Hi!

I have been thinking about a game like that too, wherein the player takes the role of a guild manager.

Pretty much all my game ideas revolves around the player being put in a position where he pulls the strings in a world where most things are simulated. I do not like it when you as a player in a strategy game have too much direct impact on the performance of your units, like in Total War where you can control the battle (I always sim'ed the battles) or in a football manager game where you get to take direct control of the football game. I do not like it because taking direct control of the games/battles often unbalances the strategy part of the game: You get to win a strategy game even if you suck at the stratey part if only you do well in battles/games. Imo that's bad design.

The problem, though, is that a game might feel too empty, too devoid of player control, if too much of it is sim'ed. The player needs to be able to control the outcome to some extent, and to feel that he's not just an observer.

To make a fantasy guild manager game interesting, I think the following would be great:
- The world should comprise multiple factions with which ypur guild would have a certain reputation that would change based on your actions and random events.
- The guild would benefit from having personnel other than the "heroes", such as diplomats, scouts/spies/trackers and crafters (blacksmiths, enchanters, etc).
- Diplomats should be sent out into the world to build reputation and uncover great quests.
- Scouts/spies/trackers should be sent out into the world to gather intelligence. They could discover quests, but importantly they should gather intelligence on quests to provide information on what the player would need to plan for, what hero(es) would fit the job, what sort of items they should equip, how aggressive they should be, etc.
- Crafters should be trained and used to create powerful items for your adventurers (makes more sense to have specialised personnel do that than have your adventurers moonlight as crafters, such as in traditional RPGs).
- Quests should be varied. Some should be rush-jobs, where you'd have to go at it without scouting, thus increasing risk involved. Others should leave you plenty of time to scout. Some should be simple one-person jobs fit for recruits, whereas others should require you to send a team of elite adventurers.
- You should always be able to "overkill" a quest, to lower risk involved, but seasoned heroes should be disgruntled if they were sent to do minor jobs all the time, and they should gain very little or no exp for such jobs.
- Heroes should have different personalities, and you should be able to give instructions on how aggressively they should pursue a quest. If a very brave and very aggressive warrior type hero were instructed to be very careful, you would risk him ignoring your orders and get himself killed, meaning you would have to be careful deploying such a character.
- Heroes should come in different classes, wherein some classes should be more fit for risky as they should have good escape abilities (as in WoW with rogue's vanish and hunter's disengage and feign death).
- Escaping battle and pulling back from a quest should (in most cases) incur a reputation penalty, so that it might be a good idea to send the guy who will give his life for a quest even if the player risks losing him.
- Guilds should also have young recruits starting out traveling the world doing minor tasks and quests for the factions of the world, slowly gaining exp and building reputation.