I just got the idea of a fantasy X-COM-like (or possibly more like the Stargate tv series) game.
The basic idea is that you would have an adventuring company, and they would send out teams of adventurers on various missions. The players would play the adventurers, who would switch out from mission to mission either because different ones are needed for their particular skillset or the main team was returning/recovering from the last mission.
Also there would be tomes/relics/artifacts/whatever that the teams would bring back from their missions for the company's scholars and mages to study, and I'm thinking that. like in Stargate, sometimes they need to bring some of these brainy guys along to study something in person (though usually they'll try to only bring them along to places they've mostly cleared). And the teams might occasionally encounter some new races and groups from whom they might recruit new members or resupply or do trade with. And there may be other advantages to exploring, like finding new valuable mineral deposits or farmland or other things that I can't think of myself.
But venturing into new lands can be dangerous, since even a veteran can fall to misfortune (it might be a good idea to have some rookie NPCs along for people to play in case someone dies in the middle of a mission). It's a good idea to send out scouts and gather information about the surrounding area from the locals, not to mention digging up as many legends and as much lore as possible, especially before heading into a dungeon. It's also a good idea to just generally play it safe, as even a previously cleared dungeon might have a few monsters still wanding about or some previously unseen traps or magical whatsits.
Unfortunately, I've sort of given up on running forum games for now and am trying to psyche myself up to get an online game started, plus I can't write even the likely minimal systems needed to run this game, but if anyone wants to use this idea in any way, feel free to go wild with it.