I see most of the top three has already been covered, then I will simply go through it again, giving small insights...

Sword or Mana (Seiken Densetsu III, I think...): introduces the concept of the "ring", which allows a single player to use his two acolytes faster than in ANY Final Fantasy game. Great music too.

Final Fantasy 6 (III in US, I believe): This one presents the player with a HUGE story that can be solved through ANY combination of classic and hidden characters in your team, any could die without hampering your progression through the story(much, that is),a nd there were a great number of different endings. THAT, my friend, is what I REALLY call a console RPG...

And Chrono Trigger, in which you have to go back in time to destroy a sword that you will find in pieces and forge anew before you can destroy it. (The very best example of time paradow included in a game ever, in my opinion) And yet, once again, the music is great, for a console RPG..

Thanks for all the help guys and gals! I'm thinking I'll do the rough plan using the staple plot ideas that I know from all games, and I'll fill out more detailed stuff later once I get a feel for how it all works.

I've already played Chrono Trigger (loved every bit of it!), Seiken Densetsu 3 (why didn't they release this in English? It's great!), and (most of) Final Fantasy 6 (feel free to consider me a heretic, but I didn't enjoy this one much; Kefka didn't work for me as a villain) as well as a few other RPGs (Grandia 2, Tales of Symphonia, not to mention scores of PC RPGs) that I'll use as the basis of my design.

Oh, and thanks for the tip about gamefaq, cyansoft. I should have guessed they'd have the dialog there as part of their walkthroughs.