don't listen to them, the words "Make" and "RPG" in the same sentence is a work of evil. RPG's are hard to make. Period. Unless you do something like what's his name's "Fight Game", but that isn't really an RPG. RPG's are the best games to make if you are gonna do a text based game, however. I would recommend making one b4 making the leap to windows game programming. As I said b4, you can make it as hard as you want to. If you make a simple b/s game with no storyline and really short gameplay, it'll be easy. But if you want to make a game that people actually play all the way through, and not just download to see how good you can program, see if it actually works, playtesting, etc. it'll be as easy as pie. TRADITIONAL RPG's are simple to make the engine for, but the storyline, artwork, balancing, NPC's, etc. are the hard part.
Basically, I would take a shot at the text-based RPG. If this is your first public game, you don't need to make anything too elaberate (spelling?) but if you really want to kick some ass and show people what you are made of, then make a nice couple hour game (unless you are crazy and want to make a 4000958 hour long game. That'll take you a little while. )