CACARO'S PROFILE

1) So, what I'm looking for are games more akin to the western kind of RPGs such as Fallout, Arcanum and Baldur's Gate:

- branching dialogues or simpler dialogues but with meaningful chocies
- ability to make choices in quests that lead to multiple outcomes
- an extensive skill system and maybe the ability to employ different skills to solve the same problem (a la Darklands)
- I'd also really like to see a game where my choices/actions really affect the gameworld and its inhabitants either in minor or major ways (for instance, you kill a shopkeeper and the shop subsequently closes, like what happened in Fallout if you killed Gizmo the casino owner - it simply closed down)
- being able to own houses/shops and the like would be quite cool as well
- being able to affiliate with factions and do quests for them
- generally games that are more nonlinear and open-ended than generic final fantasy wannabes.

2) I'd also like to ask: has a RPGMaker game ever been able to implement some kind of NPC scheduling that's somewhat more complex than "day - the npc is there, night - it disappears"? Otherwise, are there RPGMaker games where NPCs are actually doing their own things.

Thanks for the answers.