Well, if you''re really interested about scripting engines and how they work, Jan Neistadt over at flipcode.com wrote a 9 part tutorial on the subject:
That''s the first part, the rest can be found in the tutorial index on the site.
He explains it very thoroughly and what he shows you should be perfect for a simple scripting engine for an RPG. And, if you actually understand it enough to expand on it, the better
I created a scripting languge in VB a while ago, that was pretty much simplified ASM. It ran well, and could interface with the program easily. i used it at one point to create a remote control thing for my computer, and had it able to compile VB programs, run programs, open files, etc, in just a few minutes. If you are going to write your own scripting engine from scratch, i would start with something like what i did, with a single command, then some parameters to do something (kinda like what TANSTAAFL said, but with shorter commands =).
