Personally I think If Bethesda really wants you to "live another life in another world" they should consider the life of the commoner to at least be functiunaly played. A good mod idea can actually be a few things to facilitate to the lives of the common folk. A few mundane quests and such (annoying neighbors,a slap dash race to a shelter while the town is under attack, "raising" property values of the neighborhood, getting back at the guy who keeps kocking over your boxes, ect.) obviously those ideas didn't sound too good... but thats what we have modders for. An elaborate king of the hill-esque neighborhood heirarchy might also be sort of interesting......
I think this would be nice... as long as we don't go overboard... But there could be some interesting mini-quest options.
Like, maybe if you're a smith, and your village/town gets attacked by hostile demon-things, you could try and supply and fix as much weapons to the warriors/guards as you can within a certain time-limit. Er, just a weird example, but it would make a nice filler mini-game.