I've spent the last week or so starting work on a sci-fi turn-based multiplayer deathmatch RPG. Sort of like Counter-Strike, if the terrorists were giant aliens, Counter-Strike had persistent leveling and it was a turn-based, sci-fi RPG.
The content requirements for a single player RPG are more than I'm able to commit to -- mostly artwise, I can write well and program well enough --, so I trimmed down the RPG ruleset I've been working on the last few years into something more befitting a multiplayer combat game (basically just gutted the skill list). Figured turn-based multiplayer would be easier to implement than AI, so here we are.
I sat around for a few hours and sketched out the system architecture, and started setting up the RPG core classes in C#. Current plans are to implement the
Jurassic JS
interpreter compiler as a scripting language and script most of the content that way.
Last few days I got sidetracked and started working on a web-app to handle content development. I don't know that JS and a browser wouldn't be powerful enough to handle the master file for a fully-fledged RPG (for comparison, New Vegas's .esm is about 250 megs), but with the amount of content I'm planning (not much, basically the ruleset, character and item models and a single map)... I think it'll be good enough.
The long-term plan is to get enough to done to justify a kickstarter -- I don't know that there are any entries in this sort of weird hybrid genre -- get an artist, finish it and see if enough people like it to justify building a single-player RPG on the same engine with an expanded ruleset. That would, however, require a team and things.
I did a quick mockup in Photoshop. Not great and not really original, but something to aim for until I can pick up a proper UI / general artist.
