A long time ago, there was a small community over on the Apolyton forums that ran a series of role-playing games not unlike what we do here. The difference, though, is that in those games the players took the position not of heroes but of the leaders of countries. Personal intrigue and royal court drama still played a reasonably large part in the game (I recall having a general of one of my forces stage a coup!) but players also conduct diplomacy amongst each other and various NPC nations and tribes, organize their military forces and order those forces to attack or defend against the armies of other nations and spend the national treasury on various civil projects or on additional military forces. The goal is to take the best elements of turn-based strategy games like Civilization or the Total War series and combine them with the free-form style of play of table-top roleplaying games, so that players aren't limited by the foresight of the programmers. For instance, when attacked by a player with a wildly superior military force, I was able to order my armies to act more as guerrilla forces until my allies arrived to bail me out.
In a typical turn, a player might try to form a diplomatic alliance among neighbors against a common enemy, order an army to begin an offensive into that enemy's lands and describe the sort of tactics that the army will use, spend a portion of the national treasury to train additional troops and another portion on civil projects like the expansion of a mine and the construction of a road, found a new city to control a resource, trade route, or other strategic location, switch out generals between armies to try find the right mix of different military skills and loyalty, try to quell a rebellious province by a combination of a change in policy and a military crackdown, and try to broker a trade deal with another major power to bring more strategic resources like iron, copper, or horses. Each player represents a major power, and players may form alliances or make war against one another at will; there are no restrictions encouraging or discouraging cooperation or aggression between players.
On Apolyton, the settings of these games ranged from historical and present-day scenarios to fantasy and science fiction settings, from warring planets in a solar system to warring tribes of gnomes in a suburban backyard. The most successful games, though, were usually historical in setting (or maybe I remember it that way because I liked those more!) so that's what I'd like to start here. I've worked up a game set a few years after Alexander the Great's death. Historically the following century is very exciting; Alexander's generals vie for control of his empire and end up splintering it into a few large kingdoms that last until they're finally overrun by the Romans. As the Diadochi (Greek for "successors", Alexander's heirs and generals) battle for control of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, an upstart Rome wars against and finally destroys Carthage in the Punic Wars after Pyrrhus of Epirus rampages through Italy, coining the term "Pyrrhic Victory" on the way. Though I'm trying to set up the scenario historically (with minor changes for game balance), players are absolutely not bound by history; an alliance between the Roman and Carthaginian republics against the Greek kingdoms in the East, for example, would be perfectly acceptable. I'll try to be true to history as I set this up, but after the game starts, everyone (including myself, as the moderator) is welcome to venture into alternate history.
Does this sound good to anyone? I've got one friend who used to play over on Apolyton who's already spoken for Carthage, and one more who I'll save a slot for. I'd like to get six players in total, representing Carthage, Rome, the Ptolomy family in Egypt, the Selucid family in Mesopotamia and Persia, the Antigonid family in Asia Minor and Syria, and the kingdom of Lysimachus in Thrace. For the moment, I don't want to expand the game any larger than six players, though I might eventually, especially if large factions emerge who would benefit from player control.
I'll post a map shortly; I've got most of the map worked out and I'll be working up data on each of the nations shortly. (Incidentally, how do you post a picture in a thread the way What Exit? does in the Middle Earth game?) Is anyone interested? The Wikipedia article on the period is here, if anyone wants to read a little about it. I hope I'll be able to start this by Monday, barring any major hiccups.