Diving In

I've been mulling over a game idea for about two years now. I'm very experienced on the playing side of games. Particularily non computer RPG's such as D&D and so forth. I've been creating campaigns and DM'ing/Admining games such as D&D and Traveller for decades. Basically I'm an idea man, great at creating stuff in my head, and great at presenting campaign and play ideas for others. I have very little computer skill outside of office and music applications. My game idea is bourn out of the fact that I've noticed in a number of the MMORPG's that I play that there is more activity and more 'fun' being had on thier support forums, thier Mirc channels, and accross MSN between players than in the games themselves. Thus, I thought well it would save so much programming, size of engine, and so forth if the game was designed with forum interaction incorporated from the start and a principal part of the game. Additionally my own skill lies in the direct interaction and presentation of a campaign that a forum allows. So my idea is I think rather simple especially compared to all the 3d virtual reality style games that are around. My concept is simple, you start as the owner of a piece of property, you develop said piece of property and maintain it's budget using profits to expand it, you get extra income from outside sources and you pay taxes and a percentage of your profits to a higher power. The RPG aspects of the game are all conducted on a forum. With the online administrator modifing the database of the game according to events in the RP's on said forum, and presenting the main RP to the players. The players themselves can also have thier own RP's on the forum etc. It's historically based and I've already done all the research to make the game very historically based and accurate. I even have most of the numbers involved already on excel. All that's really needed is to put my numbers into databases, and create some pages with a bit of artwork to interface with the database. The nature of my ideas is that simple is better as far as the game itself goes. 2d is just fine and there is no need for moving graphics or anything like that. All that's needed is a page for the character to see himself (a profile page), a page to see the property (with new stuff appearing), pages to work the budgets, and trimmings like a static pages with how to play et. Other things like a mail server etc would all be cool add ons but are not essential as the forum would have all that. All the game engine needs to do is produce some variables like weather and apply that to the budgetary results and take the properties through thier developement phase. It would also need to Handle trading and transactions between players, and give results in a graphically pleasing manner. The basis of what going on there, with active administration on the forum(that I'm more than willing to provide) would in turn provide the basis for the Role playing going on in the forum. So in a nutshell game wise were looking at basically a data basing program, a game that is almost strictly finance and building, with the game itself tossing random events at the players from time to time. Military stuff can be added in later maybe if desired. Once complete I can see the game taking on different skins for different historical periods. In other words once the first game is done it can be a template for other games along the same lines. Based on the success of some similar games I"ve seen and played (although none are really as cool as what I have in mind) I think some good coin could be made out of this. The end product would be simple, easy to play, and be very RP intensive. So this is where I find myself running into a wall. I've looked over allot of topics in this and other game developement forums. Serfed over any software links I found. Problem is this almost all of them so far seem to be graphic interaction based. Almost all of it is 3d stuff, and no where have I found anything pointing towards anything database oriented. Second problem is I'm flatt broke. So I"m looking primarily at open source and free ware and hopefully free hosting/server stuff (them cluttering ads etc is ok by me). Third problem is I'm very limited in my skills as a programmer (the last computer I actually programmed on was a commodor128. I've no problem handling spread sheets and so forth as I said I already have most of the numbers needed. I'm currently trying to gain the interest of a couple of game programmer type people, however I would love to take a stab at doing this myself, seeing that there is some freeware out there. At anyrate I think if I could at least create something that is a step towards what I invision then I could use that to get more designers on board. Create a beta to borrow the term. So, what I'm hopeing for in posting this is that someone can give me some pointers. Maybe post a link to some software that is more 2d and database oriented, rather than all the fancy high graphic 3d stuff I've seen. Really any advice is appreciated.