Welcome to Aleral at the South Pacific Club!
To answer the first question Aleral is a fictional Dungeons and Dragons world (v3.5) that we intend to create - with the input of D&D players worldwide - and make it into a mass online D&D game, (did I mention?) free of charge.
Yes, online D&D sites do exist, in two forms that I have seen. There are those that are whole 3D computer generated worlds, like Runescape. They are impressive, but have issues with out-of-control players. Lets face it, 3D worlds are excellent fun, but no Dungeon Master(s) can keep an eye on a thousand odd players twenty-four seven, and they lack the supreme open ended style of true D&D.
The other extreme is post by post sites in which a DM picks four players from a multitude and runs a unique campaign. This means that many players either don't get a game, have to become DMs themselves or wait and wait and ...
So we thought, why not a blend of the two?
A post by post mass online world, the effort and imagination of players around the world, that any player can enter easily - send in your character and after (s)he is checked by a DM - in no time at all a board is created just for you, and off you go step in to a new world.
That is Aleral !
The Idea
The idea is that many DMs run the same world rather than many DMs running many worlds.
How? Dungeon Masters will have individual regions to control and all players within, thats not to say that a DM doesn't control the wider world and events in it - if a DM wants a storm to hit a region or regions he doesn't directly control, the DMs collaborate, and presto, a storm hits. As more players come more DMs are added and the regions grow a little bit smaller, hence no DM is overtaxed. The key of course, is communication, so a person should be a regular to the site before he is appointed a DM, I personally, would like to see DMs come once a day.
This also means that the large pool of DMs will have between them created a very complete world. If for example one DM has only one city and the region surrounding it to directly administer that city will be much more detailed than if the same DM had to build an entire world on his or her own. It also means that each region will have a different flavor a unique style and unique characters.
DMs then, will be able to see all boards organized by region, each region has it's own message board for regional DM news - for example, "the mages guildhall burned down on such and such a date" all DMs with players in the city past that date will find the mages guildhall a smoking pile of ashes.
This news can be posted on regional players news board "Mages Guildhall Burns Down! City watch are following leads on...".
All parties also have longer to think about there characters response - DMs could even give more or less information to each player based on that characters intelligence, wisdom and charisma - like taking a character aside and saying the same thing in different versions, since all characters have their own board and talk through the DM.
Also, PCs won't know if they are talking to a PC or NPC. Things become interesting when a PC hires thugs (who could be PCs?) to kill a character (who could also be a PC?) for a political advantage - held by another PC (?). All the while wondering if a real person half the way around the world will curse when thugs ambushes his character...
If the PC survives he may hunt down who instigated such an attack. By capturing the thugs who attack him...
Players may read in the regional players newsboard "Lord Derek Murdered! city watch believe that four unknown thugs attacked the famed Lord just out side his home on...." and wonder if the DMs just threw it in for background info or...
DMs (I have to say) may spend a lot of time rolling on the floor laughing at the chaos that just cant be caused by normal D&D games.
Which leads very neatly to the last point... (I'm nearly done, I promise)
Fame and Infamy
We want to devise a formula for a fame/infamy rating in percentage (the percentage of people who have heard of a PCs exploits) based on charisma, the mission alignment (good/evil), witnesses (if I kill him when no one is watching...) and who else the mission involves (saving the life of a king and a peasant have different effects).
PCs can be anything - harder PCs can be put under more experienced DM's if you dont want to run them, so if a player wants to be a Half Troll/Pixie Vampire Werewolf Lord, he can be. Of course he has to be able to explain how he got the way he is in a story that could actually be believed. That alone could make a player infamous/famous.
SEND IN YOUR IDEAS ABOUT THIS!
What do you want in Aleral?
Send city maps, ideas for kingdoms, history, guilds (members/how they work), cults, gods, interesting NPCs, fantasy poems that can be sung by bards, rulers, political scandals, creatures, cosmology (I'm throwing out the cosmology chapter in the DMG I hate it - all of it), rules errata (I have ideas for sundering body parts - nothing more annoying than fighting a powerful creature that hacks your arms off!!) - and whatever else that you want to build in to Aleral.