No, because the "true Scotsman" is arguing about what is or is not a Scotsman. I am not arguing about what a Scotsman is or is not, I am arguing about what is a good Scotsman, and what an inferior Scotsman.
The point is RPGs are not just Scotsmans, but also Welsh, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Angloscots, Gaelic and Cantonese
And each doing by design different things.
A storygame is a roleplaying game, there's no doubt about that.
I'd say there is big doubt about it. On RPG.PUB there was massive debate about difference, our own Mutated Filipino Berserker taking active stance with his radical opinion that PBTA and FITD are not RPGs but storygames for instance. That I disagree - but for instance I'd say games like Fiasco are clearly storygames and not RPGs because even if you act parts of various PC's so to speak - the whole mechanics is divorced from PC's and is working entirely on directorial level, where players negotiate and roll for amount of power to estabilish new scenes and so on. That's difference from PBTA where many "moves" have very narrative nature, but you are generally stuck all the time with your PC.
A railroaded game is a roleplaying game, too. And so on and so forth. It's like how the plastic knives and forks we gave to our children as toddlers are real knives and forks - but they're inferior knives and forks.
Yes but railroad is almost by definition wrong, and justified as extreme measure with very hapless players. As it takes away their power in almost any given game.
Now of course genre focused games either old like James Bond or new liked Blades - had certain internal rails - protecting genre of the game, but within them players have freedom to act and solve situations in multiple ways.
And that's also matter of inferiority and superiority - if you want to emulate OSR game by either havy skill-based sim or Fiasco, you gonna fail miserably.
By Fiasco on it's own is very good thing to do Fiasco games, and Blades are very good to make Blades games.
3e/3.5e DMG is quite prescriptive, page 49 3.5 DMG:
"how many encounters of a certain difficulty an adventure should have.
10% Easy EL lower than party level
20% Easy if handled properly
50% Challenging EL equals that of party
15% Very Difficult EL 1-4 higher than party level
5% Overwhelming EL5+ higher than party level ...the PCs should run"
So yes per the 3.5e DMG the 3.5e player should expect a lot of balanced encounters, but also some easy ones and some flee-or-die ones.
Indeed. But that's precisely level adequate aspect - I'm not saying all encounters have to be on par, but there is expected ratio of situation - easy, challenging and WAY TO HARD.