In between adventures, players are encouraged to bring their characters back to town and then have them interact with the townsfolk to earn money and improve gameplay. The town is a place where adventurers can cool down, recuperate, and count their cash. But, a better option than paying rent to a tavern owner would be to have the characters living in a place of their own -- a house, hideout, or even start a brand new town.
Hideouts
Unfortunately, due to the pervasive use of this word in old western movies, you may be thinking of a hideout as some old beat up shack in the back of town where the bad guys "hold up". For our purposes, the hideout is simply any dwelling owned by the adventurers that can be upgraded to improve their skills.
Upgrades
Homesteads come in different forms. Some are as simple as a house on a road and others require more care and construction -- like a space ship. If your world isn't a world at all, having your crew moving about the cosmos in their own ship is great fun but will require them to have upgradeable rooms such as an engine room or a communications console. Even if your adventurers only have a small hovel in the poor part of town, they may need to upgrade their hideout as well by adding hidden rooms where they can stash their treasure.
Crew
In addition to a place to call home, you have the opportunity to attract disciples (known collectively as your crew). These NPCs are NOT adventurers; they are everyday folks who have heard about your heroic exploits and either want to become associated with you just to claim that they were there or possibly share by proxy in your fame, fortune, and reputation. Some may be merchants, some may be servants, some may even have technical jobs that they can do as sailors, however they do not have magical powers and will be of little help to you in battle.
Large-scale Crews
In some kinds of games, your game master may give you the ability to command large-scale crews, armies, or other groups of people. Imagine you're a naval captain and you sail by a group of pirates raiding a small coastal village. You have 95 soldiers and five officers. If you take all 100 guys with you, you'll definitely win the beach battle, but the pirates may find a way to steal your ship. If you only send half your guys, you keep the boats safe but your losses will be significant -- crippling your next mission. The key is to find balance. Leaving twenty behind and hitting the beach with the rest would be the decisive strategy.
Obviously, crews of that size don't all have their own names; they are simply numbers. Over time in these types of games, you'll get recruits who bring your numbers back up to snuff. You may also want to build training centers to replenish your losses.
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