I'd like to be able to give quests TO Adventurers. "I NEEDS ARTIFACTS GO GET ME SOME"

Well generally adventurers are bumbling idiots who die horrible deaths and piss off a ton of mindflayers deep underground causing them to seek vengeance upon all who dwell on the surface!

I think that there should be more than an indirect cost and benefit to having an adventurer friendly nation though.  If you provide a hospitable place for adventurers to resupply, adventure, and eventually settle down, assuming they survive (bringing all that sweet, sweet loot with them), there should be some pretty direct consequences from that.

First off, adventurers would come to your lands more than the neighboring lord (who happens to kill adventurers for the fun of it).  They should buy from your shops (bringing you a bit of tax revenue, and providing them with better equipment), stay at your pubs (where you should be able to offer jobs to them, or have them take jobs from others), and eventually ask for a nice little plot of land within your territory to settle down (where they can build a residence, which would depend on the type of adventurer they are for what type of residence they build and what can happen there).

But what is more, within your territory they should be seeking out places to adventure, and getting rid of problems for you (if they like you).  However, if they are a more nefarious type of adventurer, they should be seeking to cause you problems.  Example, one enterprising young "adventurer" might decide that raiding your caravans is a useful hobby, prompting you to have to assign heavier guards to the caravan or hire more friendly characters to hunt him down.

That leads me to point number three.  Right now the character recruitment system is pretty inflexible and impersonal.  While I think this will get better as the betas go on, I would like to see two ways of interacting with characters, only one of which is semi-modelled now.  First, you can hire them directly (as we do now), they will charge a salary (based on their level), and you get complete control over them.   These will be your "enforcers," state adventurers, state merchants, thinkers, administrators, ect.  They will be costly, and will get more expensive as time goes on and they get better at what they do.  Then, there are your friendly adventurers.  These guys you can hire by job or by time period (guard this caravan or city for X amount of time).  You do not get direct control over them.  You pay them a one time fee, or a small fee up front and a bigger fee at the successful conclusion of their task.  The percentage of the loot they get to keep is the subject of negotiation.  After their task is complete they go on their way.  An advantage of being an adventurer friendly nation is that there are a lot of NPC's who flock to your cities that you can now "subcontract" jobs out to.  The downside is that those same NPC's could be out there stirring up problems and, occasionally, taking direct action against you.

There was an option in Civ4's world creation called "No technology brokering" that essentially worked like this. If you gained a tech off another player / computer player, then you couldn't ever trade it.

...this gave me an idea.

The idea is simple - GalCiv had the Espionage screen. Why can't Elemental have the 'free agents' or 'adventurers' screen? This screen would be directly tied to adventuring research, allowing you to unlock more features by advancing further in the tree. The selling of 'adventuring licenses' could 'register' an adventuring party, giving them a minor-faction-esque background screen. From here, you can get some basic background on what this party has done - more information obtained from requiring more fame for a license.

An example is the adventuring party headed by Joffrey. Joff's group unleashed a demon nearby, and then proceeded to track down the demon and kill it. They go to a city of yours to register for an adventuring license (more stuff to do in your lands, they feel) and are told they have to have done something nifty for a license. Holding up the demon's head gets them in, and your scribes/scholars put that information into the background screen on them for you to see.

If you gave away licenses all willy-nilly, then Joffrey wouldn't have to say he killed the demon. Instead, they'd get a pass, and you would have no idea it was them.

Lower requirements means you start off with much less information regarding an adventuring group, but you get more adventurers combing your lands for treasure and competing with each other. Higher requirements means you start off with more information, possibly even a monetary tribute every so often, but fewer adventurers will come - and those adventurers will probably end up with more influence and power, making them potentially dangerous in times of war.

Now, just having the background is nice and all, and you can follow what one party has done, even put out a bounty on a party that has been reported to you. But there needs to be more than just an info screen, right?

• Assign Task: You can make this a feature in giving a license. You select a party in the screen, click this button, and a few options pop up - scout, destroy, protect, wait, explore, etc. You then choose the rewards - monetary (give resources and gold), itemic (new word? give items and equipment), and reputation (agree to hire adventurers or give them special favors [below])
• Place Bounty: Angry with these fellas? Put a bounty on them, paid out to the first adventurers to take 'em down.
• Adjust Rights: Done globally for your faction, or individually as a reward. This includes the status of a license, whether or not the adventurers can trade in your cities, whether or not the adventurers can use city stuff (IE, enchant their equipment if they have crystals, other stuff that doesn't come to mind)
• Give Reward: Give something to the adventurers. This is done not as adjusting their rights, but as a specific boon. It's different to allow all adventurers to trade in my lands, and just allowing one or two groups to trade. This can be items, weapons, tomes, whatever.

Also on the screen would be the tithe option - whether or not you tax the adventurers for just being in your lands.

Adventurers would have a slider bar based on their power, monetary and political - not combat. Lower power means that they will work more cheaply, and are less of a threat if they turn rogue. Higher power means that they are favored by powerful backers, and will not work for free, if at all.

And in all honesty, if adventurers are just champions conveniently located in groups, it'll take a lot away from the game. I mean, it'd be a blast to meet up with a team of legendary adventurers later in the game...or to just randomly look over the adventuring tab and see, "Hey! They're the fools that sent that HORDE OF DEMONS rampaging through my lands! I WANT THEM DEAD!"