Kat: Well... What kind of a game do you -want-? I have a few ideas on the burners.
Jeysie: Well... I'm personally big on character interaction, problem-solving, and some combat, the more weird the combat the better.
MH: What about the setting?
Jeysie: Setting-wise doesn't matter to me much, as long as I can get details of it if it's something I'm not familiar with.
Jeysie: We have to have *some* combat, otherwise Ascii being a warlock will be pretty boring.
Kat: And the game is INTENDED to be fairly combat minimal, but there will be combat. The combat will tend to be extremely short and move quicker than most D&D combat, followed by spurts of noncombat.
Kat: Basically, I'm going to get in the way of D&D's combat mechanisms. Mostly by being weird and creepy about it.
Jeysie: Ascii: Random note: One idea I had, based on a D&D thread I read once, is an adventuring barbershop quartet made up of four differently focused Bards. Maybe even using the Variant Bards from the SRD.
Jeysie: Ascii: Lead Bard would probably be the direct damage/fighter type. Tenor bard would be the ranged/enchantment type. Bass Bard would be a divine bard type. And the Baritone would just be a weirdass freak.
Kat: The hardest thing here is figuring out why the hell you'd all be in the same place.
Jeysie: Kat: If you give the setting and setup, we can give you ideas.
Kat: Anyhow. Hmm... Simplicity is best, perhaps. The setting itself would be rather D&D-typical; a bunch of countries, roaming monsters, no outstanding wars going on. Fairly standard, except we shant call it the Forgotten Realms, as that sounds cheesy.
Kat: The point is that the setting is so simple it really doesn't need additional explanation. x.x You could call it "Greyhawk" if you wanted and it'd make no difference except everyone would look at you funny and go, "What grey hawk? I didn't see a bird..."
Jeysie: Kat: Heh. Well, technically Trinsic isn't entirely Greyhawk either... except for the races and gods.
Kat: Each of you could have been contracted separately by a wealthy retiree who lives out in the countryside on his massive estate and sent out to find his missing 9-year-old niece who had come for a visit that week. This is when everything falls to shit.
Ascii: Personally, I'd prefer something besides a contracted quest to find <blank>.
Jeysie: The Academy idea I thought was one of my better ones, but, well, it's been done now.
Jeysie: Maybe we should try the Ghostbuster/adventuring business idea after all.
Ascii: Jeysie: What was that one, again?
Jeysie: Ascii: What it sounds like, basically. A business group of adventurers, either pro or amateur, depending on level, who hire themselves out on cases.
Jeysie: Eh, so it's still a contract thing. But it at least gives us a reason to have diverse class/race choices. 
Kat: Ascii: It's a lot more than that. :P You find the girl the first day. It's just the adventure is a surprise.
Jeysie: If you go the "sudden circumstance that makes everyone have to adventure" you start needing characters all in the same family or town or something.
MH: I think the business angle is a great idea.
Jeysie: One vote, then.
Out2lunch: What are we voting one again?
Jeysie: Lunchie: Setting and reasons our characters would be in the same place, I think.
Ascii: I kinda like the business idea, too.
Out2lunch: Well it all sounds good to me.
Kat: Fine. A business of adventurers that hire out to whoever, and in this case, you've been hired by a rich retiree to find his 9-year-old niece who got lost a few days ago in the woods.
Jeysie: A bunch of PI adventurers. I dig it. Jeysie gives everyone a fedora and a trenchcloak.
Jeysie: Heck, that even gives us an easy write-in when Nemesis gets sorted and can RP again. She'll be our new hire-ee.
Kat: Oh. I'm making a setting change.
BLusk: Or she was left to watch the office until her temp arrived.
Kat: The vast majority of Aberration-type monsters. You've never heard of or seen them.
Ascii: Kat: What monsters?
Kat: In fact, in this world... D&D combat and such is confined mostly to Monstrous Humanoid and normal animals. Magical beasts exist to a fair extent.
Kat: Aberrations and Outsiders- what are they??
Kat: Outsiders show up, of course. They have agendas. Just rare.
Kat: ANything involving Planar Travel is largely unheard of.
Jeysie: No ranks in "Know: Planes". Got it.
Ascii: Kat: So far in Trinsic, we haven't fought anything more monstrous than a bunch of giant ants. Mostly we fought "normal" evil people.
Kat: Well, that's the case here. Magical Beasts, humans, monstrous humanoids.
Kat: None of you have ever met, heard of, or seen anything extraplanar. Outsiders exist the same way they do here on earth. With the whole religion thing. But no one's met one and can be a reliable source, if at all.
Jeysie: Kat: Yes, let's define the religion thing, then.
Kat: I'm lazy. Use the Greyhawk religions.
Jeysie: Heh. Well, the no outsiders thing does tweak the attitudes somewhat...
Kat: Right. You've HEARD Of them, but it's like real life angels. Do they exist? Do they not?? WHo knows.
Ascii: Kat: Um, warlocks thematically get their powers through demonic pacts with evil outsiders. Even if my char didn't himself, he would have had to have inherited his abilities from an ancestor who did. Unless I can come up with some alternative reason for him to have Spooky Powers.
Kat: Ascii: Handled. There IS interaction. Just no one's HEARD of it, per se. Warlocks are a myth too.
Ascii: Kat: OH, I get you. The Truth Is Out There, it's just that most of it remains unknown to the public, and the government covers up the rest.
MH: but we know about magic though, right?
Kat: Yeah. Magic exists.  Totally. Last time someone portalled to one of the Deific Planes, their shoes 
came back. This suggests that Outsiders might just exist. But that's a myth.
Ascii: How about this... my warlock inherited his powers from someone who made a deal with Evil(tm). He doesn't want anybody to know about this, so he pretends to just be a sorcerer or some such.
Kat: I need to decide on the starting gold. You ought to start relatively poor.
Jeysie: Hey, if we're level 5, than means the business wasn't a complete wash. Level 5, I mean.
Ascii: This begs the question: Are we running a *sucessful* adventuring business?
Jeysie: Even if you figure we spent 4 levels getting good at our niches... Though I agree we ain't gonna be as rich as the average Lvl5 adventurer. We can figure we have an expense account that we draw our supplies from.
Kat: That's what I was thinking too. 24,000 in the expense account.
Jeysie: Kat: Yeah, we're probably registered with the Better Business Bureau.
Kat: Don't buy too many magical items. Magical items are rarer here than in normal D&D. Not too much. But you wouldn't have a whole lot of them.
Jeysie: We'd have healing magic, mostly. Maybe a few alchemical items.
Kat: I was about to say use 5d6 drop 2.
Kat: Roll one more. Drop the third roll, it's below 10.
Kat: Full hit dice. No piddling rolls.
Kat: I'm also implementing a simple -2, +1 system. By which you can subtract two from a single stat to add 1 to another.