Instead of the overland map.....

[Kidder]

Suppose you had maps of different scales and pieces for each scale square; 1M, 10M, 100M, 1KM, 10KM squares for example. At 1KM scale an army would be 1 piece and so would a lone character. At 100M squares the army would become smaller units, and smaller until single NPC.
All indoors is 1M scale. In towns, dungeons, buildings, vessels or vehicles the scale is 1M squares.
A town would be a game piece that resolves down with scale. Towns can be made and destroyed.

With a system like this you can start at the top and fill in downwards on need, saving new detail created.

The pieces can do things automatically, economies/wars furthered, caravans get through or not and towns grow or not, the RPG can be played in the middle of a Civ type game and your character may play part in that.

Jump the scales high enough you could get a space game scaled parsecs down to meters.

Unlike TOME overland map, this would let pieces interact across map squares where capable.