Taking hallucinogenic drugs, crushing with the head against levitating and philosophizing stone blocks and jumping on the heads of poor little thingys what killed and sqished them. Weird & fubar game ...

In Stalker I would throw all dead bodies at the Garbage into one of those pits in the old factory until the entire thing is completely filled. And then throw a grenade into the pit.

Final Fantasy 5 (SFC/PSX version) (late game spoilers):

Reached the Great Library in the 3rd world, then went to the basement and teleported out, leaving me by Guido's Cave.
Used Chocobo to travel the world, got the Wind Drake, can now fly, can also get the Black Chocobo.
(Note that Lenna is not in the party at this point.)

Cleared the Solitary Island Shrine. Lenna appears in cut scenes here.

Cleared the Fork Tower. When entering, the party splits up, and Lenna goes with one of the parties. After this dungeon, I still have Lenna. (Remember, she isn't supposed to be in the party at this point.)

Went back and cleared the Pyramid. Then, fought Mellusion (with Lenna in the party, even though the cut scene showed Lenna arriving while possessed by the boss). After the battle, Lenna would normally rejoin, but dead (so you have to revive her with a spell or item).

I believe (though I don't remember for sure) that I have won the fight with Lenna being the last survivor. Back on the world map, I check my status and the entire party is dead! (The game only checks for game over during battle, so I can play until I get into a fight.) Fortunately, this can be fixed with a Phoenix Down or a Tent, or if you take advantage of saving anywhere on the world map and reach a town to rest.

During the cut scene, the Great Library was sucked into the void. Unfortunately, I had parked my Black Chocobo there, and as a result, it is now inaccessible. (It is still on the map, just not in a spot you can walk to.) This makes it no longer possible to get Bahamut or Phoenix. Unlike the all-dead party, there is no way to fix it. (Always save in a separate slot when experimenting with glitches, which fortunately I had done.)

@dtgreene

Not playing games that try to be more than just simple mindless repetitive electronic entertainment? Urgency only belongs in action games? Eliminate fear of change in the story or gameplay by removing options for the player to decide fate of which you want there to be options? For what? Not to make critical decisions that requires critical thought, ever? I hope you never become a game developer.

The thing is, by taking away the player's ability to freely explore or backtrack, you are indeed limiting the player's options.

In any case, in a good challenging RPG, you may actually have to make decisions in the middle of combat, like whether to attack an enemy (and risk having someone die because the enemy wasn't killed by your attack) or heal (and spend more resources doing so, and possibly even risk having one of your characters level drained). One thing to note, however, is that the game gives you as much time as you need to make the decision; that's one thing that separates RPGs from action games.

The best way to maintain interest is to give both the party and enemies more abilities as the game progresses.

(Also, note that @ followed by username is not the way to get a user's attention on this forum. You should instead find one of the user's posts in the topic and click "reply"; this way it will appear as a reply on her account.)

Here is a thing. An RPG has to be an RPG; if it turns into an action game, it no longer is the sort of game someone looking for an RPG is looking for. This can especially be a problem for disabled gamers; a disabled gamer with poor reflexes can play RPGs because they don't require quick reflexes; once you add in the need for quick reflexes, the game becomes inacessible to the player. (A disabled gamer posted a complaint about Albion not that long ago.)

Another question: How would you feel about a game that requires what would reasonably be considered an exploit in order to proceed? (The game I've been playing lately, Wizardry Gaiden 3, has required that on 2 separate occasions.)

Edit: I should note that I can sometimes enjoy RPGs that are completely different from others, as long as they're still RPGs and not action games that pretend to be RPGs. (An example of such a game I enjoy is Wizardry 4.) I also sometimes enjoy action games, sometimes with RPG elements, but I never count such games as RPGs. (Of note, I strongly prefer 2D action games to 3D ones.)

I'm not going to derail this thread with a long, drawn-out back-and-forth with you (so I'll just do one long, drawn-out reply :P ); suffice it to say that not all (or even most) games are going to be accessible to all people. A game's accessibility is a choice that has to be weighed by every developer, but most have an idea of the audience(s) they want to cater to. There is nothing inherently wrong with making a game that caters to a particular audience, at the expense of appeal to other subsets of people (including those with physical disabilities); nor, of course, is there anything wrong with catering specifically to those subsets, or with trying to cover the broadest spectrum possible (though, obviously, this approach is rather difficult to do successfully). NO game can be both accessible and interesting to everyone -- not even within a particular sub-sub-subgenre.

Also, this... ...is kind of what I meant by you speaking in absolutes, and assuming everyone else wants what you want from a given kind of game. For one thing, you are no more an authority than anyone else on what RPG "should" mean. Moreover, there is plenty of room for many variations and subtypes within any given genre, and if no one ever innovated or combined different genres, no new genres or subgenres would ever be created (let alone games which defy genre classification entirely). It doesn't matter if a game's labeled 'RPG' or not (genre labels are so often inaccurate or inadequate as to render them fairly useless); simply look for games that contain the features that you want them to, and be happy for other people that they get games with features that they want, even if you can't stand those features, and can't understand why they're lumped into the same genre with games that only have a general setting-type (e.g., "medieval fantasy") and a couple underlying mechanics in common with them.

Regarding your "exploits-required" game: a game that was designed to require the discovery and use of weird exploits or degenerate strategies (although, if an exploit vector was put into a game on purpose, then, by definition, it wouldn't really BE an exploit) would be fine, could even be even interesting...but the market for people who'd be really into that concept would probably be somewhat limited (though who knows...). Of course, if the game WASN'T designed this way on purpose, but still absolutely required the use of exploits, I'd say that was just a very poorly-designed game. That doesn't mean it's a BAD game, per se, nor does it mean it can't still be fun, of course (at least for some), but it's definitely shoddy game design.

There is a real issue, however: Suppose you have a game that is mostly accessible to a person with a particular disability. However, at some point in the game, there is a mandatory section that is inaccessible. As a result, a person is unable to enjoy the later part of the game because of one part that she just can't get past. It's one thing if a game has action elements all the way through; somebody who can't handle them can just ignore the game entirely. It's another thing, however, to have an RPG or turn-based strategy game that has a mandatory action sequence; the player goes in expecting an accessible game, but then gets stuck because of a section she just can't get passed.

The otherwise well-designed Chrono Trigger has two problematic parts; one part where you need to press several buttons at once (an issue if you only have one usable hand) and one part that requires button mashing (which is the part that makes me dread replaying the game).

By the way, at AGDQ 2015, somebody played through the early part of Zelda: Ocarina of Time blindfolded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhHMW_atNG4

OK, another absurd game moment of mine came to mind.

I was playing Half-life, where you have that wonderful trip on the train to the Black Mesa station, while the credits roll and into the training session.

After the training, you're in an enclosed area and the scientist needs to swipe you in to get into the complex.

I was feeling a bit cocky and decided (since at the time I was armed) to gun down the scientist before he had the opportunity to swipe his badge and open the door.

I was thinking, maybe one of the other characters would do the job or maybe it would open automatically, but I was testing the bounds of the game.

Well, the developers apparently had prepared themselves for something like this. While the scientist lay there, door unopened and I ran about the area look for some way to get out, the game "gave" me a way out.

Turret guns came out in the ceiling, tracking and shooting me as best as they could. There was no escape.

Next game I played, I was much nicer to the scientists.

I was playing Grand Theft Auto 5 Online one day, cruising around in one of my better sports-type cars (can't remember the name of the car. It's the one that has the fancy fender attachments over the front wheels. Fairly common-ish car. Painted mine black and orange :P)

I was nearing the airport, cruising along at top speed on the freeway. I started to lose control of my vehicle, as I saw someone with a tank nearby on the same stretch of road I was careening upon (or I might have hit a ramp, I don't remember). Anyways, I lost control and went flying off of the freeway into the air. My care ended up slamming wheels-first into a billboard! My car was then stuck! On it's side! On the billboard's walkway!!

It was the craziest thing! I laughed so fricken hard! Here I am standing on the billboard with my car sitting sideways.

I took a picture to save the moment for others to laugh about. I have it somewhere on my Rockstar profile lol.

I've also gotten my car stuck in the mountains a few times with no wheels touching the ground.

I've seen people do that in real life! :D

I've played the stalker games to death, so thought i'd spice the last play-thru up a bit.
Started SoC on Veteran, chickened out of doing Master for now, but will try it next time around, with nothing but a hand gun.
I did it, but had to resort to many reloads, one concession i allowed myself was any armour.
No Crosshair, no use of grenades, first part of the game up until the bridge i was stuck with the horrid Makarov PM.
As soon as the bridge soldiers became worm food i picked up the Fort 15 from the Majors body.
Taking them out with the PM was a bloody nightmare, used all my health packs up, had to sell their junk to buy more.
Thus slowing my progression down, no intention of taking the tunnel, the fight was just more fun, or paying the gits.
Completed up until the rescue of the scientist, until i changed out for a walther p99, abundant supply of them and ammo.
Fucked up, completely leaving the Fort 15 on a body, forgetting that it's part of a quest...poopz.
The rest of the game was completed with a big boy, taking a age to get enough ammo for the thing.
Falling back on the walther on creatures, bandits, that don't need such high stopping power.
Conserving precious ammo, the idea was to punch thru the game with speed.
Not linger on one section too long, didn't work out that way but hell, never thought i'd get it done so i'm happy.

So far the most absurd thing i did was waste my time (A lot of hours) leveling the heroes in the Final Fantasy games instead of enjoying them to the very core and how they're meant to be played...

The second that i can think of was trying like crazy to play resident evil 2 with only a knife and no damage and eating lots and lots of junk while gaming...and kept eating until my proportions became legendary, oh well, not sure if this one counts but it was absurd and i did it while gaming so there :)

Dropped a few kilos since then too :D

Tofu?

I've had things like that happen a lot in various GTA games. And just within the last week or so, playing Saints Row 2, I managed to get a van or Hummer (some big vehicle like that) stuck standing on end, windshield pointed skyward. I couldn't even get it to rock a little when attacking it with melee weapons, and I didn't really care enough about it to grab another vehicle and try to ram it back onto its tires, so I had to abandon it. =D