My first post.  I figure I'll just jump right in. 
For the past five months I've been reading, making notes, creating maps, writing, dabbling in artwork, and surfing the net for ideas and historical references for my game.  I'm sure many of you have experienced the same excitement I have when you first start going down that road in developing your game world, the rules, and backstory and setting for your game. I am now stuck on an idea that would merge several of my hobbies into one game and this is where I am looking for some feedback from the experts at this forum. Let me explain.
I envision a game that consists primarily of a Role Playing Game set in the French Foreign Legion (FFL) from 1900-1914.  The PC's are hapless souls who, for reasons known only to them and the GM, join the FFL and begin a five year enlistment with this legendary fighting force.  Location is Algeria and Morocco. It is primarily a historical game but I will be very loose with introducing Pulp/Adventure aspects of role play to make it fun.  Because the PC's destiny is pretty much controlled by the Legion there is limited freeplay--meaning the PC's can't wander around from town to town like in a Fantasy RPG.  To address this aspect I've developed a 5 year enlistment timeline that will determine where the PC's will be stationed and what activity their Company will be engaged in on any given day.  All PC's belong to the same squad and they interact mainly with the NPC's in their squad and in the other platoons in the Company.  In order to make this game more interesting I plan on developing dozens of vignettes to insert at various places in the 5-year timeline.  For Example: while the PC's are stationed at a mountain outpost in Spring of year 2 their squad is sent on a patrol to a nearby villiage to seach for smuggled rifles.  The vignette will provide a map, NPC's, bad-guys, clues, descriptions, and GM-only information.  Much shooting happens, maybe an NPC gets killed, the hero's find the weapons and one PC gets awarded the Medal Militaire for exceptional courage.  Two weeks later, another vignette and the PC's are ambushed while on mounted patrol. 
Here is where I got sidetracked. Beacuse of the military nature of this RPG I thought it would be a good idea to develop a rules supplement for a table top wargame involving miniatures. (one of my hobbies!) Also, though much of the Role Playing would occur with paper pencil and maps, when there is fighing I was thinking of including options to use the miniature rules to resolve those conflicts.  I would also provide some basic miniature painting guides, some terrain making tips for making houses, palm trees, etc.  It would be an entirely optional part of the RPG game.
Lastly, after reading more about the history of the battles that took place in this era, I thought about including an old-fashioned cardboard counter wargame for players to play out several Company and Batallion level historical battles.  This would be used when players are actually caught up in some of of the real historical conflicts that occured.  Again, this would be an optional supplement. 

My questions are...

Is this too much to put into one game? 

Is the audience for the RPG the same as those that would paint miniatures and construct table top terrain?

Is there anyone still left who plays cardboard counter wargames?

As I work through alot of these ideas and mechanics I can see applying the same approach to other historical settings--the French and Indian War, WWII, Fudal England, Napoleon in Spain, etc.

Hello Pivo
My head cartographer Angelo would love your game.  I think it is a pretty cool idea.  I Know a few gamers that really like historic RPG's.
For the first question

IS THIS TOO MUCH TO PUT INTO ONE GAME
if you have a web site you could add extra maps and the mini painting info on it
or just leave it in the book.  Also you could add a little of each in the book and have a page on a website with free downloadable extras.  Im not an expert but people like when a core book has everything they need to play.  You could also have supplement books for extras if you want to do it that way.

Is THE AUDIENCE FOR THE RPG THE SAME AS THOSE THAT WOULD PAINT MINIATURES AND CONSTRUCT TABEL TOP TERRAIN.
In my experience it is.  My Head writer and his brother love space combat and play Stare Fleet battles and a old Star Wars table top terrain game along with thier Star Wars and Stare Treck games for the space combat part.  I do a little because its fun and a change from other types of RPG's.  I know lots of people still playing battle Tek old and the new version.  And I know a lot of gamers that still love to paint miniatures to this day.

We actually just wrote a book on Miniature combat that even takes account for range, elevation and cover.  We will soon be releasing.

IS THERE ANYONE STILL LEFT WHO PLAYS CARDBOARD COUNTER WAR GAMES?
Im not everyone or know what the mainstream gamers are playing all the time.  But for us at Action Games we still pull out a few of the good old games and have fun a few times a year.  And like I said we like to mesh up Modern, Star Wars, Star Trek with old table top miniature  games because the mechanics for space combat are so much more fun to play with our regular RPG's.

Im not the most knowledgeable of the people here at the Forge, but if you enjoy it.  And your friends enjoy it, then there will be gamers out there that will too.  If you have questions about putting together historical RPG's e-mail me.  I could give you the E-mail address of my Head cartographer Angelo.  He has almost completed a historic game involving 15th century duelists.  And has a good grasp at combining historic info with changing gaming environments.

Best of luck
Airafice

None of those are necessarily impossible, but you shouldf concentrate on building thye RPG as an RPG.  The idead that you play and RPG until you get into a battle, at which point you pull out minis, actually means you;re making an RPG in which you have to stop roleplaying.  There are certainly overlaps on the two interests and some prior examples like Heavy Gear, and they all suffer from thisd problem.  What you need to do is work out how to conduct those battles within the RPG methodology.  RPG does not slide over into mini methodology at all naturally.

Airafice,
Thanks for the comments.  I didn't even think of promoting the miniatures game and the war game via a website.  I think that makes sense.  I intend to focus on the Role Playing Game first and then come up with the other supplements later.  These would come at a later date and be available online when properly play tested and QC'd.
I'm just at a point where I thought it would be a neat idea to pursue the historical role playing game as your primary game but with opportunities for indulging in other hobbies.  And not just for the playing aspect--I think someone who will play this game will be able to enjoy learning about the French Colonial experiences in Algeria and Morocco, the uniforms, the battles, and even the French language to certain extent by playing some wargames.

Contracycle,
I understand what you are saying.  But, when playing D&D I always found it more fun to use miniatures and terrain tiles for a dungeon crawl (the combat sequences?) than graph paper and pencil.  I can role play mini's without a problem and I want to encourage the use of mini's in this game.  So I don't think I would ask the players to stop role playing when we go to a vignette set-up utilizing mini's. The RPG rules will govern that event (kind of like the Boot Hill RPG).
The minitature rules I was thinking about developing would be for larger scale combat events involving upwards of a couple hundred miniatures and some fairly large terrain boards.  I was thinking that a set of mini rules (and a cardboard counter wargame) would allow someone to fully explore some of the history of this period.

An example of the RPG game combat play that I'm trying to create would be the PC's (along with the NPC's in their squad) fighting a series of campaign vignettes (small role play events similiar in scale to clearing a room in a dungeon) one after the other over a series of days.  These can be set up quickly on a table top using miniatures.  For example one game day might include:

1--0700hrs.  Movement to Contact-encounter three enemy scouts at 200m in abandoned farmhouse. Your squad is sent to clear that area and then rejoin advance.
2--1100hrs.  Movement to Contact-orders given to form defensive line; engage enemy mounted force at 700m.  This is a long shot with the Lebel rifle but the GM can talk the PC's through the shoot.  Intent is to volley fire using the long-range sight on the rifle, observe effects and adjust fire for subsequent shots. 
3--1300hrs. Break.  Brew some coffee and grab a quick bite.  Sniper fire interrupts-roll for poss. injury.  PC's get opportunity to make long range shots at observed sniper.
4--1500-1800hrs. March to objective.
5--1900hrs.  Assault farm house and clear any enemy forces.  Prepare defensive position for overnight bivouac.  Roll for enemy

An example of Miniature wargame would indeed have the players stop role playing and set up a larger skirmish that would involve whole units instead of PC/individual play. This wargame would be optional of course.

Sorry for the long post.

Man i sure do love Boot Hill.  That was a great old west game.

And why not doing it wider?

I think there is no setting covering the beginning of XXth century, before World War.

I loved Corto Maltes comics when I was a child.

But, from my point of view, pulp is not the the right mood... that period had some melancholic flavour, the feeling of something that is ending, the world that changes and won't go back, every event leading slowly to war. And people that know their time is ending enjoying every last moment before war begins and XXth century starts.

And, if I'm not wrong, no RPG dealt with it until now. Why to limit to Legion and North Africa? Europe and the Ottoman Empire that time have a lot to offer...

I agree with what you are saying--that many people knew, or felt that war with Germany was inevitable.  The Germans were indeed meddling in Morocco at this time and the Ottomans certainly still had some influence with the tribes in the Sahara and parts of Algeria.  And everyone hated the British.  Lots or material there.  Wars were actually between Italy and Turkey and in the Balkans. 
The period I'm thinking (that you are thinking) about is the French "Belle Époque" which lasted from before 1900 until war broke out in 1914.  A heyday for writers and artists in Paris, travel, and industrial and scientific advancement.  I actually chose the period from 1909-1914 for my RPG because it allowed for more technology to be introduced into the game--cars, planes, grenades, radio, but did not cross into the Great War.  (My error in selecting this period was that the FFL uniform was changing from the Beau Geste greatcoat to the khaki tropical uniform with pith helmet--but that is a side note for war gamers). 
I can certainly broaden this scope.  There is plenty to work with. 

Yeap. A lot of things happened. End of British empire, end of Ottoman empire (the closest thing to thousand and one nights in modern world), end of colonialism, man reaching poles, last virgin territory, end of Tsarist Russia, end of Prusia and the beginning of Germany.

And Legion, last crazy guys in middle of nowhere before armies lose definitely this sense of adventure...

I would choose an scope 1900-1918. Playing some guys with fake identities in the Legion Etrangere the first five years of the scope. After that giving them a life, a wife, children a bussiness (a kind of winter's phase the way Pendragon does?). And sometimes, all along these years, they are required and story carries them to Istambul, balkans, Germany, Paris, North Africa, Sarajevo, 1905 Revolution... and players discovering secrets behind every fake indentity (they don't need to know at the beginning, even playing the character).

And of course, World War wipes everything out.

Just ideas.