BADLUCK'S PROFILE

This might be in poor taste, but the game I made (Ara Fell) is currently on sale for 4.99 on steam with a 92% positive rating. I don't know if a commercial RPG Maker game is the best place to "start" per se, but I might argue Ara Fell is one the most well-rounded RPG Maker games out there.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/440540/

There's a free demo, and you can also refund Steam games if you play them less than 2 hours. If you do decide to give it a try, please let me know what you think!

I've never bothered with this, but is there not some sort of file type Rm2k3 uses for this? Like .xyz or something? I believe you can export stuff as an .xyz and then reimport it.

I could be making that up.

Ultimately, all you need for an antagonist in any story is a character whose goals conflict with the protagonist's. In games, since you're controlling the protagonist and most players want to do good, the good versus evil thing is just something you naturally fall into. Game stories aren't usually about their characters, so the stakes have to be pretty high, and that's where saving the world comes from.

This is also the reason fantasy writers are kind of seen as hacks in the world of literature. They tend to use these good vs evil tropes with really high stakes. This is an oversimplification, but doing that allows you to get around the finer points of literature. There's a reason all the greatest books ever written rarely have a story like that. This is also why WW2 makes for such compelling literature, even though WW2 writers tend to be seen as hacks as well.

Think of things in terms of conflicting goals rather than good and evil. I think that's the first step toward getting out of the Kefka/Nazis trope.

@SnowOwl, college is (and should be) about becoming educated, and that covers a wide range of interests, sciences and other disciplines.

Yes, gender studies as a major is likely unwise purely from a career-selecting perspective, though how many well-paying jobs require only that you have any 4 year degree, and further, how many people end up in fields not related to their major?

It is a good thing that we have millions of people educated on thousands of different topics. I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather not live in a country with 300 million engineers.

I'll just point out that none of us have any earthly idea what Trump actually wants. We know what he's said.

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Assuming you don't believe Politico is part of this giant media conspiracy that Trump has convinced people exists (which I'm sure had nothing to do with the present CEO of Breitbart news), Politico has researched 333 of Donald Trump's statements and found that only 15% could be rated as true or mostly true.

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/

Incidentally, Hillary Clinton is at 51%, which is higher than Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders.

So, yes, we know what Donald Trump has said, but we don't know what it means when he says it. He said he wanted to build a giant wall out of concrete and rebar, but now says he doesn't. He said he wanted to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, but now says he doesn't. He said he wanted to not allow Muslims into the country (temporarily or not) but now says he doesn't. He said he wanted to drain the swamp but has surrounded himself with Republican insiders, CEOs, lobbyists. He said the election was rigged against him, when he won by losing the popular vote.

So... I mean, I don't know what him saying he wants to work on infrastructure means. He's changed his mind so much and been dishonest so often that I honestly see little reason to even care what he says because there's such a huge chance it'll turn out to be not true.

Maybe that was just campaign Trump lying for the campaign and now that he's president, he'll stop being that guy. I'll believe it when I see it (and when I see it, I will be skeptical).