 'wargames' have influenced the development of later role playing games, especially those with strong emphasis on action elements and combat, as is the case with most fantasy adventure type of role playing games - without doubt the biggest RPG genre today.

a.b - Theatre and Childrens' Games
But the roots of role playing lie not within strategical combat simulation alone. One of the major factors is the wish for players to - as the name indicates - play a role. To act. And acting has been a business, artform and life style for centuries before the term "role playing game" has first been used. I am, of course, talking about good old theatre. Generally, a play is written by one author, and then performed by independent actors under the guidance of a director. The purpose of the author is to create a story (normally either dramatic or comedic, although many different genres exist), that will in one way or another entertain the audience (or provoke them to think, mainly about social issues or philosophical / religious matters). The actors' purpose is to display the written piece on the stage, and the purpose of the director is to, of course, direct the actors as well as any other participants, such as stage designers, to finally provide a stage performance as well composed as possible, often with the directors own interpretation of the original piece - even the actors may interpret the characters in their own ways and slightly (or even massively) deviate from the original intentions of the playwright. But next to this most typical and common type of theatrical performance, there's also the much freer improvisational theatre in its various incarnations. In recent history, this type of theatre emerged in the early 20th century, and has since become more popular. But if we take a look of the very basic concept of freely playing a role, we have clearly found the core principle of any type of role playing games. The most simple, and purest form of role playing doesn't even lie that far hidden in the past or in the high arts - children's games are a very natural form of role playing. Children love to pretend to be advlts, experiment with different life styles and professions that they cannot yet perform. This behaviour is not even limited to the human species - it can be observed in many young animals that playfully attempt to behave like grown up specimen. But even older animals - including humans - can be seen playing roles, or else we wouldn't be here in a role playing game forum. I believe that the general concept of role playing is a very instinctive form of learning, experimenting and spending leisure time, and I see no reason not to pursue this hobby even as an advlt, as long as I have the time. In fact, I believe frequently playing games keeps the mind young and fresh, as long as the games are actually demanding enough in certain ways, but I'll come back to that later when discussing immersion and realism.

b - The first Pen and Paper Games
In 1974, Gary Gygax' famous 'Dungeons & Dragons' was first released. It was a game of a then unique concept: A pen and paper role playing game, taking inspiration from improvisational storytelling as well as war gaming. Some very popular and basic concepts of RPGs have been first introduced around this time, including, for example, hit points, experience points, levels, attributes, skills, character sheets and such. The very base of this game wasn't new: People sitting around telling eachother a story in which each player, except for one, would play a leading role. The last player would be a sort of 'director', 'game master' (or in D&D's case, 'dungeon master') to tell the overall story and play all minor characters and antagonists. This has been done before, for example by children in the form of free role playing and story telling. In its very core, even the simple question "Imagine you'd be a medieval knight, walking through a forest, when you see a peasant being attacked by a weird animal you've never seen before - what would you do?" could be considered role playing. The new elements of the pen and paper role playing game were, of course, the pen and paper. Open scenarios would be written down on paper by the game master or an author, dungeon designs would be drawn (the first DnD editions were especially strongly influenced by tabletop war games with strong emphasis on combat and strategical elements - other PnP RPGs don't even include any dungeon maps or miniatures), the world the game took place in would have a background, and the characters would have skills and abilities written down on paper - the character sheet. There we find attributes, skills, spells, weapons, armour and such, as well as the values they have been given. A random element is also part of these games: Rolling dice is the most widespread method of deciding the outcome of uncertain situations, with the skill value normally being an indicator of what a number must be rolled to succeed, often with a penalty depending on the difficulty of the situation calculated in. Many pen and paper games have come up with different methods of rolling dice, from a twenty sided die with a 20 being best and a 1 being worst, and having to roll no lower than a certain difficulty number with the skill points being added to the result of the dice throw (D&D), to more complex methods like rolling a number of ten-sided dice, one for each skill point, and having to collect as many "successes" as possible, with a success being a roll higher than a certain difficulty number assigned by the game master (Vampire - The Masquerade). The settings also started to differ - from classic, Tolkien-inspired fantasy to very exotic cyberpunk and science fiction or even real world settings.

c - Development of the first cRPGs
With the late 80's and early 90's, computers and gaming consoles have become more and more powerful. No longer limited to very simple games of reaction, they could now be used as a medium to tell stories. Of course, it didn't take long for role players to come up with the first computer role playing games, many of which were, of course, inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and background, famous examples of which include, for instance, Baldurs' Gate. Many concepts of pen and paper role playing games were excellently suited for translation into their computer counterparts - since PnP games relied heavily on statistics, numbers, and random dice rolls, these things could easily be turned into virtual statistics, virtual numbers, and virtual dicerolls. The health points of the pen and paper world turned into health bars on the computer screen, the damage points from the weapons were turned into virtual damage points displayed on the computer screen, lowering the virtual health bars, the hit chances were simply kept and, instead of rolling dice, the random decision was now made by the computer itself. Stories were written for the games, characters created, NPCs (a term older than computer games) were given personalities and information that the player could obtain by means of conversation, traders were put in towns for the player to buy weapons, enemies would be defeated by a series of virtual dice rolls and tactical decisions by the player - a very promising new variant of RPGs had been born.

d - Outlook
Technology hasn't advanced as quickly anymore, recently. Eventually, virtual realities might be the perfect medium for role playing games, complete with impressive AIs and extremely immersive game worlds. But with that being science fiction, we're stuck with the media we have had for a few decades, and the advance of technology is behind the scenes. Machines become more powerful, graphics get better and better, and the visual immersion can be increased this way. Many newer cRPGs look very much like animated movies, including the camera work, voice acting, and even story elements and dramatic techniques. The rest of this post will be dedicated to the state-of-art cRPGs in comparison with older models, but will generally not go as far as trying to predict the future.

ii - The original Role Players
Now that I have given a short overview over the history of RPGs, there's the obvious question about who these people behind those games are, and who would want to play them. I'm not very old, so I can't tell from a lot of personal experience. But the people I've played such games with are generally creative, intelligent, have quite a bit of spare time, enjoy social interaction, are often interested in history (at least those who prefer medieval settings) or, ironically, math and science. Many of them are in school, university, or perform either a creative or academic profession. Few of them are the typical business(wo)man, less of them are female than male (however the ratio is higher in PnP games than in video games, and MUCH higher in LARP, interestingly), and ALL of them have a youthful mentality, which makes them generally fun folks to hang around with.
But my personal experience aside, there's now two major groups in RPGs. The PnP player base almost exclusively consists of the first type, the cRPG player base consists of both to a degree unknown to me. I suspect the nerd-level on forums like these to be significantly higher than the average buyer of an Elder Scrolls game, so a poll would be redundant.

a - About Nerds
The first type is the nerd. That word might not describe the player base perfectly but we all know what I mean, I believe. That's the type of player I described above - creative, intelligent, often interested in either statistics and numbers or in stories and history. Stereotypically likes to read books, probably has Tolkien's works lying around, might also be a fan of science fiction or other adventure tales. Generally a type of person with relatively much spare time - but not lazy and generally not introverted. Quite the opposite, actually, especially among pen and paper and LARP players, who need to be good actors as well. Might prefer a small group of friends over large amounts of people they somehow know but don't really trust, however. Really, too diverse of a group to really describe, with no clear line to draw where this group ends.
What the typical nerd expects from a role playing game is generally entertainment through escapism. Not because they dislike their life, don't get me wrong, but because they like to live a different one every now and then, for the adventure that the boring real world rarely provides, or simply because they like a specific setting. They normally want more detail, more stats, more background, more everything. A good game is a complex game that you can spend a lot of time playing. In the worst case, they get addicted to the likes of WoW, at which point they are sadly lost souls (warning, subjective impression and weird sense of humor of the author might have greatly influenced this last statement).

b - About Casual Gamers
The second major group that's playing cRPGs like The Elder Scrolls series is the casual gamer. They don't care and have no idea about the history behind role playing or any related topics. Demographically speaking, they can be anyone who isn't a nerd and still has some spare time to kill by playing a video game. It would be silly to make any statements about their average personalities. On a game related note, they have little interest in such things as complex background lore, lots of statistics and complex gaming systems, which is often seen as ignorant by the more nerdy part of the gaming community. They're buying a game in order to have fun while playing it - they normally do not want to be challenged, provoked to think, let alone getting deeply involved with a complex hobby or life style. They just buy a game, kill half an hour of spare time, do something else for an hour, go back to the game for half an hour, do something else again for half a day, then play again for a few minutes, then do something else again, then get back to the game for maybe an hour at a time... This part of the audience doesn't really care about what exactly the background of what they play is, as long as it's fun. They don't want to be deeply immersed, but instead merely entertained. Afte all, it's just a game.

c - What they have in Common
Both of these player bases have one major thing in common: They want to enjoy the game. And many factors of a good game appeal to both: Good graphics, well designed characters, exciting combat systems and an instinctive user interface. But this main common interest in wanting to have fun is also their main point of difference: Many things that are entertaining to one is boring to the other. Obvious instances are those where a decision made by the developers will satisfy one group but annoy the other. With Skyrim, we've seen the reduction of skills, removal of classes and introduction of perks - all of which were very pleasant changes to the casual gamer, who now has less skills to worry about, no fixed classes to limit their gameplay, and simple, easy skill progression in the form of perks that can be chosen however the player desires. A few other changes were made to please the more nerdy community, such as the inclusion of crafting and relationships. Some changes equally satisfy both at first glance, such as all the effort put into world design. But it isn't as simple as an accessibility vs. complexity debate. Many things annoy one type of player, while another type of player might enjoy them - even though they're both casual gamers or take role playing as a serious hobby. The inclusion of dragons for instance. Some are extremely excited, while others feel that the way they have been included may be cheesy and weird - and those can be found among both major camps. No, it's not just a matter of casual gaming vs. nerdy hobby. With how old RPGs are and how nerdy the community can be, it shouldn't surprise you that they turned it into a science long ago:

iii - The Threefold Model and Role Playing Theory
For the sake of not making an overly long post, I'll keep this simple. We have a rather complex role playing theory with entire books written about different aspects of the hobby. I like to quote a simple theory that has been used by a lot of authors in different variations. The Threefold Model, which is closely related to Ron Edwards' GNS Theory and inspired the later 'Big Model' by the same author, is a beautifully simple, although not perfectly accurate, way to describe every action and reaction, every decision taken in a role playing game - be it by the authors of the rule books, by the creator of an adventure module, the game master during play, or each individual action taken by the players themselves. I'll not use the pure Threefold model, pure GNS model, and I won't go as far as using the Big Model either. I'll just use the three categories used in the GNS and Threefold model:
1. Gameism
This refers to what could most easily be described as 'fun'. Fun through challenge, game, competition, sport. Most casual gamers put a great emphasis on this aspect of gameplay. I will now describe a scene from a mainly gamistic point of view. I will later use the same scene to elaborate the other two modi of storytelling as well.
Imagine we have a king. That king is an evildoer. He's head of the dark kingdom of evilness, wears a black crown with the red diamond of doom in its center which further corrputs him, and is head of an army of undead and orcs that terrorize his lands and frighten the citizens. The hero of our story does not fear his foe, however. After defeating hordes of undead using his superior skill at arms and battle finesse, he managed to sneak into the dark castle of horrible pain and merciless destruc - you get the idea - and now faces the evil king himself. The king, of course, now calls for his guards, who storm the room from all directions. A mere annoyance to our hero, who quickly slaughters them all with his dual wielded adamantium swords of fiery doom. As he steps towards the king, however, the latter activates a magical device that raises his throne out of the reach of our hero, and opens a gate at the other end of the room, revealing a horrifying monster with claws as large as blades, teeth as sharp as spears, and a skin as thick as a dragons scales. The hero gasps, but the player is fond of the challange this new enemy poses. By quickly combining a few powerful potions the hero boosts his magical abilities, launches into the air up to the ceiling of the throne room due to his new super acrobatics - much to the dismay of the now scared king - and then accelerates himself down upon the beast, throwing his swords into its eyes and upon landing creating a massive impact of magical energy, ripping apart the monster in a huge bloody mess. He stands up again, covered in blood, and turns his face to the frightened king cowered on his throne. The hero raises his crossbow (it was in the inventory!) and aims at his enemy, launching the massive magically enhanced dondaine right into the magical diamond in the kings crown, which inevitably explodes. The world is saved, the hero earns a lot of experience points and moneys, and is now the king of ex-evil-land.
This is a very gamistic approach. Not a single damn has been given about logical consistency, realism, or artful storytelling. It was simply a massive fight in which the player could prove his superiority. Perhaps it wasn't easy, though, the player actually had to be good to win.
2. Dramatism/Narrativism
Imagine we have a king. That king is an evildoer. He's head of the dark kingdom of evilness, wears a black crown with the red diamond of doom in its center which further corrputs him, and is head of an army of undead and orcs that terrorize his lands and frighten the citizens. The hero of our story does not fear his foe, however. Well, actually, he does. The king has had the hero's mother murdered when she denied to pay the raised taxes that almost starved their family. When the father tried to rush to her aid, the men of the king captured him and took him prisoner. Hidden in the corner of the room, our young hero, who at this point decides to take revenge. A few years later, our hero worked his way up into an officer rank in the king's army. He had proven himself to be an excellent swordfighter, and led a small unit of mounted men at arms of his majesty's cavalry - the famous black horseman, riding black war horses with darkened maille armour, a black-and-red coat of arms over a blackened brigandine, and the equally dark full helmets that their enemies feared to look at. After a few years of service and many deeds that required him to go to his limits and quite likely darkened his soul, the hero finally recieved his long awaited invitation letter to the kings' yearly feast, where he met with his most successful commanders, trusted statesmen and of course his many concubines. Prior to visiting the feast, the hero and one of his trusted friends - a fellow black horseman whom the friend believed to also have rebellious intentions - silently snuck into the castle in disguise, bribing one of the guards to let them visit one of the kings favourite dames, and convinced her to help them carry out their plan of poisoning the kings meal. A few days later the hero and his friend officially arrived at the feast, and after a political debate the actual fun was set to take place, starting with a large and expensive meal and ending late in the night with every of the king's trusted men being allowed to take one of the concubines to his own chamber for a night, which many of the politicans and generals were looking forward to all day. During the meal, the hero finally gave the concubine the sign to put the poison into the kings' meal, while the hero and his friend distracted him and his body guards in a conversation. However, when the dame finally opened the bottle of poison and was about to put it onto the food, the hero's friend suddenly yelled "Halt!" and grabbed her arm before she could hide the vial. The king immediately had all of the food replaced and set the concubines execution for the next day - not without planning to spend another night with her, however - he wanted to enjoy his victory. The hero's friend was awarded a medal and promoted to be the leader of the black horseman - he also informed the king about who was behind the plan to murder him. The king ordered to bring the issue to court, with himself of course being the judge, because he was not quite convinced that this man who just saved him might not have planned the whole thing himself to earn a promotion. That night, the concubine told him what he had already suspected: She lied to him, saying it was the friend who did all the planning and told her to poison the king's meal. The king promised to let her live, spent the night with her, and had her executed immediately afterwards. The next day, the hero was taken to court. He too claimed that his friend was indeed the traitor, planning to get the hero's position as leader of the black horseman. The king decided to have them both killed because he trusted neither, and would select a new leader for the black horseman at another date.
Despite all the hate they felt for eachother, despite the fact that they knew that they would not both survive this day, the hero and his former friend looked at eachother when the king spoke these words, slowly nodded, and turned around to disarm the guards. They took their swords, jumped on the tables, and back to back they fought against the rest of the kings' men who were present, like they used to when they were still soldiers under the same banner. The king quickly escaped and ran through the crowd, but the hero and his former friend followed him while fighting off more of the guards, until they finally had him cornered in a hallway of his castle. "Kill him, not me, and I'll promote you not only to lead the black horseman! No, I'll make you a general! The marshal of our army! You don't imagine what power you could have!", the king tried to persuade the hero's former friend. The hero and his friend looked at eachother again, as a group of guards arrived and stopped a fair distance away, watching the following scene. "If I killed the king now, my friend, I know you'd kill me, and then be killed by the guard. But if I kill you, the king will have me executed", the friend said, "you are a man of honour, so please grant me this last duel, as I will die anyway. If I fall, you can kill the king and fight his guard. If I live...I can at least claim to have killed you, and perhaps the king will then believe me... Promise me this, friend. If I strike you and you feel the life fade, tell him the truth so he spares my life". The hero thought for a moment, but he knew he didn't have time. When the hero looked at the guards who had arrived, he spotted that the guard captain was, indeed - his father! He had not been killed, the king must've released him for some reason and turned him into a guard! Maybe, if the hero won this duel, his father would spare him... On the other hand, perhaps his father was now equally corrputed... He finally slowly nodded, and the two fought their last fight...
The emphasis with this play style is obviously on storytelling. On drama, on background lore, these aspects of the game. Even if the hero loses this duel - as long as the story comes to a solution and a dramatic end, the dramatist / narrativist will be satisfied. Rather a well told story than a stupid game that he has won, any day.
3. Simulationism
Imagine we have a king. That king is an evildoer. He's head of the dark kingdom of relative evilness, wears a regular crown, and is head of an army of mercenaries and farmers pressed into service that terrorize his lands and frighten the citizens, because they're forced to plunder as their wages are horrible. The hero of our story does not fear his foe, however. Well, actually, he does. The king has had the hero's mother murdered when she denied to pay the raised taxes that almost starved their family. When the father tried to rush to her aid, the men of the king captured him and took him prisoner. He was later tortured to death. Hidden in the corner of the room, our young hero, who at this point decides to take revenge. A few years later, our hero worked his way up into an officer rank in the king's army. He had proven himself to be an above average polearm user, and led a small unit of mounted men at arms of his majesty's cavalry - the famous black horseman, riding mostly black war horses with sometimes darkened maille armour (altough only the officers could afford that), a black-and-red coat of arms over a blackened brigandine (for the officers; the regular fighters wore either maille or a gambeson, often not darkened at all), and the equally dark full helmets that their enemies often made jokes about. After a few years of service, the hero finally recieved his long awaited invitation letter to the kings' yearly feast, where he met with his most successful commanders, trusted statesmen and of course his many concubines. Prior to visiting the feast, the hero and one of his trusted friends - a fellow black horseman whom the friend believed to also have rebellious intentions - sent someone to enter the castle, bribing one of the guards to let them visit one of the kings favourite dames, and convinced her to help them carry out their plan of poisoning the kings meal. A few days later the hero and his friend officially arrived at the feast, and after a political debate the actual fun was set to take place, starting with a large and expensive meal and ending late in the night with every of the king's trusted men being allowed to take one of the concubines to his own chamber for a night, which many of the politicans and generals were looking forward to all day. During the meal, the hero finally gave the concubine the sign to put the poison into the kings' meal, while the hero and his friend distracted him and his body guards in a conversation. However, when the dame finally opened the bottle of poison and was about to put it onto the food, the hero's friend suddenly yelled "Halt!" and grabbed her arm before she could hide the vial. The king immediately had all of the food replaced and set the concubines execution for the next day - not without planning to spend another night with her, however - he wanted to enjoy his victory. The hero's friend also informed the king about who was behind the plan to murder him. Thus, the hero was executed and the friend promoted.
Simulationism is just that. Realistic. Within the games lore, of course - if it's a sci fi setting, there IS future elements, but they'll generally have some techno babble explanation that reminds us of some theoretical astrophysics to make them seem plausible. In a fantasy setting, magic may well exist, but is likely limited by very strict rules that are never broken so the world doesn't seem illogical. Even gods and demons may exist, but they too will have to stick to certain cosmic rule. And where no difference to the real world has been noted in the lore or rule books, real logic is applied and in doubt, stuff behaves like you'd expect it to.

Overall, this should simply show you that there's many ways to look at each situation in the game and disagreement isn't just a matter of "it's easy" vs. "it's hardcoe", as the discussions on these forums might let you think. In fact, many complex matters like the requirement to eat and sleep could be seen completely differently under these three perspectives. A gamist won't care about that, it doesn't add to the fun. A dramatist may or may not care about it - generally, the more important it is to the story, the more likely he's going to accept such a feature. The simulationist will insist on it being included, unless there's a logical explanation as to why the main character doesn't need food to survive even though the game world obviously is designed to be a world in which people eat and drink to live. Realism in combat is another such matter. It's not "easy" vs. "hardcoe" - from a gamistic point of view, damage doesn't need to be realistic, as long as it's fair and playable. From a dramatistic point of view, damage ought to be low when fighting unimportant enemies, while killing them should be easy - because they're not important and shouldn't keep you from experiencing the story. Important people will generally be good fighters or have elite guards, however, and those fights can be tougher. More importantly though - when you want to murder someone, it shouldn't take more than one arrow / thrust with your dagger, no matter how many arrows you normally survive in a fight. When it suits the story that someone dies from one, then that has to be the case. Simulationists will simply say that no matter what, damage ought to be handled in a realistic fashion unless magic is involved, in which case the lore's rules of magic will apply and while it won't be realistic, it will be an accurate simulation of the games' lore.

iv - Currently popular Forms of Role Playing Games
In the following few paragraphs, I want to continue explaining what I actually mean by Role Playing by explaining the types of role playing games I normally consider when mentioning "RPG" or "role playing". All of these are RPGs, although there are major differences between the media. But see for yourself:

a - The Pen and Paper RPG
The classic. When I say "role playing", this is what I normally mean. This is the root for all of the RPG forms below. I have explained this one in quite some detail, but let me sum up the basics again.
You have a group of players (!), one of which will be assigned the game master position. You also have a number of rule and background books, and an adventure prepared by the game master. Every one of the players will have a character sheet with information about their characters written on them. Height, eye colour, name, strength, health, intelligence, swordfighting skill, cooking skill, speechcraft skill, singing skill, amount of money, current equipment and where exactly it is carried, attributes of that equipment (sword: damage, length, weight, speed etc. for instance) and lots more. The game master will have a few basic character sheets for the most important NPCs at most, but generally only the combat relevant details will truly be written down, or other skills that might be relevant to the story (speechcraft for a political antagonist, for instance). The game master now tells the story, with the players filling in for the role of their characters. They will try to play their characters as close to the character sheet as possible. The stupid character will make stupid decisions, the intelligent character will stop him and explain the group a more sensible approach to the situation etc. as if they were real people. The characters normally don't act as if it was just a game - they'll do what they'd do in real life, which usually includes eating, drinking, going to bed - these things aren't normally simulated in detail, but they are mentioned and the cost of the food is kept track of, so that they notice when they take a long journey and run out of supplies halfway through. As I said, they act as if it wasn't a game, and as such they'll have no noticable hero-bonus that is obvious to them. If they don't want to starve, they better buy supplies for a journey, have someone capable of hunting and/or gathering, or plan the journey in a way that ensures that they will come across a village every week or so. Boring parts of the journey will of course be skipped, but the characters still had to walk for days, and the players will play them as if they were indeed exhausted. The rules will ensure that their combat stats also dropped after such a long journey, at least in a somewhat simulationistic setting. Dramatistic players might not care about that issue as much, but even gamists will generally accept a few facts like the requirement to eat and drink.

b - The cRPG
What we all are playing. Games like TES, or Dragon Age, to name recent examples. Originally intended to translate pen & paper role playing games onto the computer, they have recently taken a different path, being more and more like action games and movies, which is an issue I will discuss later in greater detail.
The normal single player RPG has you as a hero, a main quest, and side quests. The concept of a quest isn't unknown to pen and paper role players, although they are normally not strictly seperated from the rest of the gameplay. Generally, a pen and paper role playing game will consist of a 'main quest' and 'side quests', but they will never be named so and the players probably won't even realize whether what they do is a main quest, side quest, or random stuff that the game master didn't really plan - the equivalent to the latter in cRPGs could be, for example, the player getting in trouble with the guards in Oblivion. Certainly no quest, but still something to do. This strict distinction between quests and non-quest gameplay comes naturally in cRPGs due to the fact that a game can only be as flexible as the programmers could plan ahead, while the game master in a PnP game will quickly adapt to any situation. As such, you instantly notice when you left the usual path in a cRPG, while you won't really notice that there was any path in the first place in a PnP round when the game master is good enough to make you think you had complete freedom - or even grants you complete freedom, even if that means his adventure won't be played that day. The game will still be interesting, and cRPGs have two ways of dealing with this situation:
The linear game won't even let you off the path. You do what the game tells you to, period. You may have some choices, or decide the order in which you do the main quests, but at the end everything will happen as planned.
The open world game, like TES, won't force you to do anything. That means that the game might get boring for some folks, however, when they don't accept any quests and still expect the game world to be centered around them. Bethesda clearly tried to appeal to that player base when making decisions such as including dragons that randomly attack you any time. I won't comment on that right now...

c - The MMORPG
Also a cRPG, but a massive one. A multiplayer one. An online one. Hence MMORPG. In its core, an awesome concept. How can you create a game world that is virtual, but still adapts to the player as well as a good game master could? How can you program the AI to behave like real humans? BINGO! Have them be real humans!
Sadly, just about every MMORPG deviates from that noble goal. Instead, you still fight AI, solve quests for AI, and deal with annoying players who are generally just there to help you fight or annoy you by running around typing in 1337-speak. I'm not at all fond of this type of game in the way it sadly turned out to be every. damn. time. a new one was released. The amount of gamers who don't take the game seriously ruin any immersion to me. But that is just my personal opinion, and I must admit that I have not much experience with these games and still count them as "RPGs", in a way.

d - The Chat / Forum RP
This is basically PnP role playing, just with keyboard and screen instead of pen and paper. It normally works the same when it's a chat RPG, but forum RPGs often have a difference in that there is no clear game leader, but rather just players interacting with eachother in their roles. There might not be any NPCs at all - a more natural form of MMORPG, perhaps. They're obviously quite slow games due to the nature of fora, and as such, combat isn't quite as much of a factor as in most RPG forms. A major problem is making sure there's a common 'time' for all players, and that one storyline doesn't continue at a faster speed than the rest of the game, or vice versa. This is especially dangerous when one player needs to be at a certain virtual place at a certain time, while his character is still involved in a different event that would already be over if he wouldn't have to wait for another player to come online again - his character misses the meeting, and now has to find a reason to, because the original delay was caused by an out-of-character delay, not an in-character one.
Oh, on this note I should probably underline the immense importance of "out of character" thoughts versus "in character" thoughts in ANY type of RPG. As I said in the PnP entry, the character is to be played as if everything was REAL, and NOT a game. That's what is usually called immersion - the ease to forget about the 'game' and 'become' your character. But even if that fails, you still ought to play as if you were immersed, or the other players will too lose immersion. Single player games don't force you to do this - but a good game will have you immersed anyway, and trying to immerse yourself will make it easier to stay in character and enjoy the game to its fullest. Unless you are a pure gamist and don't care about story and believablity at all, then it may be sufficient to just let your character kill things while you sit in front of the computer eating pizza and phoning a friend.

e - LARP
LARP is easily the most immsersive role playing experience there is. The chills of having the evil baron's guardsmen suddenly raid our tavern in the evening, while I had a weapon hidden under my coat and was afraid they'd execute me on the spot if they found it... the dream sequence one night that was arranged for me, in the middle of the pitch black forest, surrounded by what appeared to be wolves with red eyes, running for my life, stumbling upon a stranger who shared the dream, not knowing whether to fight or to trust him... The battles and fights, especially when you lose overview and it gets emotional and you don't know what the hell is going on anymore... The fun of spending the evening at the tavern, listening to tales of older adventures - and knowing that they actually are true, in a way.
Several days at a time, without being reminded of the real world except for a few safety measures or limitations due to the location (ye, there's lightsticks around the combat zone at night, or people would possibly get injured when they started fighting on dangerous ground, but you stop really seeing them after a few minutes), truly BEING your character. Really incredible and impressive, but sadly extremely expensive and, of course, time consuming. I'm glad that it exists, but you can't do that every day, nor every week, and not everyone can afford to take a long weekend off every month and paying for it, plus maintenance of the equipment of so many different roles...
But let me rather describe what this is: It's acting out the stuff for real. Usually for several days, non-stop. Eating stuff like in ye olde days, drinking mead at the tavern, fighting with swords while wearing actual maille armour - you get the idea. Gameplay wise, the main differences to pen and paper games are, among others, the more simplified rules, since rolling dice would be quite an immersion-breaker. Often, it's "you can do what you can actually do", or "you can do what you can believably pretend to be able to do" (such as magic; there's often a limited number of spells and spell effects, and a limited mana pool, but you just memorize that stuff, there's noone who can confirm whether you cheat or not - yet it rarely happens, as those people are honest folks and trust is the base of such an event), but many things need some sort of rules, of course. Health for example can be a simplified hit-point system (with only a few hit points, so you don't lose track), with armour giving extra hit points and weapons having simple, easily memorized damage values: One handed weapons cause 1 damage, two handed ones cause 2, for instance. Acting is important here. Of course real-steel weapons can't be used, or people'd get seriously injured, so we have to do with extremely light foam weapons. Don't expect people to wildly swing them around though: It's a matter of honour to realistically simulate the weight of the weapon, and to react accordingly when one of those hits you. And people actually do that. There's a few core rules, including: Don't play to win, and play for the others as much as for yourself. This isn't a sport. There's no shame in losing a fight, and a believable death is much better than a victory that could only be achieved by ignoring the rules or not acting properly. And it works. People actually take care to play for eachother as much as for themselves. Perhaps the perfection of role playing in certain ways. However, the down side is obvious: It's extremely limited in what it can display. You only have humans, for instance. Good luck trying to believably have a dragon appear. Or a skeleton (that's walking). Or fireballs flying around (except for some specifically 'scripted' pyrotechnics perhaps)... It's generally quite low-fantasy, as you obviously cannot levitate, breathe under water, or turn into a wolf in real life.

II - The typical cRPG
Now, as I said, I'd like to compare PC RPGs to other forms of RPGs, so let me first describe the former. We all know that PC RPGs are often seperated as Classic, Eastern, and Free Roam, so let me use these three as categories:

i - The Classic Western cRPG
This game is closest to its roots in PnP role playing. Instead of playing a single character, you control a group of characters, all with their unique personalities, skill sets, and equipment, just like you'd expect in a pen and paper RPG round. The rules are often directly taken from a pen and paper game, or modified slightly to suit the new PC medium. Newer games of that type have abandoned old paths and rarely are strictly based on games like Dungeons & Dragons, anymore. Instead, they have their own, often very different, rule sets, like Dragon Age: Origins and it's extremely simple rules. In fact, I believe DA:O spawned an own pen and paper game - I doubt that was successful, though, as I've never heared of it again. Nice marketing stunt, though, in theory.
Such games usually follow a strict storyline leading from A over B to C. Maybe there's a B1 and B2, and you'll get the choice whether to take the first or second path, but you'll end up at C again. Maybe there's even different endings - but you'll never leave the pre-planned routes. At the side of that road, there's little quests for you to solve - sometimes so many that you can spend hours doing unrelated stuff and feel relatively 'free' in the game world, but inevitably you'll be reminded of the strict railroading of the story, unless the game is very, very well done. While many core aspects of pen & paper role playing are included in this type of game, some major ones are missing. Mainly that is the freedom to do what you want, the believable world that works even if you weren't there, and of course interaction with other players. Reading a conversation with an NPC is one thing, actually talking to the game master is another story entirely.

ii - The Classic Eastern cRPG
This game type is a little different in it's methods of story telling, its combat mechanics (which are often minigames on their own and not at all part of the usual gameflow) and features cliches from a completely different culture than our own (referring to my culture as European; which, on a side note, is quite different from the US, fantasy-wise. Our own game settings tend to be closer to folklore and medieval history than American fantasy, from my experience, but has less ancient influence). Japanese fantasy settings are usually very high-fantasy compared to the still somewhat realistic/believable worlds we're used to in western fantasy. But in its core principle, these games are very similar to the default western cRPG, in that you play a group of heroes who follow a relatively strict main plot with possibly a few or even massive loads of side quests. Simulationism rarely is relevant in these games, from what I've seen.

iii - The Sandbox cRPG
The Elder Scrolls being the best example for this type of game. There's others, but we're all extremely familiar with TES series, so I'll stick with that example. You have a massive world that generally would work on its own without the players intervention - clearly a simulationistic aspect. This makes the world seem alive and real, because even if you leave the path the developers have chosen for you, you'll still feel like you're playing the game. You will however notice that you're off the rail road, most of the time. An important factor in these games is that you're generally alone, or only have companions that you can control indirectly by giving them orders, but those rarely have very developed personalities. All in all, the games are massive in scale, but sometimes lack depth. What impressed me about TES, however, was that this depth was actually there! When I played Morrowind, reading through libraries of books, learning about the politics of Vvardenfell, I felt very immersed with the game world. Wherever you go in that game, you always learn something new, which is truly a sign that this game was a master piece. Sadly, exactly that factor felt very neglected in Oblivion, and I sure hope Skyrim will give us some more of that.
Anyway, the main thing the Sandbox cRPG has in common with classic RPGs is the freedom of the player, the main difference is the inevitable loneliness that will kick in at some point.

III - The typical PnP RPG
In contrast, I'd like to describe Pen and Paper role playing in greater detail, especially with regards to the specific play styles I have previously introduced. This will show you where I'm coming from with my arguments regarding, for example, immersion and playability, and my demands for cRPGs.

i - General
As I have described already, the general layout of a PnP RPG consists of a game master and the players. The reason rules exist is, at one hand (which is a gamistic element), to include some level of fairness. This was probably inspired by tabletop war games, in which the goal is to 'win', and fair rules had to exist to ensure the better player would win the game. In a role playing game, this point is only important as far as gamism goes - narrativism/dramatism and simulationism do not require any fairness. Still, most games try to have a certain 'balance' and 'fairness', so the players know what will possibly happen when they attempt action X. Say, a player tries to cast an invisiblity spell. If the spell fails, he will not be invisible. If it succeeds, he will be, but his equipment will not. That is a rule. Without that rule, there could be arguments between the player and game master. "What? I casted the spell, and now you tell me it didn't work?" - "But it did work, you are invisible." - "Yes, but my equipment isn't! And I'm blind because my eyes are invisible and light passes right through them!" - "Well, that's only realistic..." - that could be an example of a conversation that can be avoided by simply having rules. The other purpose of rules is simulationism. "How far can I jump?", "How much damage does a swordslash cause compared to a bec de corbin?", "Does my guisarme out-reach his halberd?" and such questions, the answer to which the game master probably does not even know, can be explained by rules. Not for fairness, but simply to aid in simulating a realistic world. This might even apply to unrealistic elements, like the afore mentioned spell. The rules say you can see even though your eyes are invisible, so you can. The reason is explained in the spell description, go look that up. Maybe it's a secondary effect of the spell that makes light behave differently around you. Keep in mind though that ALL PnP RPGs have one major rule: Rule Zero; the game master is ALWAYS right. In doubt, he can overrule any written rule if it fits his story. If he does that too often and against their will, though, the other players can of course replace him or leave the group. Rules also allow a random element - dice throws - and as such, a game element that is outside of the players' control to be introduced. Which many players enjoy a lot, because the game is not as predictable when some situations depend on the dice, not your decisions. Others (mainly narrativists) find random elements annoying.

ii - Gamistic Systems
These are Pen and Paper systems mainly based around competition, fight, victory and defeat. About game, to put it simply. Having been rather rare these days, those were the original PnP RPGs, like the early Dungeons & Dragons. The inspiration from tabletop war games is obvious here. I believe these systems to now be rather rare mainly because the RPG genre evolved and is now more strictly sperated from the war gaming genre. Still, many games have strong gamistic elements - they are games, after all. Such elements include, for example, miniatures and dungeon crawling quests. PC RPGs were first developed when PnP RPGs were still at this level, which probably explains a lot of things about cRPGs.
Gamistic Systems include easy to use but well tested rules, to have the best gameflow and maximal fairness.

iii - Narrativistic Systems
This type of PnP RPG is mainly based around telling a good story, even at the expense of simulationism. An example for such a game could be Vampire - The Masquerade, in which the rules, by definiton, are no more than an aid to help telling the story. Even the game master is named story teller instead, and realism is hardly an issue to worry too much about. The rules are quick and simple, only there to aid in situations in which random elements are required, but generally, the players' decisions and the story that they're playing is much more important than any rules, and no player should ever take the rules more seriously than the story itself. In doubt, rules ought to be ignored rather than followed if following them could make the story worse.
This playing style is very close to the 'theatre' origin of role playing, as opposed to the much more straightforward war gaming.

iv - Simulationistic Systems
These systems usually have massive amounts of lore, background information, and rules. Complex rules. Rules so complex that you might need a computer to keep track of all of them - which makes this genre extremely well suited for PC RPGs. A major annoyance about realistic systems is that the game master constantly has to look up rules, descriptions, lore, background information and such, and a fight can easily take hours because each second of the fight contains so many rules that it takes minutes to describe that tiny part of the game. A computer could handle such things in an instant, which brings me to the next point:

IV - Technological Advance and its Use in the Development of Role Playing Games
Something current PnP RPGs are stuck at is rule complexity. I'm playing an RPG that requires me, as the game master, to basically memorize at least five large books à 200-400 pages each, for the rules alone! That's not including any lore, politics, history etc. whatsoever. The game also expects me to know the name of half the people of every town the players could possible visit, because those people have been described somewhere in the 100 source books. And if a player realizes that I described a character that he knows but I don't in a wrong way, there'll suddenly be a loss of immersion for that player, which I of course want to avoid.
I love such a dense, complex setting in which everything makes sense and has a purpose, but it's a massive amount of work to keep track of all of that. I just can't handle it sometimes and have to call for a break to read something up on the internet quickly before I can continue playing. What'd really help me here is a computer to remember all these facts for me and display them at request - indeed, I think, such a game setting would be perfectly suited as an open world PC RPG, if only we found a way to keep the spirit of role playing within. The first step is simulating a massive world, but that wouldn't be the problem with current technology. The problem with current technology would be to bring actual LIFE to it. Many games have made different attempts to reach this goal, but at the end, I always feel alone in these worlds. I miss my companions.

V - The Importance of the Multi Player Aspect
Ta-daah!

i - The classic Party
The core idea of PnP roleplaying is that a GROUP of people go through all these adventures. A perfect cRPG needs no less than that: A group of dedicated role players to play the game together! How much fun would it be to merely travel through Cyrodiil if you'd not do it alone, but if there'd be the orc who's always trying to persuade the group into hunting some animal he has spotted in the distance, and the argonian who is fascinated about the vegetation she hasn't ever seen in her life, telling the group about her life in black marsh, and the charismatic cyrodiil of noble descent, who gets the group out of trouble by talking to guards, and the high elf, who always seems strangely absent until a magical mystery needs to be solved, a daedra to be fought, or a library to be visited, when suddenly he starts telling the other players about a lot of things they didn't think anyone would have known nor cared about?
I tell you, the game would be awesome! The problem, sadly, is, that you actually need a group of role players. Nerds. The people to play PnP games with. This game would need to be developed for this specific target audience, not for everyone else. More about that later.

Now, another problem is a technical one. The main problem is time. How would you introduce such a feature while also ensuring that one player can act in the night while all others sleep, without having players stare at black screens for hours? What happens if one player can't show up to the game? What happens to his or her character? What if one of the players randomly gets disconnected from the game?

These worries should be the least, though. There IS solutions for all of these.
If a player isn't there - we have a situation that also occurs in PnP RPGs. Believe it or not, but us role players have a life as well, and sometimes can't make it to the RPG weekend/evening/whatever. There's several possible solutions to that problem that are commonly used:
1. Mark the Red: The player character is there, but not quite. He doesn't do anything most of the time, unless the rest of the group specifically needs him to do something. Then he acts for a short while, and then stares into the distance again until the next time he's needed. Advantage: No explanation about his disappearance is needed. Disadvantage: The player character could die without the player even being there to do anything about it.
2. Has anyone seen him recently? The player character isn't there. Maybe he just wanted to take a dump and didn't return, maybe he got a letter from his family who quickly needed his help - however it is, the group will continue without him for a while. Advantage: Nothing can happen to the character. Disadvantage: It's hard to explain why he suddenly disappeared or where he is now.
3. I'm still here: The player character continues doing everything as usual; because the game master or another player took over his role. He's simply being played by someone else now as a secondary character. Disadvantage is, again, that the character could do something the original player wouldn't want him to do, or could die.

All of these solutions could be simulated in a cRPG. Mark the Red could mean that the player character simply is turned into an NPC that follows the group around while the player is absent. The second option could mean the character simply de-spawns and re-spawns again when the player rejoins the game - however immersion breaking that might be. The third option would be difficult to do, but of course, you could simply have someone else join the game for a while and take over that character - if the player is fine with that solution.

A more difficult problem is the time issue, but one solution I'd have in mind would be the two-in-one solution: There's a dream world, almost equally complex as the real game itself. The dream world constantly changes depending on what the characters have seen and done in their life, and all sleeping characters could even share a dream. The one character who insists on staying awake could do his sneaky business, while the rest of the group enjoy the time out in the dream world, doing silly and weird things without having to fear any consequences. Perhaps even quest or plot elements could be hidden in dreams. If all character sleep at one point in the game, they could agree to skip the dream phase, of course. And unless the group is really inconsistent and decides to split up and do their own thing all the time, this would be the norm anyway.

ii - MMORPGs
I've already voiced my personal opinion of this type of game, which is overall negative. The reason is not the concept of a large multiplayer game, but the way it ends up, every time: With the players not truly wanting to participate in a role playing game. This issue can only be solved with invite-only communities, essentially meaning the game would have to be developed for only one relatively small community of maybe 500 players. The largest LARP events known to me reach up to around 5000 players and generally suffer from relatively low immersion already, even though everyone there is devoted to the hobby and is likely wearing a thousand Euros worth of maille armour and such. That many players in a game that doesn't require people to devote themselves to it can hardly end up too well.
It would be the ideal computer game, though. A fully functional virtual fantasy world in which everyone actually plays their role and can be fully trusted. Such a community is however a mere utopia, and while surely something to be desired, cannot be achieved by any means I could imagine. The technological problems of such a world, on the other hand, have long been solved for all the MMORPGs currently in existance. But until someone finds a truly effective way to enforce role playing, and a common definition of what type of behaviour is considered 'canon' and what isn't - there won't be very impressive results in this area.
I believe that for now, the perfect player count would be four or five. Most people should be able to get that number of friends to play a game with them, easily. A bit less won't hurt either - a game should not be so difficult that it requires every player to be fully efficient. There should be room for bard-type characters who just aren't useful for anything other than entertaining the group. Role playing is what a role playing game should be about, not efficient killing.

iii - The Advantage of Single Player RPGs
As such, I see the single player RPG as generally superior to the MMORPG, with a co-operational mode being optimal. But multiplayer aside, the main advantage of a single player game is that there's no random internet people to ruin your immersion.
The game's there only for you, and the developers can fully focus on maximising the fun for that one player. This is similar to the game master in a PnP group. If you're playing with only one other player, you an entirely focus on him or her and create the most immersive game. It'll get lonely quite quickly though, so adding a few more people to the mix might be a good idea - but I've never seen a game master capable of handling a massive group well, and the same applies to game design. The more people to account for, the more demanding the creation of a fun game will be.
So, to put it this way: The main advantage of a single player RPG is that it can dedicate all its immersion, be it simulation, drama or game, to the player. Like a good TV show, there's one or a few heroes, but never too many.

VI - A Summary on the Importance of Immersion
Which leads us to the topic of immersion, one of the most important topics in regard to role playing games in general. A role playing games quality can perhaps best be measured by this factor; the better the game is at making you forget that it is a game, the more involved you are, and the deeper the connection with the gameworld and as such, the stronger both dramatistic and simulationistic attributes of the game will be. Merely the gamism won't take a massive boost here, and some casual gamers might not need this level of involvement.

i - The Definition of Immersion
But - what is immersion anyway? What do we define as immersive?
Now, immersion is, basically, the ability of a game to draw the player's attention in a way that makes the player feel as if he was part of the story and game world, not a mere spectator looking upon the game world from an outside perspective. A common term used to describe this is "suspension of disbelief" - now, the full term is "willing suspension of disbelief" and actually describes a more complex situation. When watching a movie, for example, a few illogical things might happen. A typical example in almost every movie is the background music: It isn't actually there, noone in the movie itself seems to hear it, yet the audience does. Another related example is the 'noise in space' situation - there's no air in space, and as such no sound can be heared, and yet we do hear the explosion of ships and weird noises of laser cannons and such. You could even go as far as saying: The fact that there's a camera team floating around in space filming the entire thing is already illogical. But we don't notice these things when watching a movie, as we willingly suspend our disbelief - we just say "screw it, I'll just accept this as reality now". However, at some point our will isn't quite willing to suspend the disbelief anymore. The sound in space example for instance - when that happens in a movie, I always shake my head and have to keep myself from laughing. It's just ridiculous. My willing suspension of disbelief is ruined. Now, if my will alone isn't strong enough to suspend the disbelief, the medium itself will have to help me out a bit - for example, by lacking noise in space. And this is why I use the term "suspension of disbelief" rather than "willing suspension of disbelief", as I'm not referring to the act of suspension performed by the audience, but the measures taken by the creators of a work of fiction to help the audience with it.
Or in other words: The measures taken by the creators of a work of fiction to make it more immsersive.
This medium - the game, or more specifically the role playing game - is especially notable for its attempt to be immersive. I have previously mentioned the escapism that inspires this sort of gaming, along with the wish to learn and experience a different life, out of curiosity, like children do when playing.

ii - Reasons for Disbelief
The problem is, of course, that disbelief cannot be entirely avoided. If it was, we'd be living in the matrix, and that cannot be our goal. We can only ever suspend our disbelief for a relatively short amount of time, otherwise we'd be completely addicted to a medium, which is not what I advocate. Still, we want to stop playing when the real world needs us or we feel like doing something else - we do not want to stop playing because the game fails to immerse us. A game that fails to be immersive fails at being a good role playing game.
Now, what are common reasons that cause this disbelief that pushes us away from the game world and lets us realise that it's all just a game, or even, in the worst case, make us laugh about it?
One unavoidable reason is technical limitations - in every genre. In the video game industry, this is most notable when the shortcomings of AI become obvious. Another major source of this is bugs or glitches in the game, or overly evident game mechanics that aren't properly hidden, but displayed right in our face. Yes, I mean things like "level up!" screens, that could as well be called "hello, I'm a game mechanic, not part of the world!" screens. Or "whoops, did you want to be immersed? Sorry, I can't offer you that, but what about a level-up?" screens. Or generally any noticable game mechanic that could be hidden, but isn't. I'd go as far as saying that many absolutely redundant game mechanics are still obviously displayed simple because the developers don't realise the power of their medium or underestimate the intelligence of the audience.
Let's use a simple example: Skills. With Skyrim, we see a shift from the typical TES skill advancement to "perks". The problem I have with that is the following:
When pen and paper games were first introduced, the players needed rules. I previously have explained what these rules are required for, so I won't go into that detail again, but a fact is that these rules were and are deemed a requirement for a functional pen and paper game. If I want my character to breach a door, I'll have to have some sort of indication on whether or not I'll succeed with that attempt. A "strength" attribute is excellent for this purpose. Or let's say my character is running from a town guard - wouldn't it be good to know my speed and the speed of the guard to judge whether or not I can escape? Or maybe I'll try to escape by climbing over a wall - now a "climbing" skill would come in pretty handy.
For these reasons, pen and paper games have, often very elaborate, skill systems. Lots of numbers to look at and compare, to one another or to random dice rolls, to decide the outcome of an uncertain situation. A cRPG confronts the player with similar situations. In an Elder Scrolls game, you too might have to run from a guard, climb over a wall or enter a locked room. But how do we find out whether you succeed or fail? Of course - we'll simply have the same skills and attributes as a pen and paper game!
That was the basic idea when creating the first role playing games. And it's a completely logical step. But instead of going onwards with technology, we have seen game developers taking steps back with this mechanic. Once there was dozens of skills, now their number has been reduced to less than 20 for Skyrim. Instead of adding new situations and new skills to deal with these situations (like climbing walls or kicking in doors), the developers 'simplify' the current mechanics and give the player a simple, easy skill perk system. Something that once made sense in a pen and paper game, perhaps, but is not at all required in a modern cRPG anymore. The reason why and the solution to the problem will be explained below:

iii - Ways of Suspension of Disbelief
As I said, the pen and paper game requires a character sheet with all values written down. Whenever the players 'level up', they can increase those skills. The reason for this is to simulate the experience they have gained over the course of their adventures - the longer you travel around and fight evildoers, the better you get at it, obviously. So a simple system that didn't take too much time had to be introduced, a system that kept numbers small enough to compare them to 20-sided dice.
A computer however is much more powerful than that! We could have massive amounts of skills, huge numbers and lots of rules and regulations that a computer all could take into account within the fraction of a second. I am playing a pen and paper rule system with friends that has hundreds of skills, half a book full of character classes, and probably a thousand pages of rules. I have to memorize all that and calculate with it while playing. It's hard for me - but it'd be extremely simple for a computer!
And the best part: The player doesn't have to notice that at all! At the character creation screen, the game could ask the player a few question about his/her characters past. "Were you born in a city?", "Was that city near a river or the sea?", "Were your parents wealthy?", "Are they still alive?", "What did you do once you became old enough to work?" - such things. Completely without any numbers. The game could then create an extremely complex character sheet with a lot of details that the player won't ever get to see. The game would then tell the player about his/her strongest and weakest points "Due to your life near a large river, you are a good swimmer", "Since you were interested in smithing since you were old enough to work, you are a good blacksmith", "Because your parents were poor, you never got to learn about the nobles and high society, and you'd have problems behaving correctly in such circles" - and then the game would begin, and the player would never hear about these skills again. Instead, the player would notice how these skills smoothly change - get higher when used, drop when unused for a long time - there is no need for any intrusive features like pop-up messages, level-up screens or character sheets, as the computer can very well handle an incredibly complex system without annoying the player with any of that.
Another factor is, for example, realism:

iv - Realism and its indirect Contribution to Fun
Yes, the good old realism debate. I've said this in a few threads already, but let me elaborate it anyway:
I prefer the term 'simulation' over 'realism' in this context, as 'realism' implies that the depiction of this fictional world should be as close to the real world as possible, which is not what I intend to say. I mean logical consistency within the game world, according to its own rules, even if those rules are not equal to the rules that the real world follows, apart from the concept of logic, which I apply to both worlds because my mind is limited to thinking in logical ways. If there is no cause-effect-correlation, my mind cannot follow a given situation anymore and I lose immersion.
In other words: For a world to be immersive, it needs to be as logically consistent as possible. Whenever something in that world happens that is not explained, I will either try to find out what causes is (perhaps even give up if I believe the reason to be out of my own reach, such as devine intervention), or I will think that it wasn't actually meant to be caused by anything, but simply happened because the game developers put it there for me. Which is a cause, of course, but it's an out-of-game cause, not an in-universe explanation (compare my earlier elaboration on out-of-character vs. in-character). If something obviously happened for out-of-game reasons, I inevitably feel reminded of the fact that I'm playing a game, as such, I fail to suspend my disbelief and lose my immersion. I'm no longer travelling through Skyrim, I'm now sitting in front of a computer in which pixels travel through Skyrim. I do not want this to happen, of course, as it makes the game less enjoyable.
The solution for this is simple: Making sure that nothing in the game seems to happen (or not to happen) because of the fact that it is a game. Of course, this can never be completely achieved, as I have explained before, due to technological limitations. But within the the restrictions of the medium and budget, I demand the developers to try their best at getting as close as possible to this goal.

A few examples come up very often. One is the requirement to sleep, eat and drink. For me, this is a very important element of believability. If I can wander around the countryside for weeks without ever resting or eating, I'll be reminded of the fact that this game doesn't take itself very seriously, and will thus lose immersion. I do have an easier time accepting a lack of perfectly developed eating animations, however, as I know about the technological limitations and can willingly suspend my disbelief to a certain degree without being completely kicked out of the game. A complete lack of the requirement to eat, however, is simply logically inconsistent: Every house in the game has tables with food on them, shops sell food, taverns serve meals, and NPCs make use of these possibilities - why the hell would my character not need to do the same? Why does this world obviously revolve around eating just as much as the real one does, except for my character? These thoughts that the game provokes are out-of-character-thoughts, and as such entirely unwanted during gameplay. The best way to avoid these thoughts is by either having a setting in which noone eats, drinks or sleeps (which is not a classic fantasy setting anymore, of course, and certainly not Tamriel), or by including the requirement for the player character to eat and drink.

Another example is the law system. I could really only laugh at it. Why am I arrested for murder and put in a cell for a few days only? If they treat criminals like that in Tamriel, how do they manage to maintain any social order? No, that seems completely illogical. Execution would be a much more believable punishment for murder - and of course, I should hardly stand a chance against a large number of well equipped guards, forcing me to flee the region and only return in disguise, or bribe the right people. These solutions would feel much more immersive to me than what players usually end up doing in Oblivion: Either just sitting in prison for a few days or easily beating massive amounts of guards in combat.

Which leads me to the next point: Combat realism. I have no trouble willingly suspending my disbelief to the degree that there IS magical means of healing - hell, even an explanation like "a constant magical flow in the air slowly heals all minor wounds in a matter of a few days" is acceptable as an explanation for (very very slow!!!) health regeneration when resting. But weapons causing nearly no damage, massive differences between experienced characters and inexperienced characters in the damage they cause or health they have, and unbelievably fast health regeneration or use of potions in a time-freeze-zone like the inventory are entirely inacceptable. That completely ruins any immersion for me, as the game world would never be described that way in a book. I know that it's only like that because "it's a game", and this very thought is the declared enemy of immersion, and thus enjoyment of a role playing game. And the solution for such problems wouldn't even be difficult. Avoiding combat without having an advantage, less fights overall, more realistic damage system, stronger emphasis on defense, blocking, dodging, cover (as realistic ways to express better combat performance of high level characters, as opposed to simply 'more hit points') are all possible, easily well balanced (for years I've been playing pen and paper games with that level of realism and not once has any of my characters been killed! They have been captured, arrested, forced to flee, or wounded and left for dead, sure, but I never felt treated unfairly by my game masters - I can guarantee you, realistic games work!) and my main point remains - the computer is an excellent platform for such games, with a level of realism that can hardly be achieved with the very limited means of pen, paper and dice. We have a very powerful machine in the computer that can easily keep track of millions of statistics at a time, allowing for immensive realism, but we simply don't make use of it! Why? Well...:

v - Side Effects of Realism - Accessibility vs. Complexity
It is a common (mis)conception that realism and higher complexity lead to a lack of accessibility and make the game unplayable for anyone who isn't perfectly skilled at it.
This is, of course, wrong. I have played afore mentioned pen and paper game with players who have not read a single rule book, have had no prior role playing experience, played completely 'inefficient' characters, and yet had no problem taking part, at all. Only one of their characters died - because of the cowardness of a group member who would have had the chance to free her OR get over his greed and pay the ransom, but decided to rather flee. With such friends, you need no enemies, of course... But that's off-topic.
It is not at all difficult to design a game that is only as challenging as the player wants it, even if it is realistic. The main way of balancing this, in pen and paper games, is by only giving the group adventures as difficult as the group can handle, as a game master. This is by no means 'levelled enemies', of course - it's rather the amount of enemies, or their type, and it is logically explained: The more experienced a group/player is, the more dangerous areas s/he might visit, and the more dangerous missions they will agree to complete. A cRPG can use exactly the same principle. There should be plenty of quests that do not at all require a professional combat expert to solve, so that the more casual gamers or players of non-combat characters can have their fun. The more dangerous areas and quests are clearly presented as such, to avoid any misunderstandings. "Please escort my daughter to the next village" could be either a dangerous or non-dangerous quest. Simply have the characters elaborate to make sure the player knows what's going on: "A few boys from a nearby village are following her around sometimes, I feel uncomfortable letting her travel alone, please escort her" is easy, while "She's the princess of the kingdom and the evil lord of darkness tries to have her assassinated" is a hard quest. It's as simple as that, really. Proper game design makes even a realistic game very accessible.

Just think it through. At no point of the game, excessive nerdiness is required to succeed:
Character creation is merely answering a few questions
Gameplay is well balanced and the difficulty depends only on the type of task the player agrees to complete, or the type of area s/he decides to visit

There's really no room for unfairness or over-the-top-complexity here. A game can be simple, intuitive and easy to play while still being immersive and realistic at the same time, and I've played such games - just sadly, the cRPG genre doesn't really feature those, for the fear of disappointing the audience.

VII - The Audience and Market and its Effects on cRPGs, and what can be done about it
Which brings us to the next point. The audience. As I have explained, there's more nerdy and more casual gamers, and anything in between.
The recent trend was to mainly please the casual gamers, to increase the amount of customers. There seems to be no attempts to develop the genre towards more immersion and better gameplay - instead, the only technological advance is in the visual department, and gameplay gets simplified more and more with games being recycled with slightly different stories. Developers fear that more complex and immersive games would scare away the casual gamer and lead to massive losses. My opinion (as explained in section VI, v of this post) is, that well implemented complexity does not lead to scaring away players. The only true problem that I see is that with added believability and realism, less 'special effect' hype can be created; less fights, less explosions, less over-the-top enemies. That will hardly have a huge impact on sales, however, as I believe that the audience is well capable of adapting to a more believable storyline and gameplay, as long as it is not needlessly complicated. This is evident in the movie industry, where special effects are surely a cheap and easy way to turn a below-average movie into a blockbuster, but there's still the odd movie of true quality that also sells well.
The true core of this way of thinking, however, is of course that the computer (and to a lesser extend the console) is merely a new medium for an old genre of games, and that we should strive to use the full capacity of this medium to further develop the genre, rather than forgetting about the roots of this hobby called 'role playing', and simply making average action-adventure games.
The Elder Scrolls series in particular, in its roots, has managed to include some revolutionary ideas and advancements into this gaming platform. Ideas like smooth skill increases, open worlds, NPCs having their own life and activities, the ability to do anything, use anything, talk to anyone, enter any building - this freedom especially is a core concept of role playing - and with a strong modding community, we can even leave some of the game master's tasks to the players themselves, giving them the ability to create own quests in the fully functional, free world that has been created by the developers - as was the case with pen and paper role playing games since decades.
I want the developers to be fans of their own game, not businessmen. I want them to do the very best to make the best possible role playing game, not the game that sells best.

On this note, a little word on consoles:
They're horrible. They lack features the PC has, with their only advantage being convenience for the casual gamer. As such, they do not embody technological advance like the PC does, they actually hold back and slow down development of games because of their limited hardware and lack of upgradability, and the horrible input devices. They also promote a specifically casual type of gameplay - sitting on the couch lazily and semi-focussing on the game, but mainly just relaxing. There sure is a place for that, but it would be a shame if this type of gameplay was the focus of those who should instead attempt to perfect the art of creating a truly impressive role playing game. Yes, I am hating on consoles here, and no, that is not the main point of this post, it's a very small side note and a personal opinion. Feel free to correct me if I fail to understand some concept about console gaming that actually makes it better at providing an immersive experience than the PC can.


Conclusion
All in all, I believe this all comes down to finding out what we actually want to play. We, as the audience, are the ones who, at the end of the day, have the most power. If we don't demand the industry to strive for something bigger, for something more complex and plainly awesome, then we will not get that. There will hardly be any interest in giving us more than we beg for, as long as we simply accept the status quo withing thinking ahead and daring to dream of the fantastic possibilities of the new media. It is the responsibility of us, whose hobby it is to play RPGs, to make sure that those RPGs truly deserve that name. While I wouldn't blame the audience for the tendency of publishers and developers to forget about their roots and high goals, I am still sure that we could, if we would stop accepting what we're giving and start thinking and motivating them, greatly improve this genre.

Most of you will never have thought there was anything wrong with it, but I ask you to allow your dream of a perfect game to not be a mere fantasy. It was dreams like those that spawned the role playing genre in the first place, that triggered the transition from pen and paper games to cRPGs, and it is these dreams that should guide us!

I know that I won't have much success by writing this post alone, but I sincerely hope that a few of you who read this will think about it, and I hope that we can continue this thread in a mature discussion that can highlight all the problems and chances there are, and come to new conclusions and directions for this hobby.

Thank you for your patience. Now, to quote myself at the end: