To get from place to place, you'll need to trek through large areas of wilderness.

this can get dull quick, in any game. you'll want some sort of accelerated time or fast travel.

about the only way its not dull is when there's lots of cool stuff to find everywhere along the way, and you never have to travel too far overall. as long as what's around the next corner is more interesting than whats at the destination, the player will enjoy exploring. as soon as the destination becomes more interesting than getting there, having to spend time in transit becomes a hassle for the player, not fun.

you'll need to decide what kind of combat system you want. find a system / systems you like, and emulate them - IE let them inspire your design.

if your strengths are code and art, you'll need a quest writer, and a sound person. the writer writes the quests. the quests define the graphics and audio content required. you build the engine and make the graphics content, and your audio person does the music and foley work. and then there's voice actors, motion capture actors, etc. depending on how crazy you get.

Just the basic description you give in your OP should be enough guidance for a writer to start on an outline for a campaign of quests.

if by graphics you mean graphics programming and not art, then you'll need an artist to do meshes, textures, and animations. you as coder would build the engine, and the artist would create the art content required by the quests, written by the writer.

Building on what Normal says above, you could take a look at this site's "classifieds" system (see the menu at the top of the page, I believe), and try to find a writer or game designer who's interested in working with you. I imagine that this will be easier if you're willing to offer money, but you may find someone willing to take part without it. It might also be worth keeping an eye out for similar projects that you might join.

I'm also working on an open world fantasy role-playing game.

I decided to keep my map relatively small but packed with things to do. It's four square miles, that's just two miles along each edge which is tiny compared to a lot of AAA titles and similar in size to the first and earliest open world games like GTA III. However it means that filling it with interesting quests can be achieved by a very small team (in my case just me) and there are landscape of tricks you can use to make people take roundabout routes and make the map seem much bigger than it is.

Content can be purchased quite cheap and obtained for free, so far my games art budget is a massive 15 euros...

For more information please feel free to check out my journal links in my signature.

Good luck with your game!

To get from place to place, you'll need to trek through large areas of wilderness.

this can get dull quick, in any game. you'll want some sort of accelerated time or fast travel.

about the only way its not dull is when there's lots of cool stuff to find everywhere along the way, and you never have to travel too far overall. as long as what's around the next corner is more interesting than whats at the destination, the player will enjoy exploring. as soon as the destination becomes more interesting than getting there, having to spend time in transit becomes a hassle for the player, not fun.

The Pokemon series handles this nicely. You have to travel on foot at the beginning of the game (slow). Very early in the game, however, you get running shoes (slightly faster). Once you get about halfway through the game, you get a bike/skates (fast). Not long after that, you can use Fly (instant travel). I believe The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past has something similar, but it's been a long time since I played that game.

I know I want to make something fairly similar to the Zelda series, but with more of an emphasis on exploration

...

Can you think of any interesting/unique game mechanics for a game of this style? Something that would make you want to play it?

I've always enjoyed the exploration aspect of Zelda games. In adventure games, it's important to include various items for the players to find and discover. The goal of exploration is typically to discover something new. This is one of the main strengths of the Zelda series.

Consider the bow (ice and fire arrows), bombs, boomerang, pegasus boots, roc's cape, ocarina, etc. Each item is acquired at certain parts of the game. This allows players to experiment and discover different ways to use these items to solve various puzzles. There's a certain joy in the "A-HA!" moment that happens when a solution is discovered.

Another interesting point is that placing these items throughout the game world provides a both an incentive and a reward for exploration. The fact that Link does this every time he finds a new item is quite satisfying (who doesn't love to hear that jingle?).

and there are landscape of tricks you can use to make people take roundabout routes and make the map seem much bigger than it is.

have to be careful with those. Skyrim uses that a lot. Can't go directly form anywhere to anywhere 'cause of the damn mountains! have to follow the stupid little paths, back and forth, back and forth, rat in a maze BS. making the world harder to traverse and thus take longer to cross doesn't make it seem bigger, it makes it more frustrating.

"the industry" and participation in it often assumes certain validations. questioning those may not be healthy for industry participation but may be healthy otherwise.. ymmv.

for instance.. "what is fun and ought it be done?" and "does fun actually exist?" are implicit parts of my creative process, but not for those who assume that fun certainly exists and generate income by tailoring towards this definate objective.

..what i am suggesting is that the question you have may be because you are currently integrating "game making" into your life, and life is a wider set of values than those presented by an industry. now you can make a game.. but what exactly is fun? (others have answered this, and i maintain that "fun is an activity one is encouraged to participate in without a definate idea of the objective," eg. the manner in which children are encouraged to participate in "fun" activities to develop skills, keep them out of their parents hair or whatever).

as an "old" person easilier accustomed to putting on a year or two than in youth, i often keep a project in my thoughts for a few years and see how the ideas develop - incidental life events can easily translate to fantasy settings to inspire storytelling devices/plots. actually, it's easier to find a linear progression through related themes (a linear progression is at least some form of creative aggregation) when you've got a lifetime behind you.. one can pull from various experiences and feel "confident" about them because they are real... otoh if you are young, creative ideas constantly have to be weighed against the idea you have of what your peers will expect, as that may be your working model of "what's good enough".

ultimately, are the ideas good enough for a game? here again, life experience can jade.. as one sees new releases as less appealing and more often hackneyed assemblages created for capital gains or other rudimentary thoughts. it's "harder to answer" because at my age i wonder next, is a game good enough for me? ...... when i was young, all the tech was new, but later in life it's more of the same.. so very often, when i get these ideas for creating a fantasy world, i decide instead, to put the energy into living my real life.

it's like i have a friend on facebook from anniston.. every post about game development he says "call the cops.." because i guess the anniston idea of a video game is getting the cops to chase you...

if you get away, it's probably healthier than carpal tunnel :)

you get one shot for every moment at making things or not making things, and our choices define who we get to be. i spent a bit of time reading about what makes games or stories compelling but was pretty happy with my own ideas about it. one of my favourite game ideas is "octodad," but i seriously can't see anyone sitting down and cooking up an idea like that.. i can only see it being birthed in the hot forges of semantic motion.. ideas flying around and for an instant two things click together and you realise it's exactly right.. (this idea expressed in a fritz leiber short with an extremely silly name) or basically i mean come on wine? ale? culturally, who writes this stuff, "hempen rope".