I do a mix of both whenever I GM a fight, and this sounds interesting, but I've only seen a let's play of Paper Mario: TTYD, which I assume you're basing this around. If the Paper Mario wiki has enough detailed information about attacks, enemies and so on I could for sure do the battles. I'd need to do my research in the way PM: TTYD progressed story wise if you wanted something parallel to that.
There's also the issue that I tend to miss a lot of early forum activity due to sleeping and other things.