Note: Yes, I did steal the subsection of the title from the book Guns, Germans and Steel by Jared Diamond.
There was a roleplay that failed, hosted by an online peer of mine (from NationStates) that dealt with exactly the same thing. It died within a matter of weeks. I really liked the idea and I want to re-start it (using my server). First, I wanted to go through different history/role-playing forums and survey who would be interested. After creating a successful base of users I think I will be safe in starting said role-play.
I have tried something similar on this forum before and it could have been successful had I not stopped posting. If anybody remembers, it had to do with the ancient world. Well, this is similar.
The idea is to take the current world (2007) and allow role-players to re-write (to a certain degree; I'll explain this later) their nation's history between 1975 and present (this is to avoid the revision of crucial moments in history which have shaped our current world dramatically, such as the Second World War and Vietnam War). I said 'to a certain degree' because there has to be an element of cooperation. We all know that even prior to globalization the world's history was more or less intertwined between all nations, in some fashion. People would have to cooperate to make sure histories made sense. Naturally, because of the high degree of fantasy and given the fact that the majority of us are young and idealistic the world when the game begins is not going to develope the same way it would from a real-world standpoint (far more war!), but that's fine and fun. However, don't be mistaken, some realism is expected. Real-world populations of '07 would be used.
I'd like to know if anybody on this forum would be interested.