I was just struck with a thought and I wanted to get your opinions on the idea:
What if there was a miniatures game with a relatively simple system, where the players and GM, over the course of several sessions completed an adventure (more akin to Imperial Assault than D&D, but flavor could of course vary).
However, instead of the traditional system (massive rulebooks and intimidating level-up rules), it's simplified, and based on purchasing cards at level-up that you can use for abilities in combat and out-of-combat. Then, every time your group achieves something important in the story, your group gets to open a little pack of cards or draw from a legacy deck or something, and everyone gets to gain new abilities from that pack, some intentional (though a purchasing system), and some not (based on actions they took in previous sessions that earn them "keywords" which have effects for that character later on).
The idea would be to have a really low production cost (coming to $30 retail or so) and produce multiple modules or adventures that players could experience one after another. However, each box would be a one-time-use, to reinforce the idea that decisions are permanent.
Would you be willing to purchase such a system?
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I guess I didn't communicate my idea clearly enough - I want to sell an entire adventure-in-a-box, but not have all of the players know ahead of time (including the DM) what's inside. Instead of having players planning out their character progressions and loadouts, I want there to be some element of surprise as a wizard suddenly erupts with a magical power that he didn't know he had, or the fighter suddenly uses a new fighting move he just made up, and it worked!
The box would come with packs of cards already inside it, which become available as quest objectives are completed, and which could be mixed and matched at the players' leisure. Perhaps some packs would instruct the players to only look at card backs, which have some description that they would choose, then they flip over the cards and get to use those, leaving out the rest, so those options are no longer available (or maybe they are at future purchase points... I dunno).
To make the game replayable, you could put a little card divider insert into the box to keep them in little packs of 10-15 (like Dominion's box divider does), and when a GM downloads a new adventure (or writes their own) they could put the cards into packs of their choosing (or which fit the published adventure), allowing them to replay the game with a new progression and an equal lack of knowledge of what the future holds.
Does that explain my idea better?