Quote Originally Posted by Heliomance View Post
There's a lot of people going "this is a terrible idea because X, Y and Z". That's not helpful for discussion. Far more useful is "X, Y and Z could be problems, but here's some ideas that could maybe overcome that, what do you think?"
Give them credit where it's due - it's better than the standard internet "This is a terrible idea and you are terrible for even thinking of it".

Eldan's hit upon an interesting plot reason for travelling as part of a convoy, why not extend the idea and have the players as nomads, travelling between cities to peddle their wares? You have room for all sorts of gameplay types, from hunting down dangerous monsters to get raw materials; fighting to protect the convoy from attacks; crafting along the road or at city sites; exploring to find loot; and trading from city to city.

You can enforce the moving mechanic by giving each player a reason to stay only a limited time at a particular city (they have nothing more to sell, or incremental rental prices on the crafting facilities).

Players can form convoys to better travel between cities more safely (ie pickup groups), with better rewards for more of the group that actually make it to the next city in one piece.
As for the setting, you could go historical/fantasy using the Silk Road (ignoring the SRO MMO).

Alternately you could go sci-fi with a variant of Battlestar Galactica (other than the BSG Online game), with a very good reason for the convoy not to hang around. In this one, the players would have a 'mobile' base and deploy out in between jumps to get raw materials for repairs, fight off cylon patrols, etc.
Possibly shard the server so that each shard has a single convoy ship that the human side are responsible for, with the opposing cylons just being a pure pvp mode?