What about Vancian do you like?
That would be… cool?
Glad you were able to get them back in!
I play Wizards; I'm more "falls on the side of the muggle supremacists", tbh.
That said, I think the description given by oldtrees1 is much closer than "casting magic all the time" to describing my position on the "what I want magical beings to do" front (which, obviously, is unrelated to my position in my first post regarding balance).
Ah. Gotcha. I'm onboard with having skill matter more than chance, and with challenges like "walking" and "chewing solid food" be things that get outgrown by most.
Eh, I'm not sure if I'm following. That is, one could invoke mechanics with or without listening ("I hit AC 42, dealing 69 damage to… whatever"), even incoherently ("but it's 500' away… hovering over the middle of the grand canyon… and you're wielding a sword…"), just as one could go off-sheet with out without listening, and even incoherently.
But, what you were trying to convey was, you believe, sometimes, people mistake "not paying attention" for "playing the sheet"?
Am I close?
… well, my answer is gonna be weird.
To me, "role-playing" means giving answers as the character (close enough? You know what I mean, right?), answering "WWQD?".
In 5e D&D, the RNG is generally far more a factor than skill. Usually, a group of buffoons will do better than the trained professional.
So, in a reality that uses 5e, when a teacher asks a class, "why do we have governments?", it's highly likely that a student will give a better answer than what the teacher knows. The flow of knowledge is from the many to the one.
I can envision a society that follows this humorously inverted logic, and build a character who grew up in that society. So that, when it comes to sobbing problems in a 5e universe, I don't have to break character to suggest throwing more bodies at the problem, to know that "crowd-sourcing" is the tech of choice.
A system fails to be an RPG when you are forced to make decisions for the character that the character could not make. When you cannot construct a reality that logically produces the mindset in which the game is played.
That's how 4e fails to be an RPG.
When you *can* answer the question WWQD, but doing so is not just suboptimal but impossible, when you cannot act upon the roleplay answer, when you are constantly forced to metagame limit yourself to an unrealistically constrained list of options, it is also not an RPG, by my definitions.
This is how CRPGs fail to be RPGs.
So, to answer your question, well, I can't answer your question, because I don't know any of those systems well enough. You'll have to answer your question for yourself.
When you make decisions in those games, are you role-playing the character? Could a character in those systems have come to the answer you did? If so, if you can actually play the game in "actor stance" without needing to access metagame knowledge of "the more people helping, the quicker we'll accumulate failures -> only the person with the best modifiers should ever touch the dice", then it can be a role-playing game.
When the mechanics force you out of actor stance, because what's obvious to everyone at the table as the correct/best answer is impossible to achieve as a reasonable, trained response in character, when you cannot build a setting that makes sense of the rules, then it's not an RPG.
When the system explicitly prohibits you from taking actions that would be in character to take ("but… there aren't rules for…"), and this occurs too often / for too many important choices / forces too great a deviation from WWQD, then it's not an RPG.
So… are those RPGs? If I set the original SSI gold box series in them, could I try to burn down the slums? Could I say arbitrary things to whomever I choose, and get back reasonable responses? Could I try to steal someone's cow? Open a shop? Build a ship? Become mayor?
If I'm role-playing my character with no concept of what system I'm in, will my actions make sense, or will they seem pants-on-head? If the latter, can I (you) build a background based on the system such that you can then play strictly in character, and have them make reasonable decisions?
Or does the system force you to stop role-playing, and play the system?
Answer that, and you'll know my answer to whether or not those are RPGs.
I'm sure I'll add more entries over time (senility willing).
Hmmm… does ShadowRun count for "toolbox + defaults"? (I'm only familiar with really old editions, but… "point buy" of race / funds / skills / stats / magical aptitude priority… then WoD level "bad at math" (ish) optimizer's paradise of "starting costs have no relationship to upgrade costs"within those priorities (something I'm not personally terribly concerned about either way)… with pre-built "troll street samurai" / combat Mage / street shaman / decker / etc)
IME, the biggest… Hmmm… "boon" to "approachable" I've found for new players is, very sadly, having the GM make the characters for the players. "What do you want… OK, here's how this system says what I think you're saying."
The worst thing I've found for "approachable" is "what do I roll, and do I want high or low (or "highest without going over", or…).
Merging two ideas: do those who don't want to engage with "rules heavy" actually engage with the fiction? Will they try to serve steak to the vegetarian? What's your experience there?