Imagine this. You are walking around in a pretty desolate part of the world and come across a book on the ground so you decide to read it. You find out that it is the diary of a perished adventerer and find out what he was doing before he died. This leads on to a quest to complete what he was trying to do and maybe on to more quests as you unravel a long quest line.
This would be a pretty cool means to get quests because books would be so hard to find out in the middle of nowhere and only the people who are most keen on finding out everything about the game world will spend the time required to find quests such as this.
Also I love the way books are handled in the Elder Scrolls games. You can just walk into a building and read the books on the bookshelves and find out more about the world by doing so. Occasionally you find a book that increases your power as well which rewards those who take the time to read all the books. I think that would be a really cool addition to the game and would add so much depth to the game play.
I recall a neat quest type thing that revolved around the Ishva Mal. I remember it so succintly because I was a caster with High int, and the monsters barking started to have wierd letters, like when I used to hear "GRRRRK!, I would then hear "GRRAK" then after more weeks, exping, hunting in that area, "BARK! DIE!" and I found out I could read gnoll! I learned gnoll! and those odd parchements of gibberish suddenly had lore, and understandable words.
that was pretty neat.
yeah, i miss learning the language of the mobs you were killing, or just sitting with a friend and speaking a language until you could understand it. Amazing how right Everquest got a lot of things right out of the gate.