Good thread!
Mine is still unnamed, and given the train of my thoughts it might not even be possible for some time. I've become a chaos theory devotee, and I want to build a world out of enmeshed dynamic systems. However, I don't want a game that requires one of those newfangled 733 G4s just to run, and is turn-based because the computer has to churn for 24 hours generating the next frame. 
I digress. The basic idea is that there are three distinct civilizations in three climates, all adjacent: mountain, valley and desert. All have perfectly good historical reasons to distrust each other. All three keep meticulously accurate histories which are factually correct, but which spin or selectively omit facts to their own benefit. Tension between them is coming to a head, rapidly. That's when you appear. You can start in any of the three cultures.
The solution - restoring the peace - involves discovering a fourth civilization that the other three were all complicit in extinguishing, and which is blotted out of the histories except for a few oblique references. Details are yet to be determined, obviously. First, I have to write the histories.
It will be low-magic fantasy. I'm definitely going to have various kinds of magic, but the only PC race will be human (all the civilizations are human). There are no elves, orcs, dwarves or hobbits that a Tolkien or D&D; player would recognize - whether there are any fey creatures depends on how the story arc goes, and whether I can program them in to my satisfaction. If there are fey creatures, there will also be unicorns and dragons, although again, these will be quite different from the fantasy norm.
What am I blathering about? This: I am hoping to have fey creatures (known variously and more-or-less interchangeably as goblins, elves, sprites, pixies, dwarves, gnomes, brownies, trolls, kobolds, hobgoblins, leprechauns, etc., and other varieties such as dryads and dragons) appear and disappear in response to local karma, with their forms and natures being determined by the nature of the place they appear in. Most - the sprite-like denizens - grow spontaneously out of the innate magic of a place, or from the energies left behind by a major event at that place. Some, like dryads, are actually the souls of places and cannot leave any more than a human soul can leave its body. They also can only be slain if their "body" is destroyed.
The problems adapting this model to a game engine based in boolean logic should be obvious, but hope springs eternal. 
I didn't get a BS in CS for nothing. I'm going to have to get someone else to do the artwork and the music, though. I can design, I can write, I can code, but I can't draw worth beans, and the only instrument I can play is drumset. 
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James
(This message has been edited by Amorph (edited 02-20-2001).)
