***** FYI - I am a pretty good brainstormer and think that even if an idea sounds crazy it might trigger a better one in the next person down the line. That said, I may go off here a bit but tis all for the benefit of the project ***
It really does sound interesting. It would take a really good collaboration to pull off. Then again we are talking about us and this is one of the few places that successfully has already done a CWBP and done it very well.
How did you imagine a 'living game' going on?
My first thought was that we'd need a lot more history and faction detail within an area and then we'd need people to represent some of these factions. They would then decide what they wanted to do and we could write the history and map the changes that resulted. This would take some real organization and a few committees to pull off.
A few of these I could forsee (I just made up names so whatever):
The Ancients (Basically they would say what comes into existance) - They who hand out areas to be mapped and make final decisions
Various Governors and Lords: Those who build cities and/or locations within cities or oversee such creations. City Lords I guess.
Adventurer Guild: Those who help determine the direction of the Heroes within the world. Heck if we had any VTT experts we could perhaps RP some of these events.
Historians or Bards: They would write history or events that occurred. Basically the authors to make sense of what happens.
There obviously would be all sorts of offshoots on this and folks could belong to more than one Committee.
I hope you have a simpler idea because to pull of what my first thought was would take a Herculean effort. I think it would be a blast to do but we would really need some good oversight to keep things from unraveling or ending up with two versions of the same story with opposite endings.
So in other words you have a community story complete with world and maps for all things.
Now, even if this seems preposterous to you and is WAY off what you meant, it should be obvious that you fired up a creative flow within at least one person here.
So, what did YOU mean
PS. I had to hold myself back because I was in danger of getting on a roll. One of those types of things I am want to do just so I can watch my wife roll her eyes at me, hehe.