I know you can free-roam before resuming the missions, but it's not really the same as you still get attacked a lot while wandering about.
I'm talking about just allowing the Fantasy mode to have more than one zone, so you could choose Orc village, Wrangler space ship or whatever as a setting and then enter it. Possibly with the ability to warp between them using consoles or something (to avoid having to go back to the menu all the time).