I’ve noticed a couple of these ideas mentioned in other threads, but I wanted to embellish them a bit and see what people thought. I have described the following system as a relationship based system for interacting with towns. Many of these ideas might be combined with a reputation system that has been mentioned quite often in the forum, or they could exist along side the reputation system as a separate relationship level with a particular town.
This may still be a long way off, but it would be cool if adventurers could integrate themselves into specific towns as an alternative to traveling around and taking random jobs where they find them. Once integrated into a town or community, the adventurer could build buildings, walls and fortifications; establish a home for himself; take a profession in the community; etc.. Perhaps if the adventurer accomplished enough for the village, he could take a position or title of importance, like the mayor, a priest or even the high priest. The adventurer could enlist members of the town and community for specific projects, building walls and fortifications, manufacturing particular weapons and items, trading for particular items that aren’t otherwise available given the town’s resources. Of course, the adventurer could participate in defenses of the town from invaders as well as sieges by the town on other sites.
Once integrated, the mayor and other community members could give the adventurer different tasks depending on the profession the adventurer has adopted. Adventurer priests could talk with specific community members to convert them or go on missions to different sites to spread the faith. Adventurer guards could be sent to defend allied sites, to track and discover hidden adversarial sites, or to carry diplomatic messages to other sites. Adventurer merchants could travel with caravans and negotiate trades with other communities for specific items required at the home site. Adventurer spies could be sent to infiltrate other sites, try to convince people from other sites to migrate to the home sites, assassinate members of rival communities and frame alternative culprits, incite an infiltrated site into war with a third site, and steal items, secrets, plans and technologies for the benefit of his home site.
Eventually the adventurer could even form relationships and friendships with other members of the community into which he has integrated. And if a player gets bored or falls out of the good graces of the community he could pull up stakes and move somewhere else.
Clearly some of these ideas require more village development, resource tracking, etc., but I think they would be fun long term goals that would add another dimension to adventure mode.