Game development on rails

Something I've been thinking about is what kind of game would make sense as a rails web app. I have this little engine that I was working on in ruby called alchemy, it's focused on adventure and synthesis in a mutable environment (currently no plans for any kind of combat). There is a persistent world that is accessed using DRB from the client. I don't know enough about rails to know how it handles session state and what would be the best way to back-end it to a game server.

I am trying to determine what the right user interface for this game would be. Currently I'm leaning towards an abstract, hex based board that is implemented using javascript. I haven't really had much experience in client side javascript but seeing what people are doing with ajax these days makes me wonder what kind of interactive environment one could build with these technologies. First step would be to produce a proof of concept and see what kinds of ideas that sparks.

Writing this stuff in ruby is a blast.

The little game world is fun to play in so far I can do the following:
Farming: Fish, wood, metals, plants
Crafting: No recipe parsing yet just old shoes are created for any recipe
Movement: Move to any linked location
Respawn: Materials are respawned at variable rates
Skills: Object actions are tied to skills, you level the skill based on difficulty
Inventory: All items can be stored in inventory and then added to a recipe and crafted

At some point combat would probably be a requirement but I'm so bored with combat systems anyways that it's just fun to play with harvesting, crafting and exploration.

Anyways, this is all just mental gymnstics.. Here's a little sample log of fishing in the opening instance:


>> Welcome proj
>> Got 5 Potions
>> Got 2 Pickaxes
>> Got 2 Axes
>> Got 1 RabbitsFoots
>> Got 1 BasicFishingRods
/mats
>> Executing command: 'mats' nargs: 0
>> Material: Stream 2/10
>> Material: Stream 2/10
>> Material: Stream 2/10
>> Material: Lake 2/10
>> Material: Stream 2/10
/use BasicFishingRod
>> Executing command: 'use' nargs: 1
>> Use requires target, please /target 'thing-name' or 'self'
/target Lake
>> Executing command: 'target' nargs: 1
>> Targeted harvest location for material: # 2 resources left
/use BasicFishingRod
>> Executing command: 'use' nargs: 1
>> Got one RainbowTrout
/use BasicFishingRod
>> Executing command: 'use' nargs: 1
>> Got one RainbowTrout
/target Stream
>> Executing command: 'target' nargs: 1
>> Targeted harvest location for material: # 3 resources left
/use BasicFishingRod
>> Executing command: 'use' nargs: 1
>> Failed skill test for 'fishing' (level: 1) on Stream (difficulty: 15)