A tale told throughout generations...

[Dukat]

For a while, I have wanted to play a game (freeform or rule-based) with the premise of players at first controlling one character, but then going on to play their character's descendants. What I have in mind is something like Phantasy Star III, if you have played that game (though hopefully this will be better executed.) The characters would play as the heads of noble households, all vying for position. While certain events would have all of the players assembled, the rest of the time, the players might be working solo or with less than all of their fellow players. In general, the game would progress such that a certain interval in real-time would correspond to an amount of time in-game, i.e., 2 weeks equals 1 year. That way, if someone falls behind, instead of having to wait for them, we can simply say that they didn't really do anything of note in that year and keep going.

What I am looking for other than players, specifically, is 1.) a lady to be a co-storyteller, playing certain female NPCs, and 2.) some sort of ruleset. The first is because I do not want to play any female NPCs who might be interested in the male PCs, although I might play other females. Also, I do not have very much experience in DMing, so I might need some help. As for the ruleset, I would like to have this game have certain parts that are more-or-less freeform, but in other instances I would like to interject random chance and test the abilities of characters. I would like to resolve any combat as quickly as possible, instead of having multiple rounds of difficult decision-making and a wide array of powers, so I was thinking that having several quick checks depending on rolls of d20, modified by characters' stats, would be a good way to resolve situations. However, I do not really know if there would be already established rulesets that would work for this, so suggestions would be good.

So, finally, the burning question: is anyone interested?