With IF on the brain again I've been trying to think of something simple and fun I could do to re-familiarize myself with the developer, and I realize after all this time I STILL just want to make Walk Around My Incredibly Detailed Fantasy World and Look At Things and Talk to People: The Game.

If the gameplay itself was say, just a matter of finding collections of objects via talking to NPCs and paying attention while exploring, or selling goods to make X amount of cash, would that be enough to hold anyone's interest? (Kind of laid back experience of the Shire meeting Animal Crossing, is the best way I can explain it...)
Or does anyone have any examples they can think of that remove the usual puzzle focus and still leave a satisfying or at least moderately entertaining game behind?
Another possibility I've considered would be a sort of CYOA-IF hybrid with locations to explore interspersed with choice-based segments to move the actual plot along.