Thank you - I'll take that advice and start out little - maybe a clone or just a guy standing in a room that keeps getting thirsty, and drinks when he hits a thirstiness limit. As much as anything else, I wanted to make sure I'm not learning a tool that would be an inefficient one to use further down the line.
Last time I went anywhere near making games was the Hammer editor to make old L4D maps, and working out how to make little events happen was probably the closest to programming experience outside of building websites and automating LAN stuff. In any case, GUI-based sounds good.
Appreciate the reply, thank you!