There is a basic empty skeleton RPG Maker VX Ace project, along with some scripts and makefiles that make it easy to pack/unpack RPG Maker datafiles to/from YAML and script files. This converts them between plaintext formats, which means they're now easy to version control/merge/share. (And it means that programmers can work on scripts without ever opening the editor at all, just repack and run Game.exe!)

Dependencies

gnu make
ruby
rvpacker (https://github.com/akesterson/rvpacker)
RPG Maker VX Ace

For non-programmers

For any project built off this skeleton, collaborating is easy:

Download and install the version control client that your developer tells you to
Check out the project from the URL they give you
Repack the project
If you are on Linux or OS X:
Double-click the 'unpack.sh' script in Finder, Gnome file manager, or run it in a terminal
If you are on Windows:
Double-click the 'unpack.bat' script in Explorer
Open the game project in RPG Maker and make whatever changes you want
Unpack the project before committing it up for everyone else
If you are on Linux or OS X:
Double-click the 'pack.sh' script in Finder, Gnome file manager, or run in a terminal
If you are on Windows:
Double-click the 'pack.bat' script in Explorer
Commit the project into version control

Now your programmers and project managers will thank you.

For programmers and others who care about diff/merge

Clone the project
Do whatever work you're going to do
edit yaml files in YAML/; these are all the game database files converted to plaintext YAML
edit scripts under ./Scripts - these are all the game scripts, ready for your IDE/editor of choice
Whatever else
Test your work in the game (or open it up in the editor)
make pack
do your testing
make unpack (convert it all back to text)
Commit your work

The game skeleton has had all of the default ruby scripts yanked out. The scripts (100% stock) now live in ./Scripts/RPG/*rb. There is only one script loaded by the project proper (and which gets packed back into Data/), ./Scripts/entrypoint.rb. It doesn't do anything more than setup some load paths ( so 'require' works how we expect ), import the RPG module, and then call the main loop.

If you want to modify entrypoint.rb, do it before the game loop starts.