Van, I've had the same Idea. In fact, that's what got me into Game design/programming/3d also! I wrote a basic design document.
Basically(in my version, in my head), you choose a job. Say taxi driver. Then the game all of a sudden turns into "crazy taxi." (dreamcast game)
Choose criminal, your job is too go into buildings, stay there for say 30 seconds, and you'll automatically gain something in your inventory.
Choose Cop, check your radar to see if a criminal is robbing a place, and go shoot him.(or whatever

)
Choose basketball player, play basketball.
Choose b-ball manager, pick up players from the street(Called the hood in the design-doc.

) (Kinda like in FFX where you scout different blitz ball players to play for your team.)
Pizza boy.(Kinda predictable gameplay, much like taxi driver.)
The neat thing is, I made it so that most of the jobs will cancel each other out.(criminal v cop, basketball player v manager, etc.)
Kinda flows everything together efficiently.
-------------------------------
Back on the topic.
Van Mesh looks nice. (lol, that's about all I can say.
A book? I hate book. Book is stupid.