A "Living" Settlement in a True Sandbox Environment
The game I would love to play/be a part of is an idea I've had for a long time now, at first thinking of perhaps running it myself, but soon realizing I don't have the experience or expertise to do it right, plus what I would like to propose seems too complex for just one GM to run, so I believe perhaps severals Co-GMs would be necessary.
But I am going around in circles without getting to the point. This idea I have in my mind consists of the following:
We have a barebones settlement in a pretty much unexplored mass of land (could be a big island or a small continent). The closest civilized area is on another mass of land, so only reachable by sea, which means supplies and help are very limited to start with.
A small group of people had been sent to survey and try to settle where possible this unexplored land. They have started creating the settlement with the few supplies they brought with them, and the leader has named himself governor and has sent two or three people to travel to the closest port town across the sea and recruit/convince more people to come along. They are looking for anyone who wants to try and thrive in the new environment; explorers, hunters and warriors to check out the surroundings of the settlement, survey the land, report what dangers or perils are about if any, fend off those dangers, see what the vegetation and fauna is like, and in the future perhaps even claim some more land and add more settlements; sea captains, sailors and longshoremen to bring more supplies; merchants and crafters to start putting those supplies to good use and establishing businesses; construction workers to build houses and shops and so on.
From here the idea is for those envoys sent to the closest port to recruit those that will be the players. The way I see it, because I would love to see the settlement grow into something much bigger, each interested player (if any) should have right to two characters to start with: one of them a more typical adventuring type that would deal with dangers, explore, protect and such, the other one a civilian of their liking, anything that would contribute to make the settlement "alive" as in the title of the post.
The adventurer character would be led more in the typical way roleplaying goes, with encounters, adventures and exploration. The other characters would be more strategic/economy style of play, working to improve their craft/profession, make fortune and help bring civilization to the new land.
Why do I say "living", mostly because I love detail and realism in games and I usually find that most people are the opposite, where most prefer simplicity, I choose complex. So for a small example of many possible. I have seen adventures where the characters are carrying a ridiculous amount of gems and jewelry, worth ten times what the average citizen would make in a year. They just get to the first settlement in their way, a 250 inhabitants village with a single jeweler, they go to their shop and think about selling every single jewelry item they have in there. And it turns that the jeweler has more than enough to buy all they carry and they get out of the shop happily carrying out all those coins (I don't even know where they would store so much money). Another example is when shopkeepers seem to have unlimited numbers of certain items ready for sale, even in small populations.
In this environment I would like to see merchants that have a certain amount of money and stock, and they can only get more by actually buying and selling, trying to keep things realistic.
In the case of the civilian characters, they would also need to decide what their job is going to be and acquire anything they will need to perform this job. If someone wants to start a business, they would need to get the plot, get the building constructed, whatever furniture and/or equipment their going to need, and the items they are going to sell or the materials for crafting them.
Changing conditions, weather, random events would be thrown in to keep things interesting too, and still keeping with the general level of realism. I would say any existant magic should be low level to keep with the concept.
There's many rough edges at the moment (it's only an idea that needs a lot of work to get it going) and it all needs to be presented in a better order, put down some rules, decide on a system for running it all (should probably be homemade because I am not quite sure if there is any existing one that would cover all this) and see if there is enough people interested in giving it a shot or even polishing it with their own ideas.
But if anyone would be willing to run this I would love to be a part of it myself. Possibly even running the economy/business/city building part of it which is my favourite.
Sorry about the long post. Thanks for reading and I will be waiting for everyone's feedback (constructive please ;-))