MAKING THE PLAYER CARE, NOT JUST THE CHARACTER

Oh, that's a big topic, especially difficult to pull off without cut-scenes for RPG maker games. I'm not a developer as you very well know, but I dig theories so I'll try to add my few cents.

First of all, narratively, we all know the "show, don't tell" formula. If you need to tell the player he should care about something, you're sure to be doing it wrong. You need to subtly convey these feelings and motivate the player on his own to go to the same direction. Or build on natural curiosity and assumptions of the player (like locked doors or treasure chests. You know there gotta be something there)
The easiest way to make the player care is to involve something he knows, he's touched and seen before. Something he's worked on. If you lose something you worked on or need to re-do something .. it's awful. But this very effect can be applied positively.

If your sister is ill and you need to travel the world (let's completely disregard the trope), it doesn't involve you unless you had contact with said sister before something happened.
Make her lively and likeable, then watch her grow weak, feeble and ill (while still preserving her likeable redeeming features) until you (the character) finally decides to do something about it.

If we break this down, it's easy to make cut-scenes out of it - but can we weave this into the gaming world?

A slight alteration would also be to have some semi-triggered cutscenes. Not by walking into a room, but by interacting with something. Your monster-elixir for example. If you just automatically gain the ability to use monster blood, then it seems out of place - if you searched the corpse and then get something out of it, it's quite different.
Your approach made this reaction possible and your decision to check it helped you. You made it possible. That's what we like.
Of course, this means that you can miss things. So if you implement vital features like this, there need to be alternative ways of learning it (in town, in sort some of school, by skillbooks or at later corpses)

Any additional information, and especially skills gained by these minor actions make you hungry for more. It tells you there is merit in exploration. And that makes you motivated to search more. Reward the player for following your views and ideas as the creator.

Have some logic in the game. That makes it easier to go to later parts - if the previous actions result to what you're now facing, you won't even need to explain anything. You needn't see it coming perfectly clear, but if hints make sense in restrospect, then that's awesome (improves replay-value as well). There are many different ways to procceed, of course, but you can limit those by your party restrictions. Having too little time, too few allies, the need to act alone and use the surprise - whatever.

Howver, the environments and worlds themselves have great narrative potential. I realize this is particularily difficult for RPG maker games, as you have tile restrictions among other things (you could make some doors stand out more than others by adding some carvings or gold ornaments elsewhere, for example). Having hints in the environment also means that you can miss those - so you either have a chain of similiar hints (getting bigger and stronger) or take the risk.

We often deal with enchanted forests, for example. But instead of saying "the witch has cursed it! Look!", you should instead discover that it has been cursed. You might just have a job there without any spefic information, but once you wander into the forest you notice slight annomalies.
It's the usual forest when you enter, once you walk furhter in you'll notice trees growing strange ways, animals becoming more aggressive and mutating a little bit. Perhaps new plants or just plants that usually wouldn't be growing in the forest. This and a changing color theme will make you curious to what happened here and already think of possible reasons - like a watch cursing it. So your job must be to kill her, or stop this curse.

That's an obvious one, of course, but it can work similar for different scenarios and does wonders.
When a war is raging on, the areas near towns and battle fields will have wood chopped, animals scared and acting strange (bullet shots/loud noises alone are a huge problem), some old campfires, resting places and perhaps devastated lands.

During dialogue, the silent protagonist (or just any form of silence inbetween) does wonders. The biggest problem is that while the character already has a fully developed motive, objective and personality - the player is only about to discover what that is, and what is going on. If you have some more specific responses later on, when you already agree with the character, then that comes much more natural.

So, if you want to motivate the player to hate a certain person, you must not have your character get angry at the person. That would break the immersion and any tension you have. You already screamed at him, right?
Instead, let your character not react at all. Perhaps a neutral response or question by some team member (it's always great to include not only the protagonist into NPC or any kind of banter).
Instead, show all the atrocities this person commits, his twisted views and his effect on people (not too much in your face throwing, of course) and then let your character react to it.

That's all that came to mind on the spot, but it's definitely worth some further thought.

I think you are talking about something completely different in this thread than what I'm thinking off, but isn't the essence of getting the player care immersion?

There are plenty of things you can do for that:

1. Let the main character NOT talk at all, but not because he is mute, let the player think he actually talks as the main character, let other character react as if the main character actually said something but let them be vague, so it's up to the player's imagination what he said.

2. Make characters, even NPCs, as lovable as possible. The more the player likes them, the more he cares when something happens to them. The you can achieve this for example by letting them tell "slice of life" stories with which the players hopefully can connect to. Having a very little amount of characters and NPCs in the world game of course helps doing this a lot better / easier.

3. Referring to the example above, if you really want the player be interested in opening a door, why not just leave some sort of clue close to it? You might find a piece of paper with a riddle or some cryptic message painted on the walls.

4. Make the player feel important by emphasizing how important his actions are e.g. "only you can save the world now". Or "there is a girl behind the door and the room is air tight, she won't have much time left, you need to hurry and find a way to open the door" and then let a timer start running.

5. As an alternative, you can also do an approach where it's completely up to the player what he wants to do. He can destroy or save the world, whatever he wants. The player will feel more involved because he will feels how strong of an impact his decisions have.

There are a lot of tricks you can employ and you can make some guidelines. However, I think that there's one skill that will be crucial; keeping track of what the player knows. You place something you think is exciting behind a locked door, but what does the player know? Does the player have any reason to think it's something exciting and not just something that eventually has to be done? If you don't tell the player what's behind the door, there are other ways to give the player the idea that it's something worth the effort. If you do, you may still need to use those other indicators. For example, letting the player know that the legendary sword of big bad evil slayer is behind the door does not necessarily mean there's something great behind the door. Often legendary swords are only slightly stronger than the best store-bought one.

You can't keep a perfect record of what the player does. However, if you create that locked door, put the legendary sword behind it and ask yourself "does my game have a track record of making plot magic items cooler than store-bought ones?" you should be able to look back on your game and answer it.

I don't think narration has too much to do with immersion. There are games with narration where I still felt heavily immersed in the world like for example Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Well, it certainly shouldn't substitute plot, however, immersion on different layers is a great thing!
This screen really shows that and how you are progressing. In a much more elegant way than showing percentages.

Shadow of the Colossus wouldn't have been a great story if you just got the plotlines. The neutralness of the colossi, their genuine struggle, their impact on the earth surrounding them (becoming visible after they perished ..) - the changes on the character and the general scenery all showed what kind of price may have to be paid. And really questioned your motivations - while at the same time really spurring you on to finish it, for all this would come to naught otherwise.

Implementing environmental and menu changes are nice details, if nothing else. But they can be more and are always appreciated.

The trick in Zelda OoT doesn't work very well on me. As soon as I get crappy collectibles, I stop getting exited for more of them. Most songs are just there for a select few puzzles and a lot of items are as well. "Congratulations, you found boots that are necessary for certain puzzles, but are otherwise a pain to use!"

How exited I am about an ornate chest depends on how good the game is at putting good stuff in them. At the beginning I will assume they are going to contain something good, but I stop that assumption if the game disappoints. If you want to motivate me, put good things in them.

While we each are a bit different in what motivates us, positive reinforcement is pretty universal.

author=Crystalgate
The trick in Zelda OoT doesn't work very well on me. As soon as I get crappy collectibles, I stop getting exited for more of them. Most songs are just there for a select few puzzles and a lot of items are as well. "Congratulations, you found boots that are necessary for certain puzzles, but are otherwise a pain to use!"

How exited I am about an ornate chest depends on how good the game is at putting good stuff in them. At the beginning I will assume they are going to contain something good, but I stop that assumption if the game disappoints. If you want to motivate me, put good things in them.

While we each are a bit different in what motivates us, positive reinforcement is pretty universal.

But the Golden Skulltulas, man! Being rewarded for going out of your way to explore the world, and even during the beginning finding a few on your way or hearing some behind a bombable wall; it really helps establish a wonder for exploration. Even if the skulltulas individually mean jack diddly shit, once you come across the skulltula house in Kakariko Village and realize that you'll be rewarded for collecting X amount of tokens, it gives you an incentive to look over every square inch of the world. And the rewards you get never make you any stronger, so its not like you have any reason to collect these tokens outside of just because you felt like it.

Sure, there's always going to be the tried and true routine of chests containing: map, compass, rupees, nuts, rupees, bombs, dungeon item, rupees, big key; but what else would you expect in a game that isn't built around the same things RPGs are? You don't craft in OoT, so you aren't going to be concerned with picking up materials. Potions/fairies wouldn't make good chest loot as you'd have to find them complete with a bottle which would destroy that awesome feeling you get from obtaining one of the only four glass containers in the entire world. Sometimes, old, dusty, suspiciously-untouched RPG chests containing weapons/armor/gold much too large to fit inside aren't all that great. *click, ker-thunk!* Claymore!

And what about earning the pieces of heart to extend your life meter? Still not mandatory if you've got enough skill (gaming that takes skill? *mind blown*) but allow you, in some small way, to become "stronger" in the way that is typical of most of gaming's greatest rewards for success.