Fimbul
"The only way I see this working is an exporter for node.js that skips drawing"
I agree. A game world running at node.js server without render is good enough. Other things could be done by 3'rd plugin.
Although node.js might not be fast enough, or have enough library supporting, it is the best choice that it could combine with C2 editor (layout editor + event sheet + plugin system) to create serve without programming (uh, it's still need 3'rd plugins).