I'm not techy enough to know what Steem would do vs BTC as a game currency. BTC is likely to have some cool & fast payment channel stuff available by the time your game is ready. Keep your options open. Maybe you could integrate Shapeshift from within the game and you could then trade with an 'exchange NPC' or another player's avatar in a virtual marketplace. How cool would that be? Game items should definitely be blockchain tokens like Spells of Genesis is developing.
Maybe Steemit could be used for leaderboards, and as an alternate staging area for groups ready to go adventuring, raiding, etc.?
It all sounds awesome... I've been waiting for a game with real crypto. I'm sure you are aware, don't hold even a single customer satoshi on your servers... don't tempt The Man!
This is great advice and your line of thinking is right along the same lines of what I had in mind (and currently in development). I had been watching spells of genesis and at one point was considering making SP a card-based game, but I wanted a true campaign that people could lose a full night of adventuring into. I like that the Spells game has an element of ephemeral quality to it as an asset outside of their game.
Leaderboard that's steem based, I like that idea, very original and has that community tie in. Wow, I'll need to chew on this a bit as I learn more about Steem/it.
Oh yeah, security is a big must, there shall be two-factor authentication, encryption, and hashing for the game functions. Each game roll is also currently probably fair as well, even though it's not gambling, I want to prove there's no "rigging" involved :D