In a text adventure you have to use your writing skills to set the scene, that's not usually how it's done in text RPG's. One major difference is the map location system, most people will use linked rooms to map the game world, like West is room 25, East is room 27, RPG's would be more likely to use an array of rooms, like areas of woodland and stuff because with moving enemies that's the easiest system to adopt. I think people are concearned that they'll get a screen of stats instead of half a page of room description to read. But the thing is, how many of us will be using item weights?, like the anvil weight might be 100, while the key weight might be 1, so you might only be able to carry 90 weight in total, that's a stat, you'd never see it, but I imagine it'll be evident in a lot of these games. Whatever provides realism is fine, being able to carry 90 keys and no anvils is perfect realism
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Really stat's are not the issue, because I'll show you a text adventure with a day-night cycle if you want, plus stats, plus a shop to buy ingredients for spells... Really I think the important factor here is that you describe the scene in good detail, then through a parser or multiple choices you adventure, anything more than that, like stat's or even turn based combat should be fine as long as you still have the detailed location and item descriptions.
Really, you could have your stat's invisible, like in real life
- there's no rule saying you can't use stats or turn based combat, there's no rule saying if you use them they have to be obvious. Why not add them, but then make their interface more elaborate. Like if you found a sleeping Orc, you might check how much items your carrying, then use that as a factor in deciding if you can sneak past without being heard - or if you attack then you have an advantage, like the Orc missing their turn because they were sleeping. You could even have a narrow guage parser for combat, like when your fighting your command set is cut down to run, attack, defend, cast spell - whatever, but use descriptive stat's. Back in the day, these were just called Adventures, the term RPG came later.
Those choose your own adventure books could go either way, anyone remember them? - you had simple choose which page next varieties, real simple, but you also had RPG's too, the most famous adventures, like Deathtrap Dungeon by Ian Livingston had RPG elements. If a book can get away with it (and moreover become so famous), then why not a text adventure
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Personally I love text adventures with movable characters in them, like Gandalf and Thorin in The Hobbit, add's a whole other dimension when people can wander about, whether they're plot characters, spawned enemies or whatever, I intend to have at least one freak running around the place causing mischief.
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