I know that well, but does the interaction between players allow for emergent gameplay when characters act in ways not anticipated by the algorithms?
According to me, yes.
(only my point of view below, of course)
When, philosophically speaking, one is a consistent materialist, as I strive to be, I think the answer is theoretically yes it is a true RPG. To say no would be to ignore the determinism inherent in our biological condition and to imagine that, simply because we are not machines, we can create imaginary situations entirely free from influence.
However, there is, I believe, a significant degree of difference between the sophistication of our cerebral imagination and that simulated by a computer. Making another human being dream, transporting them to another realm, or engaging them in a fictional dialogue is not merely a matter of data accumulation, abstraction capabilities, information synthesis, or statistical choices. It is the art of encapsulating a subjectivity, which presupposes being one oneself (at least, given the current stage of our technological advancement). Because the subjectivity implies the body.
Of course, one can engage in “true” role-playing even solo; there are systems and methods for this, based on oracles. These oracles act as imagination boosters that impose random constraints, from which the player defines coherent events and resolves them using a set of rules. Therefore, it’s not strictly a matter of social interaction. But upon reflection, do the imaginary worlds, characters, and situations we invent for ourselves emerge from nothingness? No, they are both the product of the influence of others’ imaginations, elsewhere and before us, and of our own organic experience of the world—of the body that we are, which allows us to live the life we live. It is precisely this biological, organic, physiological body and its tangible relationship with the matter of the world that enables subjectivity, perspective, psyche, and imagination.
I absolutely love RPG video games; they’re a lot of fun, and I play them regularly, so I do not look down on the genre. I even find that some are stunning, intelligent masterpieces whose full depth can only be appreciated after certain real-life experiences. Still, in role-playing between human beings, which involves the body, there remains an intensity of life that technology has not yet been able to replace.