Game idea - structure and suggestions

[jseah]

Basically, this takes setting exploration and tries to turn it into a game all by itself.

It still needs alot of work to turn into a proper game so suggestions are welcome.
Also, do you think you would be interested if someone was to run it? (just a hypothetical question)

Fantasy setting, magic exists: (the magic system is extensively known by the GM but not by the players, they only know what is 'common knowledge')

The players take on the role of an academic faculty (either individual members or whitewashing an entire department) of one of the first universities to be set up in the setting.
A list of pre-known information is given (not necessarily correct) and the players are given a budget to explore the setting and gather information. These expeditions or experiments take time and money. Budget allocations for next cycle are done by how much contribution each department has made.

No world changing events occur unless the players initiate it (eg. inventing a machine that kick starts the industrial revolution... not necessarily steam powered)

[Yora]

It's not a bad idea, but to plan an expediation, you need to already have a pretty good idea what you are looking for. You don't just head into a random direction of the jungle to see what you'll find, you are usually searching for something very specific.

And to know what you're looking for and how you could find it, you need to have some good ideas about it. If the players are historians, archeologists, or prospectors, they'll need quite a bit of background information to plan such expeditions.

[Kol Korran]

As Yora said, there should be some goal to the exploration. you could start with "map this area and find anything of interest" but the campaign itself should include more than that- at least something interesting while they're exploring (and i'm not talking random monsters or animals)

but on the whole- explorations wouldbe nifty. it would be great if you can somehow make it accesible to well known systems, just to increase it's actual use.

Pathfinder has some rules for exploration for the King Maker adventure path, and i think they have some sort of archeologist/ historians/ explorers/ IIndiana Jones society (forgot the exact name) that you might compare or draw from.

[mint]

Sounds a little bit like you could hack Ars Magica to do this.
The covenant is the university.
Broaden researching spells, artifice. You have funding (vis) and exploration going on already.
Works on the outline, detail might get iffy.