So when I asked around on the IRC channel for a good place to start they pointed me at FIFE-rpg.
When installing and programming this I got a few errors.
So this post is mostly for me to remember what I did wrong and got all the interesting links in one place. So I started with downloading FIFE from here: https://github.com/fifengine/fifengine/wiki/Downloads
Then I followed these instructions:
http://archivewiki.fifengine.net/Building:Linux:SCons
So basically I did the following.
Unpack it where you wan
tar -xzvf fife_0.3.5.tar.gz
After that you can build all the essentials by entering the following in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install build-essential scons libsdl1.2-dev libboost-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-image1.2-dev libvorbis-dev libalut-dev python-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-test-dev swig zlib1g-dev libxcursor-dev libopenal-dev libasound2-dev libguichan-dev
After you have all the dependencies you can install FIVE by going to the directory where you unpacked FIVE and type
scons
Make sure you check if it finds the libraries you need, otherwise it won't build.The libraries are easy to find online when the aren't found.
So the next post will be about the first tutorials.