1. What RPG makers are there, and where do I get them?

Lots, but the only three that people care about are RPG Maker 2000 (RM2k), RPG Maker 2003 (RM2k3) and RPG Maker XP (TOMTIT). RM2k and RM2k3 are essentially the same program, that being a ready-made RPG engine in which you can design your own maps, spells, weapons etc. etc. RM2k3 added a few more options to the default setup, but nothing ground-breaking, and it's backwards-compatible with RM2k. Sort of. RMXP is the latest incarnation, and while it has basically the same setup as RM2k and Rm2k3, it lets you directly screw around with the engine's code. Extensive scientific research has yet to discover anyone who's done anything remotely useful with this. RM2k and RM2k3 were never officially translated into English, but a few illegal translations of no fixed abode exist, and they're what the community - at least, the English-speaking one - is founded on. You can buy the Japanese versions at some exorbitant import price, except you'll still need to use the translation anyway, unless both you and your intended audience can read kanji. These aren't actually up for download on any sites - at least, not for long - because Enterbrain has been cracking down on people for hosting them. That a company would try to prevent piracy of their own products makes sense, of course, except that RM2k and RM2k3 are only widely circulated because they're in English, not necessarily because people are too stingy to pay for them. The end result is that people who weren't buying them in the first place are... still not buying them. RMXP does have a legal release, which you can pick up here. Sort of. It's not very good - from what I gather, they just ran it through Babelfish and didn't take into account that, say, kanji characters and English characters won't necessarily fit in the same size window. There's apparently a patch now, but the release was, to most people, a massive slap in the face, especially since there was already an illegal English hack of the program floating around that managed to be more professional. On the upside, the promotional video was pretty funny, with an announcer who sounded suspiciously like Goldman exciting us with tales of "HIGH-LEE IN-TOO-IT-IV CONTROLS!" and "OTHERWORLDLY CREATURES", before imploring us to "BECOME A GAME CREATOR TOO-DAY!" RMXP is, in its very being, a total miscalculation: It runs at twice the resolution of RM2k and RM2k3 and allows you to modify the engine's code, which sounds like a good thing, except... Running at twice the resolution means that people can't pilfer graphics from SNES RPGs, which is where most of the graphics people use come from (recoloured, of course, which makes them completely original creations COPYWRITE VASH_THE_STAMPEDE_1989!!!!). The end result of this is that people are working around it by... yup, grabbing SNES graphics, putting them in MS Paint and stretching them by 200%. Some people, anyway. Most of them just use one of the earlier programs because it's infinitely easier. Modifying the code. This is the big 'un. See, the RMXP engine, in its non-modified state, isn't as attractive as RM2k3, which had side-view battles, a class system and a SNES RPG layout (rather than a Windows XP-inspired one) as standard. Now, it's possible to edit the base code to make it look and feel however you want, except that the whole reason people use programs like this is that they're too inexperienced / lazy / both to write code in the first place. I cast some runes, and they revealed to me that, at some time in the distant future, a total of eight people will have found RMXP useful, although their identities are shrouded by the veil of time. If you just want to play the games people have made, but not make one yourself, you can legally download the relevant maker's Run Time Package (RTP) from most sites. Except this one.

2. Do people actually make good games with these?

By and large, no. You can roughly split the community's output into two categories: Games made by people who think it would be kind of cool to make an RPG, but really aren't that committed because they have jobs and social lives, so the end result is pretty amateurish but still sort of charming; and self-aggrandizing pieces of shit made by tedious little wankers who are determined to prove that they're the alpha-male by creating a "project" (rather than a "game") that has a really long list of reasons for being great, even if those reasons are totally illogical. Examples include: Instead of using the engine's default combat system, they made up a new one by using a bunch of integers to move pictures around the screen. That it will be clunky, unresponsive, inflexible and riddled with bugs is of no consequence, because it... looks slightly different. There were a lot more of these before RM2k3 came out, because RM2k used a Dragon Warrior-style first-person battle system, and being able to see the characters on screen is clearly more important than, say, being able to control them properly. The release of RM2k3, which had a side-view battle system as standard, was the closest the community got to a "Kurt Cobain moment". Exemplary Example: Elysian Fields, an RM2k game which featured a custom-built combat system where the only command was "Fight". The author was incredibly proud of this because "at least it's not default". Cunning use of the find / replace function of MS Word in order to ensure originality. Ancients, Crystals and Gaia are so 1994, but an identical plot involving Celestials, Runestones and Midgard will be hailed as visionary and cutting-edge, especially by people with Naruto avatars. Exemplary Example: "Last Dream". You may need to think about this, but not for very long. Not, on any account, using the graphics that come with the program. The major argument against this is that it stops the game looking unique, which seems fairly sensible until you realise that everybody ends up using the same set of imported, non-default graphics anyway. Much like crystals, evil dragons, captive princesses and green slime, it's constantly criticised for being cliched even though nobody in living memory has used any of these things. Exemplary Example: Kinetic Cipher, a game which even its own author says has terrible graphics, actually looks nicer and more cohesive than most, simply because the author has used the default graphics, all of which are the same style and fit together perfectly. Not that every game produced is either amateurish or dull. Just most of them.

3. So what 'famous' games are there?

Riiiiight. What's well-known and what's good are two different things, and, as I've touched on above, the community has a tendency to judge the merits of a game based on how hard it must have been to make rather than whether or not it's actually fun. A Blurred Line is generally considered the highpoint of what people have produced, which is an exception to the rule in that its graphics look like somebody ate the map tiles and then vomited on the screen. This ultimately doesn't matter, because the game itself is pretty magnificent - it's fast-paced and has multiple branching paths (which all lead to the same place, but still), as well as a magic system that can best be described as "Final Fantasy 8, but good". It is, however, only 2/3 finished, and will likely remain this way forever, so the question of whether the storyline is a cleverly-constructed sci-fi thriller or just a load of incoherent bollocks is still open to debate. The Phylomortis Series is well known, if not universally liked, because the dialogue is confusing and the combat is difficult. Or, to put it another way, the dialogue thinks it's smart because every word has been replaced by a much longer alternative (Why have "Poisonous Odour" when you can have "Olfactory Toxicity"?), and the dungeon design punishes you for not knowing the layout in advance. It also pushes the limits of the program in terms of how much customised stuff you can stick in without having to re-write the engine's code... it's just that none of it is entertaining the slightest. The Way Series is incredibly popular, but the appeal has gone right over my head. It uses pre-rendered backgrounds (like Final Fantasy 7 or Baldur's Gate) instead of composing a map from individual square tiles, but the maps design is the definition of 'simplistic' and they all look essentially identical, so once the novelty wears off, they're boring as fuck. It alternates between using the default combat system with a few adjustments (you have to 'charge up' your MP instead of just restoring it with items, which sort of adds strategy) and the "Plunge" system, which is just Rock Paper Scissors, only with three different sword styles. It wasn't fun in Alex Kidd, and it's not fun here. What makes it really annoying, though, is that you're pre-destined to lose almost every Plunge for plot-reasons. In Episode One, anyway - it goes up to Episode Six, but, you know, other uses for my limited lifespan. Ara Fell is a standard SNES-style RPG, but it's polished to almost professional standards (ie. not as nice as Secret of Mana, but better than Secret of the Stars). That's basically it. There are some custom bits, but they violate the RPG Maker constitution by being practical. It's generally just quite good and you should probably play it. Legion Saga is apparently important, but I've never played it and I have no idea what it's about.

4. So is it worth following?

Um. I'm attracted to indie games because they're usually free, and the people making them are doing it out of love, rather than them being a frustrated movie director who thinks the best way to add 'depth' is to force you to micro-manage everything. The RPG Maker community is - not always, but usually - the opposite of this. What should be the players asserting themselves and creating the kind of games they want to play quickly degenerates into players designing games they can more easily "market" to the community, using the same set of arbitrary criteria - how long their plot synopsis is, how many 'systems' they have, whether or not there's a card battle minigame - as the soulless corporations they should, by all rights, be rebelling against. Not that there aren't occasional flashes of brilliance. Well, 'brilliance' might be the wrong word, but... flashes of personality that doesn't exist in games designed by committee. People were weirded out when I gave The Adventures of MR BIG T a good score, since it was clearly amateurish, juvenile and created by someone who was quite possibly insane, but that's precisely why it deserves a good score - it's a personal work by somebody who isn't trying to impress us with buzzwords, and doesn't feel they have anything to prove. Nothing like it would ever be released commercially, not even by ValuSoft. I could, however, go down to EB right now and pick up a game which is identical to 95% of the community's output, only prettier, better designed, and with a proper ending instead of "DEMO OVER". If they enjoyed making it, fine, but the general response to anyone who looks like they're having fun is "That's cheesy, where are your plot twists?". A Blurred Line is still pretty good.