I think the idea was to differentiate it from tabletop back when they were a lot more like tabletop RPGs than most of today’s RPGs – they were either turn based or pausable, party based, and involved, you know, playing a role. This was way back before basically every third person hack and slash was called an action RPG and the acronym lost all meaning. I realize that it makes me sound like a bitter old man, and I loved Nier Automata, but it ain’t an RPG.