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I think when you get into the MMOVN thing, the 'VN' part is just the fact that the information given to the player is provided in text form, in a controlled manner. However, once the player is aware that there are players on the other side, it becomes more like a game, practically speaking. But you can play a VN like a game (giving yourself objectives) if you want to. The difference is whether the author pre-created what's going to play out, or if the players themselves are going to create the emergent story. The latter would be a text-etc-interface multiplayer roleplaying. It could certainly feel like a VN because of the narrative and how each player sees the information, but I wouldn't call the whole thing a VN. For prose generated from an underlying game system, what would matter is how much of what happens determined by the author. If it's just the order switching around a bit, then it'd still be author conceived. Otherwise it would be emergent. (If you call that type of presentation VN-style, then yes, the game would be a VN-style game, you might even think to call it a VN. But that would overlap with the current notion which has that VN's are something which authors conceive of). I suppose an examples of that would be a game where all you do is explore this big manuscript that you view within the game, and when you go to different places you hear different sounds and stuff. I have no idea what to call this. It's not quite the same as a set of real letters because you can incorporate sound and visual effects into it. Does controlling the order the player reads parts of the story make the work a VN or not? If you had a series of episodes viewable in any order, that would still seem like a VN. What about if you interacted in a point and click fashion to access the episodes? What about if you walked around a 3-d environment to access those episodes? It's just a categorization problem. You wouldn't be able to make a classification for every conceivable thing without being very minute and detailed. You can pick a relatively easy way to categorize works, or you could end up aiming for a categorization that's actually impossible, because our notion of what makes a VN would turn out to be contradictory once you explore the array of things which are possible using text and interaction.

Nice. I'm actually talking about the hallucinogenic effect that red text has on me. I feel like I'm tripping out. Wheeeeee. ... But the definition is tops, too

This is a pretty good narrative between @Darbury and @Palas that I'm reading... on my computer screen... with the on-screen text matching their avatars... THIS ISN'T A BLOG! IT'S A VISUAL NOVEL!!!