IIRC, Toady has confirmed adventurers are somewhat possessed. You can commit atrocities, but you'll notice the tears streaming down your adventurer's face as you do so.
That raises a question. If you play your character in a completely contrary way to your personality then might our adventurer realise he is possessed, leading to the possibility of exorcism or just suicide.
Ideally you'd be able to choose your characters traits, appearance etc eventually, rpg-style, in addition to the option of choosing historical figures with preset traits.
I do not actually think we should actually be able to choose those things directly. That is because a player will not necceserily know the general character and appearance of the civilization that the person he is player, so we could up with people who have a completely different appearance to the other people in their civ, which people may come to regret.
We get presented with a list of historical characters and get to look at their personality, appearance and skills. Alternatively we can choose to play as a random non-historical character and the rejected options are added to the historical list until the complete population of the site is historicised. The create new historical character option would be on the list as one of Number X people and the number keeps going down so long as non-historical characters are left in the site.
Once the number reaches 0 we have to choose someone from the site or choose another site altogether. Therefore there is no Mr.Anachronism fell from the sky as is presently the case, if you want to become part of part of the world then you have to become just that; if you cannot find the right person then you have to look elsewhere, not wave a magic wand to make one.
This feature would also allow us to play as the king of our civ,right?It would be awesome to see an undead attack from the view of the hopeless king OR better yet you could even play as the necromancer itself!
As for the adventurer's family,what if your dad became some sort of mercenary before you were born and you never knew it?This could lead to interesting plot twists.
@:*sneak attacks the bandits leader*Finally I will put an end to this waves of crimes and..........Dad?
Dad:Yes,I am...your father.
@:Nooo!This can't be happening!
Yes you would but once again there is only one king, you do not get the same kind of freedom to decide what kind of character you are going to be if you choose to be king. The idea has potential but at the moment it would not change the game much, so you probably be better off playing some hardened warrior guy. At first we ought to look to the kind of material advantages a king has in the sense of greater access to public help and resources.
Actually we should probably use the same system for all site leaders, they can for instance just command local soldiers to follow them. Civilization leaders simply enjoy the same benefits as local site leaders but in all sites, allowing adventuring kings to travel from site to site and potentially gather up small armies of companions in order to deal with major threats that normal start-up adventurers would wisely avoid.