What the game needs is a wiki...
I agree with both of you. The game needs a little injection in the arm to make it feel more like a role playing game. It could also do with a wiki.
The role playing boost should be fairly easy to do. Probably best to make these optional rules provided at a future release, but with these I would certainly try tackling the first four adventures again, so replay value of previous Rise of The Rune Lords products would go up. Plus would give us RRL veterans a new challenge as we face the next series of adventures Here are my recommendations.
1). Creat a scenario end card. One side with the victory text to read that inspires the adventurers with the impact of their success on the town, or whoever hired them and that leads you into the next scenario. It can also add some context into the reward they received for their success. E.g. The town is so grateful the town marshal opens up their world famous armory and allows each adventurer to pick a weapon from 10 random weapons drawn from the box. On the other side of the card provide the end text again for what happens if you fail and the impact on the scenario, E.g the town leaders are so dismayed by your failure they insist you must prove your worth by completing Scenario Z before you try again to defeat the scenario that you failed. Additionally, the town is concerned with your lack of prowess their support of you and your party is no longer what it was; each character must Banish one ally, and the party must choose now to either attempt it again ignoring the town leaders (must now banish an additional ally) or you can complete scenario Z and Try the failed scenario again.
2). Give the players options for how they try and resolve the adventure path. Recommend the first scenario. Always be a must do first scenario to set the conditions for the new path. Tying this into the end scenario card described above, could look something like this; if you defeat villain Captain X (first scenario. Of new adventure path), you can either choose scenarios BCD or CDE and here is your reward, weapon, skill feat, or card feat, etc.,. On the other side of the card provide the end text for a failed scenario and the impact on the scenario, Since you did not defeat Villain Captain X, each character must Banish one ally and you can either attempt it again (banish another ally) or complete scenario Z and must follow path ZBCD. No options if you fail. The party can either follow the instructions of the town leaders and do Z or try and get their options back, or do The original scenario again skipping Z but losing an ally. I think providing a method for the adventure party to have to make a decision between scenarios helps add some of the social interaction for my group.
3) Add a sense of geographical distance and dimension between locations: the locations are key component of building the sense of an RPG world. My group we always says that the first time someone moves to one of the locations they have to read the location card text both sides; the closed side has the fluf text, and the open side hasthe game text. We also use the travel rules which I have described in detail on other forum posts. Basically, for 5 or fewer locations we lay them out in a straight line and the party all start at the left most location and we have to travel to the other locations. Traveling requires a D6 roll and if you roll the distance or less on the D6 you must fight a random monster and either defeat it or evade it to complete your move. For 6 or more locations we set them up in a circle. Distance between location is determined by the number of locations In between where you are and where you want to go. So a jump,of one location to the very next is a distance of 1, two locations is a distance of 2, etc.,.
4). Create the mechanics to build your own character. I think the creators of this game made the right call to have pre-created characters and did an excellent job creating this game so anyone could jump right in and begin playing without a bunch of preset up work. However, I really miss being able to create my own character. I miss building him or her and then trying the character out against the adventure. I don't think this would be to difficult to create. Perhaps establish a point system where we have a certain amount to spend on skill dice, skill traits (melee, divine, etc.,.) and skill bonuses, and powers. For the special powers like Valeros power that let's him recharge a weapon instead of discarding it, we could have a list for each profession (fighter, Mage, cleric, etc.,) and each special power could have a point cost to add to our character. The deck list could be set based on the profession chosen for the character with the option to spend character creation points to upgrade the card list when you first create the character.
Sorry for the long post, but wracking my brain for how to take a great game and give it a little more of an RPG sense to it without over complicating things. We need to keep this game simple and elegant, but I fear without increased RPG/adventure feel the game may get old after awhile.