Right.
Charging for it never really crossed my mind.

Well its just a thought, depends if you want to and how it ends up

So we're NOT going to make anyone our bitch?
Not announcing it in advance, certainly
Well, are we going to hire John Romero?

We could have an NPC named Johnny Rome?

He could be the local madman, running around screaming about making everyone his bitch but running away any time someone approaches him

Graphically, I believe similar to the world today, though I cannot say how run-down it may be due to armed conflicts or such.
Story-wise, I have no idea at all, that's Alias' specialisation.

It has to be something where we can tell an interesting story, at least for me thats the primary objective. I'd prefer the modern era just for the novelty of it all. The only modern day RPG I can think of is Alpha Protocol and that seems very far removed from the infinity engine style. The one thing I do really want to figure out is a way of making firefights actually something to be afraid of but still not so stupidly hard that the game becomes unplayable. That was one of the reasons I latched onto the idea of Red Dawn, modern day era with a lot of potential for stories and a good balance between fighting the evil commie bastards and sneaking around setting up traps and being sneaky
I haven't given a LOT of thought to the story really since I've been working on uni stuff. In theory I could use the short story I'm writing but thats a story of rebellion & political intrigue set inside a tree so it sort of lacks the real world feel

There's a severe lack of modern-themed RPGs. Well there's Alpha Protocol, The Secret World, and...that's about it. I think a modern themed RPG has a lot of untapped potential. For one, most "modern RPGs" that were released usually cross over to the science fiction part. I don't think I've yet seen a pure modern RPG, so as an idea, that might be a starting point.
I'd also recommend a setting in Hyboria aka Conan's universe, but then that's the Conan fanboy in me speaking already hehe. Not so much recommending it here, since it's not wholly public domain, but just to elaborate on a unique point about it, the cool thing about Conan's universe is that everything envisioned about it is based on real history. Although Hyboria is fiction itself, the setting is built as an emulated layer to real world history that took place during the BC eras. This creates a sense of connection with the reader, something that we can empathize with. Maybe we can try a theme eg. modern world that does this too.

Sort of a 'what if' thing? Always love those

Yup. Alias why don't you come on IRC and we'll talk more.

too late, need sleeeeep
also no idea how to access the gog IRC (or indeed any irc)

Here are a number of IRC clients (I use TurboIRC), connect to irc.quakenet.org, and join the room #gog (either through some button or the command /join).
Sleep tight, it must be around 3.30 AM by now, right?

It was about that time, yeah. Gotta love uni break even if I'm still working flat out on this project.
Trillian seems to have connected to the GOG room well enough, shall give it a go one of these days

Bah, so much for trillian connecting to IRC. Unless there's currently server trouble its just not going to be stable enough to be bothered using