I started with rpgmaker as well, and your comment made me so nostalgic. I remember downloading a game from rpgmaker.net that had a "custom battle system" implem

I started with rpgmaker as well, and your comment made me so nostalgic. I remember downloading a game from rpgmaker.net that had a "custom battle system" implemented in it. They replaced the entire built in battle system with a custom implementation that used techniques like you described. I was absolutely blown away when I opened it in the editor to see how it works. It was hundreds and hundreds of "variables" (which if I remember correctly only allowed i64), and hundreds and hundreds of "switches" (which was booleans). I had no concept of stacks and heaps or function calls at that point. I can't imagine the amount of energy it took to pull that off and maintain/debug it.