Re: Fallout 3 PbP idea
Give everything a reason why it's evolved the way it has.
Easy example was the ants. But let's say perhaps that your choices at the end of the game have caused most of the species to evolve again in these weird ways. That's acceptable enough (for our purposes).
I doubt most of the raiders could reprogram the robots to do these kinds of things. However, there are many alternate reasons that robots could be reprogrammed for a variety of reasons. Look at the big "superhero" showdown that was taking place
Leveling up skill points should take place as it did in the game. Let people earn levels then decide how to spend their points.
But in addition, we should put skill caps on each ability. This way someone doesn't randomly decide that getting 100% small guns skill at level 5 is a good idea to never lose.
Books should be extremely, extremely rare. We don't want people to gain too many skills too quickly since this kind of RP somewhat relies on everyone being around the same strength. Besides that, the entire reason that the book idea worked in the game was you're the only one reading it. (Consider each new book you find as a new volume of it) So you're the only one who can improve off of it. If we started finding books in an RP like this, we could pass the books around to each other and all gain points.
A better choice than skill books may be to give out special new equipment to adjust stats. Maybe a laser sight you could attach to your gun to give you bonuses. Or you find a special glue for repairing better (hence only one person can use it or it gets used up!). An item found then can only be used by the one person who found it, but if the person is defeated and drops their gear (or gets their thing stolen, or outright sells it, etc, etc.) then the next owner gets to keep it and get its bonuses.
Most of these little things can be resolved and balanced out when we discuss the system balancing.