Ah, well, I wouldn't call her a musician either. A singer - maybe. But not a musician, no.
Ah yes, fair enough. I've not played Oblivion, so can't comment on its RPGness.

A problem here is that most definitions of the RPG-genre are opinions as well. People tend to include things they like and exclude things they don't like. So some people will say "this is not an RPG", but it's still just an opinion because their definition of an RPG is in itself an opinion.
This is what happens when people claim that Oblivion is not an RPG, or that RPGs can not have player skill-based elements (which is baffling, as all RPGs have such elements - solving a puzzle or deciding tactics for a battle is not done by stats, but the player's puzzle-solving or tactical skills, and in principle this is just the same thing as having the player's aiming skills influence the outcome of a battle).
So these people are no more correct than those of us who definitely consider Oblivion an RPG.

Obviously Oblivion is an RPG.
RPG doesn't mean: loads of stats, turn based isometric combat, D&D.
If an RPG is done right, stats and dice rolls and all that crap should be invisible to the player.
Claiming any of these games isn't an RPG just reduces the credibility of the poster. Frankly, as i've said before, they basically chose the 5 best rated PC RPGs of the last 5 years... that means if they have no credibility, neither do any other review sites or reviewers.

Yeah, some people seem to forget that computers are capable of so much more than emulating P&P.

True... but even good P&P shouldn't be about the rules and the dice rolls... not if the DM is any good.

Speaking of P&P emulation, did that D&D virtual tabletop thing ever get released? Was supposed to basically be a kitchen table emulator so you could hook people into it and play like they're in the room

Agreed. Ideally, an RPG should be as fluid and seamless as possible. The mechanics of the pen and paper game exist only to give the game structure. This can be far more transparent in computer gaming.
Personally, I prefer levelling systems that reflect this - that increase your skills in any given area as and when you use them rather than requiring you to manually enter points, possibly even into skills you have yet to use. It seems to me to be a weakness of a genre that you can exploit the system like that.
A true RPG is simply one that is just that. A game where you play a role. Therefore character development, interaction with others and ultimately the effect you have through the choices you make are of paramount importance. Not making the mechanics as evident as possible. The more choices you have and the larger their impact, the more like a true RPG the game seems to me.

IGN "lost it" a long time ago. Here is an example I found particularly amusing/horrifying.

Quest For Glory did that didn't it? I remember one game where a mate would sit literally for an hour practicing climing to get better at it. Building skills through honest practice? Bah kids in them days...
I'd like a hybrid of the selection and realism model. You level up and the game presents you with the skills you've used since you last leveled up and, depending on the amount of use, you can increase them by a certain amount. Say you spent the time between level 1 & 2 playing a stealthy guy, you snuck around, disarmed traps hid in shadows and only got into one or two fights. You hit level 2 and you can't put as many points into swordfighting as you can into stealth skills.
Although in that scenario the swordfighting might well be your first so that sort of thing you should be able to learn a lot from. The skills would also have to plateau at some point, it's unrealistic to continually and infinitely learn from the same actions and in a game mechanic sense you'd end up being so stealthy that you could end up running around naked screaming and smacking people in the face with your knob and they'd ignore it.
In a game like this you'd have to find someone to train you in any new skills you wanted to acquire, in a game mechanic sense you're paying in coin and time to override the normal limits
Of course this hypothetical game would have to be actually balanced so combat wasn't what you did on the way to your next dialogue tree and dialogue wasn't the boring thing that got in the way of killing so you had genuine options in how you played the game. Obviously this is such an outrageously unrealistic fantasy that I might as well add "Should also be playable on a mac"...
Hmm, reckon we could licence the infinity engine? A gog original RPG. Hah make it the tale of weclock marching up to gabe newell and telling him off for disabling his steam account

Hahaha nice... lack of editorial oversight or even peer review. Classic

I think that a Flash beat em up would probably fit the bill better for that confrontation. LOL It might require a few special moves though. Gabe's got a bit more... padding than he used to.
I think the system that best represents what I mean is the GCD mod for Morrowind. If you've got Morrowind you've got to try that mod. It doesn't add any fancy graphics. Just changes the mechanics of the game. Yet it's still the best mod I've ever used in any game (not including total conversions).
Essentially, it increased your skills as you used them. Occasionally your related attributes were raised too. You could still use trainers to raise your skills in their specialised areas. But mostly it was down to you.
I like your idea. But maybe instead this could be represented by the perks (like Fallout) or skills (like Diablo) that you could invest in. But only if your character was developed a certain way. So a sneaky character could gain Silent Running and a magic user who relied on ranged fire attacks could have the option to learn ranged freeze attacks.
That way, you're not merely limited to being able to do something better, but can also gain new abilities related to the ones you're presently using.

Take a look at GemRB; Infinity Engine, reverse-engineered, open source. (But seemingly no multiplayer support yet, which I found out as I tried running Baldur's Gate II through it the other day.)

Hmm, that has potential. Once its actually finished we should get working on something
Hmm, how about each skill belongs to a domain? Sneak, lockpick, disarm trap & backstab could all be in the stealth domain, you get 2 skill points per level and because you've been using sneak extensively, you can put 2 points in that or 1 in any of the stealth domain skills?

It does actually work pretty well, and I believe it's mature enough to start working with. I'm guessing it won't be "finished" for several years, if nothing else, a totally custom game might get the developers working harder.

Feel free to give a better one then, and explain why it is better.
Deciding how to improve your character also gives you choices, and manybe important ones. Do you improve that skill that will help you bullshitting other characters into believing your lies or the one that lets you kill people quickly from afar? Or maybe the archeology skill that will let you decypher that old important-looking stone tablet in that temple? Choices and consequences.
The current trend is to try to hide as many data from the player as possible but that's mostly a lazy way to do things, because if you really want to give the player a lot of options you have to give him the mean to develop these options. It doesn't mean that you need to use a lot of obscure and confusing rules — D&D 2 is kind of a reference in that field — but you can make them all sensible and clearly available as in Fallout, where you can see right away how stats, traits and perks influence skills, all in one screen.
How exactly is it a weakness of the genre to give you options to develop your character? I'd very much define as a weakness a system where skill improve when being used, because while it sounds good on paper it leads to all sorts of abuse: keep casting a low level spell while walking to improve your magic skill, keep jumping around to improve your acrobatic skill, etc. It just makes the act of increasing skills and leveling up not only tedious — really, it sounds like work, the kind of stuff I do to be able to eat every day and buy games that I can play so I get a distraction from work — but also insignificant, because you increase it from very trivial actions. Leveling up and increasing your skills should be a reward for accomplishing important tasks. Bloodlines has a pretty nifty system where you unlock new skill levels by investing points into them and you get those points only by completing tasks, no matter how you did them, though completing special objectives could net you more points; this means you would get the same reward whether you decide to kill everyone in that enemy-infested warehouse or sneak past them.
Another way to deal with the skill increasing by use is to make it very slow, like in Jagged Alliance 2, but then it isn't a reliable way to improve your character since it takes so much time, more like once in a while you get a little bonus for performing well and mostly need to have your merc train in their free time, at the expense of doing something else — choices! Or you can abuse the system by having your merc run around while heavily loaded or repeatedly throw knives at crows, and no it isn't as fun as it sounds.