DO I sense an irrational hatred here oric? You don't seem to understand how it's played... your just spouting the same hate speeches as others have done before...

It's not an essay writing contest, and it is a real game, but without the restrictions that hound PC games... When you play fallout, you enjoy the freedom of choice, but you can never really do EXACTLY what you want. In D&D, you can. It's not limited by a system, nor by engine problems, nor by bugs. The rulebooks, the stats, hell, even the dice, are optional.

D&D may involve acctual writing (even if it can be played by voice) and a few char sheets, but it's the world created by these sheets, and the freedom provided by the DM, the human, who can understand the way a human thinks, instead of a machine programmed to give you a quest, guide you through it in one, or maybe two or three preplanned routes, and then dump a generic reward on you.

let's have an example. During a nice game of the spreadsheet simulator, I had two charactors under me... now these two were surposed to help a village evacuate and escape from an army on the march... but they didn't do it. The reward was based on how many were saved... so instead of risking it and running, they did the unexpected. They snuck into the camp... and poisioned the entire army.

Now can you say that a game involving a storyline would let you do that? Would halo allow you to change the storyline and instead of saving earth, join with the covenent? Would Half Life allow you to simply kill Alyx, and save a bunch of time? Would GTA:SA just allow you to kill the damn cop who hounds you through the entire game?

D&D may involve writing, but it's about the freedom of being able to do whatever the hell you want, weather it be save those villagers, kill the army, or capture both and sell them into slavery! It's the players damn choice. So yes. It does involve a story. Yes, it does involve d20s, YES it is a proper game, and it's a damn good one at that.