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[Sirus]

This thread is everything I've ever wanted

Watching the HELL out of this.

[MrWiggles]

I think the best tools for making an RPG, pencil, paper, & graph paper. Very smal cost. You probably have most of these items already.

[Reudh]

C# + XNA or whatever game thing it uses.
Lua + LOVE
C++ + whatever game library it has
Python + Pygame
Game Maker (NOT FREE)
RPG Maker (NOT FREE; 90% of things are pre-made and non-customizable)

I used RPG Maker 2k3 for some years (2006-present). Admittedly, although besides the tileset and events and whatnot, it's very hard to customise things.
I was given RPG Maker VX for my birthday a couple of years back. That one's bloody powerful. I have a game, currently on hiatus, because I'm still learning RGSS.

[Akura]

http://rpgtoolkit.net/home/

My old community, although I haven't been back there in years. The official version hasn't been updated in many more years, but it's open-source.

[Dariush]

Program it yourself. RPG makers are dumbed-down, limited in features and you won't improve your programming skill with them.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Program it yourself. RPG makers are dumbed-down, limited in features and you won't improve your programming skill with them.

Frank Lloyd Wright didn't build houses with his bare hands.

The amount of overhead to make a game from scratch is tremendous. I do it, but I've been doing this for years, and I still work with others to lighten the load. I've seen numerous projects crash and burn because they ran into technical difficulties and couldn't fulfill their vision -- or because the teams got bogged down on boring fiddly implementation bits, reinventing the same wheel already used hundreds of times by hundreds of other teams. If someone wants to make a game, and is drawn to using a pre-made toolset, but gets scared off because somebody on a forum told them they should be doing everything from scratch instead, they're almost certain to meet the same fate. On the other hand, use tools, and the feedback loop from work you put into the game is shortened to a fraction of what it would be. Effort turns into results quickly and powerfully.

I used to think using game maker programs was weak, a crutch for the less capable and less ambitious, one I myself only leaned on because I couldn't do any better. Then I went to college, majored in software programming for games, became a design intern at a studio developing an MMO, and eventually graduated and started my own business as an independent developer. Now that I've worked on more than half a dozen finished games myself, I no longer have such elitist preconceptions.

I've personally seen programmers come up with amazing technology, only to desperately search for someone with the creativity to put it good use. I've personally seen designers who hate even basic scripting, but can perform absolute wizardry when given a good editor. DIY game development may sound badass, but in the real world, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars paying programmers to do nothing but write tools exactly like this for their own internal use. Not only does it save money by accelerating development times, it enables their often very talented designers to forget about programming everything from scratch and focus on what's really important -- making a fun game.

[Microcline]

Program it yourself. RPG makers are dumbed-down, limited in features and you won't improve your programming skill with them.

Frank Lloyd Wright didn't build houses with his bare hands.

The amount of overhead to make a game from scratch is tremendous. I do it, but I've been doing this for years, and I still work with others to lighten the load. I've seen numerous projects crash and burn because they ran into technical difficulties and couldn't fulfill their vision -- or because the teams got bogged down on boring fiddly implementation bits, reinventing the same wheel already used hundreds of times by hundreds of other teams. If someone wants to make a game, and is drawn to using a pre-made toolset, but gets scared off because somebody on a forum told them they should be doing everything from scratch instead, they're almost certain to meet the same fate. On the other hand, use tools, and the feedback loop from work you put into the game is shortened to a fraction of what it would be. Effort turns into results quickly and powerfully.

I used to think using game maker programs was weak, a crutch for the less capable and less ambitious, one I myself only leaned on because I couldn't do any better. Then I went to college, majored in software programming for games, became a design intern at a studio developing an MMO, and eventually graduated and started my own business as an independent developer. Now that I've worked on more than half a dozen finished games myself, I no longer have such elitist preconceptions.

I've personally seen programmers come up with amazing technology, only to desperately search for someone with the creativity to put it good use. I've personally seen designers who hate even basic scripting, but can perform absolute wizardry when given a good editor. DIY game development may sound badass, but in the real world, companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars paying programmers to do nothing but write tools exactly like this for their own internal use. Not only does it save money by accelerating development times, it enables their often very talented designers to forget about programming everything from scratch and focus on what's really important -- making a fun game.

My initial reaction was also the essential essay Make games not engines.  However, there's a reason that Yume Nikki is the only RPGMaker game to receive an overall positive reaction (Ao Oni, The Way, and Exit Fate could also be argued, but they are at best heavily flawed and extremely subject to user reaction).  Most of these games required their developers to work around RPGMaker's natural flaws to make their game, perhaps taking longer than it would to replicate the functionality in code.  My personal opinion is that RPGMaker is valued more for the inclusion of default sprites and music rather than the engine.

I've seen great things done with GameMaker, but I don't know if it's actually capable of reducing the time needed to become good at game development.  We've seen a crop of people who've developed the ability to use it extremely well (Dan Remar comes to mind), but it's worth noting that they've been using it for 5+ years.

In the end, I think the best option is the proper integration of a high-level language of your choice with pre-existing libraries (or even an engine, if you can find one that fits your idea).  This gives you the ability to treat components as "black boxes" like with a game maker, but doesn't limit you or require you to use workarounds if you want it to do something different.

tl;dr Learning to do anything well takes time, and learning to use a language won't take that much longer and will leave you much more flexible

Some languages you might consider:
C/C++: I wouldn't use this for gamedev unless you have previous experience with it or work with it professionally.  On the other hand, it's fast, solid, and has an extensive and ever-growing number of libraries.  You'll probably want a bit of fluency in it at some point to look at the large number of examples written in it (reading the Nethack source is pretty much a right of passage)
Java: It's clean, portable, and has excellent networking.  There aren't as many game focused libraries for it though.  It isn't as slow as people often claim, but I wouldn't program something with huge memory requirements like Minecraft in it though.
Python: It's a great place for non-programmers to start, but if you have any experience with other languages you'll hate it
C#+XNA: If you aren't concerned with portability, this is what to use.  It's fast, clean and hassle free.  Visual Studio is the best IDE I've used.
Flash: I haven't used it, but I suspect it's one of the best things for aspiring devs, especially given the development of Flixel and Flashpunk

That said, there's nothing really wrong with GameMaker.  In the end the biggest challenge with RPGs (the RPGMaker-styled JRPG ones, at least) is that unlike other types of games that the bulk of the work is in the art assets rather than the programming.

[Reudh]

Aye, and the code is often just there as scripts that you can insert pretty easily.

To use RPG Maker or Game Maker are good starting points- entering at the shallow end of a deep pool, rather than jumping right in.

[Ultimuh]

So in which of these is it possible to make Action RPGs such as the early zelda games, soulblazer and similar?

[Sirus]

Probably Gamemaker, I've made simple but similar top-down games before using that.

[Reudh]

It's difficult but possible to make ARPGs in RPG Maker VX.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

My initial reaction was also the essential essay Make games not engines.  However, there's a reason that Yume Nikki is the only RPGMaker game to receive an overall positive reaction (Ao Oni, The Way, and Exit Fate could also be argued, but they are at best heavily flawed and extremely subject to user reaction).  Most of these games required their developers to work around RPGMaker's natural flaws to make their game, perhaps taking longer than it would to replicate the functionality in code.  My personal opinion is that RPGMaker is valued more for the inclusion of default sprites and music rather than the engine.

I've not read that essay. The fundamental idea of just making games instead of getting bogged down programming systems is common with what I'm saying, though I'm not speaking to programmers as he is. I'm saying that making games does not require that you even BE a programmer, let alone that you worship the idol of flexibility that comes from writing a game from scratch.

RPG Maker is valued for its ease of use. That's both the assets packaged with it and the tool set that composes the editor. As editors go, it's extremely good. Limited, yes. Tools always trade off flexibility and power, and the limitations are why the later RPG Makers (XP and VX lines) expose code scripts to let you tinker with the internal game logic.

I'm not familiar with any of the games you name, but I don't think it's for you to tell people who make well-regarded finished games that if they'd not used the tools they chose to use, they would have finished their games faster or better. Every game you hold up as an example of people struggling against and overcoming the limitations of their framework is a game made by people who chose to use that framework. If they didn't think the tools they chose to use were the best way to make their game, they wouldn't have used them.

Aye, and the code is often just there as scripts that you can insert pretty easily.

To use RPG Maker or Game Maker are good starting points- entering at the shallow end of a deep pool, rather than jumping right in.

This I fully agree with. If you want to use tools like RPG Maker, don't let anybody tell you not to. They're great. If and when YOU decide you need more power and flexibility, you can "graduate" and do things the hard way.

Unless your ambition is to become a programmer, rather than to just make a game, I'm never going to tell someone asking about tools that are specifically designed to let you avoid writing code that they really should man up and write code anyway. You don't need to write code to make a game. You might have to in order to make a certain type of game you have in mind, but if there are tools for the game you want to make, and you're willing to make the game fit the framework provided, there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking advantage of what's out there.

Just make games. Don't reinvent the wheel just because somebody else told you that you need more power.

[Neonivek]

However, there's a reason that Yume Nikki is the only RPGMaker game to receive an overall positive reaction

Oddly enough the creator got lucky. A lot of the content that never went into the game would have hurt it (like combat).

[Qmarx]

That said, there's nothing really wrong with GameMaker.  In the end the biggest challenge with RPGs (the RPGMaker-styled JRPG ones, at least) is that unlike other types of games that the bulk of the work is in the art assets rather than the programming.

Hence, Open Game Art.