Both, Ogre 3D (http://www.ogre3d.org) and Irrlicht Engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net) should be suitable for developing a RPG.
Both are easy to use (though I think Irrlicht Engine is a bit easier to set up and work with, at least when you´re a beginner) and open source.

Mike

No offence to your or your team (if you have one) odex but I'd steer clear of this sort of project for quite a while. If you had the experience necessary for something like this then you'd more than likely already know what to do.

Start right down at the bottom with the very basics. Start off with console programs and games such as hangman, a text-based pong and maybe even a text-based RPG. You can learn everything you need to know about the basics and some more advanced stuff (audio and networking for example). Once you've mastered these you can then think about moving onto graphics. Start at 2D graphics so that you understand the basic concepts needed within 3D development. Ensure that you're extremely comfortable with both the basics of your chosen programming, the advanced features of it (things such as iterations, polymorphism and templates) and 2D graphics before you even consider 3D game development.

For your text-based development or simply learning the basics there are literally hundreds of books out there and thousands of free online tutorials. About.com is an excellent site that contains in-depth tutorials going over everything you'll need to know. From there I recommend a library such as SDL and the Win32 API if you intend to develope for Windows systems.

As for 3D applications there's no doubt that DirectX and OpenGL are the way to go. Again, there are many books regarding these APIs and they cover both the mathematical prerequisites that you must acquire before you develope 3D applications, the basics to your chosen API and the advanced topics of your chosen API such as HLSL (High Level Shader Language) for DirectX.

To summarize, don't stress yourself too much, you'll only fall into an endless pit of problems where you won't have the knowledge of how to correct them.

Best of luck to you!

In all honesty, unless you get an RPG specific engine, you will have to add/mod the engine that you are using quite a bit. Your best bet therefore, is to either get an open source engine and mod that, work around an existing engine or just build your own, game specific engine. Remember that there is nothing wrong with creating a game rather than an all singing, all dancing game engine.

I'm with rpg_code_master on this one.

Modding an engine that "does it all" will be a royal pain in the posterior. Even worse is trying to mould a FPS engine into a NWN-style RPG engine.. it's ... unpleasant. I have some experience in this.


I would recommend looking into RPG Makers.
Wikipedia has an entry on this, along with several external links
RPGSource also has a listing

I agree that if your new (like me) to steer clear of graphics for awhile. I have tried to make an RPG (just text-based, one creature verus another with various decriminates like hunger) and got it able to compile, but it doesn't work right. Try just learning a language and move onto them later.