To give you an idea how you progress your game as you learn:
1) Simply print text to an intro of your game,
2) Add a menu (start, inventory, explore etc) using a switch statement.
3) Add health, mana, energy, stamina, whatever, etc. variables.
4) On 'explore' add random cases where either rat, wolf, possom, owl, etc. pop up from no where (using rand() in <cmath>)
5) On each case where you're in a fight, add menu to attack, retreit, etc., and on attack monster's health variable loses (-) the attack damage. The attack damage could be based on your weapon, which could be an object of a struct that defines the minimum dam, maximum dam, and penetration % maybe (use a random 1-100 float, if == penetration %, +50% dam.), then use your random function to randomly choose between your weapons min-max dmg. to take away from the targets hp.
ie. The Adventure of You, from the game topic:
http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showt...t=41431&page=1
Alright I could go on, but I wont because you shouldnt waste too much time on practice programs unless you're using code you need to practice.. and that stuff is pretty simple. I'd say none of it goes past tutorial 5 on this site. Thats like the most basic you can go for an RPG game.
You dont need to worry about your goal, as weird as that sounds, to get to your goal quickly. Simply study C++ your ass off, and make those pointless suggested programs as practice and when you're done with the basics you can write up a text game easily (some people delve into it, copying and pasting code and just waste time).
Of course to have the one you wanted, a server, with an interface, you'd need to learn basics, then winsock and win32 (or some other API).. but that isnt hard at all if you know C++, because those are just building blocks
The link in the last post has nice concepts for a text-based game.. however its in C, so I wouldnt even look at it until your past half-way on the eBook.. and know the basic differences of C and C++ (byebye(strcmp, printf, getch), wth's allocating, dont use #define, can you say class?, lose that .h grr, etc.)