Shea: are you saying a game isn't real time if the menus aren't affected?
Not sure I totally understand the question, but for sake of argument, menu interaction is of little consequence.
Tabletop PnP games, (D&D, and from what I understand, the Dark Eye), people roll dice to take a turn; move, attack, cast a spell, counter these things etc. Any one OR combinations of these things constitutes a turn. Then the next player player takes his turn, and so on, until that round of turns is complete. Then the process starts over again.
Computer adaptations of these games simulate these dice rolls and this is basically my point. Therefore, I interpret them as turn based. These are only examples (maybe not even good ones), as there are many types of games that implement turns differently. Like I said, I consider King's Bounty to also be turn based, as do I believe Civilization can be if you choose. Then there is pause and play...totally differnt thing, but can also be part of turn based games.
The argument could be made that most all PC games operate on some variation of this...that they are simply random happenings based on an intial input(mouse click or keystroke, reaching a correlated spot on a grid, etc), made possible and shown on the display through transparent calculations and algorithms.
All I was trying to say was that for me, Drakensang and, say, Baldur's Gate, NWN, etc., are turn based games that you can play in semi-real time (i.e. without pausing). The fact that you are not pausing, doesn't make those games less turn based. The games are just passively(computer AI) versus actively (player) controlled.
I don't play shooters, but I imagine there are plenty of those types of games that are the mindless point and click type games that every PC, NPC and enemy can be doing something at the exact same time, non-stop, unitl only one is left standing. Sure, there are transparent to player calculations going on, but once the action starts, there is no controlling it.
I'm probably way off base, but that's the way I see it.
