Yes, Mount & Blade counts.
I guess it'd be hard for a designer to be able to justify the costs of a living breathing world that exists without the intervention of the player. Imagine the heart attack a publisher suit would have if you tell him it's very likely that a player will miss a great chunk of content and that unless he's careful, he'd effectively be reduced to a participant in the world, missing out on tons of content.
What if this
is the appeal? "Prepare to enter a world so alive that can be saved by another hero if you blink!" I would totally play in this.
Roguelikes are more akin to P&P RPGs in the sense that stuff is made-up as you go along and, for most P&P games, nobody ever finishes them anyway, at least, they are only limited by people's desire to end it by communal agreement or people's desire to not keep playing.
Having said that, MMOs are actually more akin to proper P&P because you actually have a group of individuals performing different roles to achieve the current objectives.
Having said that, single-player Role Playing
Games are specifically designed akin to the
set modules you would get included in a P&P set, for people who don't want the hassle of relying on a decent DM and the associated 'mess' that too much ingenuity can cause to a role-playing group. Instead of having a group of people to play with, you play all members of the group. Because it's a game there's a beginning and an end with some form of narrative as a reason for existing.
What bothers me is when people, such as yourself, put so much emphasis on having a dynamic world. Or what is often referred to as "A living, breathing world". Why do you want that so much? When you play a game you encounter whatever the game offers, you perform the tasks that the game asks you to do, you eventually get to the point where you're wanting the game to end, either through boredom or because you want a change of scene. In what way does it matter whether the quest you're given is randomly generated or a static pre-script? How does that change anything? Why do you want NPCs running about doing stuff? How does that change
your experience?
For me, any game which randomly generates stuff always, and without fault, leaves me feeling a bit empty. As if the game is playing itself and I'm just an insignificant time-waster. Surely people play games in order to escape this kind of nihilistic and depressive outlook. With set modules you can actually taste the sense of achievement, as if what you're doing has some kind of purpose beyond hamster wheel time consumption.
I'm a completionist though. My intention whenever I start any game is to beat it/complete it. I like to then take on a new challenge that is different enough to provide a sense of the new, but still within familiar territory. I am aware not all people are like this. Some people are habitual quitters, no matter what the game is, after X number of hours they get bored and want to move onto another game, to which roguelikes are like the solid embodiment of their personality. Some people get addicted the same game, want to live in one particular game, find themselves willing prisoners in the same world for all eternity, to which MMOs and grand simulations are a solid embodiment of their personality. My personality is just enjoying the hand-crafted pleasures of set modules. To me, the more hand-crafting you remove, the less interested I am (which is also, ironically, why I don't like crafting in games).
To me, it's you who is preaching decline. And it will be me who is whispering "you silly decliner" as I unplug your old drip and plug in your new one as you exist in a vegetative state behind your virtual goggles, forever chasing that never-ending new quest-line at level 3,546 in No Man's Sky version 5.9848765.
