samuraigaiden: In Wizardry 1, you control a group of young men
Actually, the manual points out something to the effect that "Wizardry isn't gendered, but English is" in order to explain the use of "he" in the manual, which implies that the characters are not necessarily male.
Wizardry 1 does make at least one slip up, in the message that appears if you forget spells after casting HAMAN or MAHAMAN (a message most players never see, as it's extremely rare and requires casting a spell that costs the caster a level, so very few players will see this, and which was removed in the sequels and the NES port), but by and large, the game never genders the party.
dtgreene: Wizardry's scenario is really no more complex than that of Super Mario Bros. and I've never heard anyone use the "RPG" label for SMB.
Also, there aren't any choices that affect the plot in Wizardry, as there isn't any plot to affect.
(Note that by "Wizardry" I am referring to the first game in the series; later on, starting with Wizardry 4, you start seeing some choices that matter from a plot perspective.)
samuraigaiden: Maybe I didn't make myself clear.
My point exactly was that any choice that exists in Wizardry is made through gameplay and it only exists within the scope of the Scenario - which in this case is a very narrow scope.
In Wizardry 1, you control a group of young men tasked by a mad king to recover a magical amulet from the hands of an insane demigod wizard who is not interested in negotiations. What choices do you make? You choose your party members, their equipment and class specialization, you choose how they approach the friendly and unfriendly encounters in the dungeon and you choose the strategy to win fights, traverse the dungeon in efficient ways and eventually fulfill your quest.
Those are the choices. The gameplay is the choices, the choices are made through gameplay, the gameplay possibilities being determined by the scope of the Scenario.
And the choices you make affect the plot because the plot is the story of your adventurers and their quest. If they all die, if you give up, if it takes you 10 generations of adventurers to kill Werdna, that's
your plot.
This is what Role-Playing Games are about.
Playing CYOA good hero/jerk hero simulator with action game combat interludes isn't what RPGs are about.
In Super Mario Bros., you control a plumber tasked with rescuing the princess of the kingdom. What choices do you make? You choose which ? blocks you hit for power-ups, which pipes you go down (like the 1-1 which skips a good portion of the level, but also skips a 1-up and a power-up), whether you take a risk to collect that power-up or 1-up, whether you use warp zones, and whether you repeatedly stomp a koopa for 1-ups (and when to stop, knowing that going too far will result in a game over), and how to navigate the mazes that appear in a few of the castles.
As you can see, there's plenty of choices in Super Mario Bros. that you can make. And these choices affect the plot much the way choices in Wizardry do; if you skip rescuing some of the toads (because you used warp zones) or if you barely manage to clear 8-4 on your last life, that's *your* story.
My point here is that having a story is not what defines the RPG genre; there are non-RPGs with major stories to tell, and there are RPGs whose plot is only as complex as that of Super Mario Bros..
