Hello all, first time posting on the site, so greetings to everyone. I have completed two semesters of C++ at the college level, and have gotten through 2 semesters of discrete math. The math I am being told will be useful later on in my programming life. I also went through NeHe's nice little Open GL tutorial and have purchased the red book and am working my way through that. Now that you have a little background I am wondering on the feasibilty of making a small 3D game. For those old schoolers it will be along the line of the old Wizardry and Bards Tale games. Graphically I don't need anything that is super-powered, I am trying for more of a game-play, and statistical type of game. The player would walk around multiple 3D dungeons from a first-person perspective. Here is the meat of the question, what type of 3D engine do you think I will need to use for this sort of project. Could I use something similar to lesson 10 on NeHe's site. I have been googling a little for 3D engines, but I must admit I don't fully understand the concept. Are they just an elaborate version of the basic principles in NeHe's? I would like to do all the work myself and I am not afraid of learning as I go. I feel programming all the code myself would be the best learning experience. I learn best by making mistakes and learning from them, I don't fear error messages! Thanks alot for any input.

Well, I admire your enthusiasm. I guess if you want to write all of the code yourself, you have a long way to go. (Since you won't be using a game engine) ;). If you don't mind using an engine, you have many options. You can find some here:
http://www.opengl.org/applications/windows/developer_tool/