Admittedly the thought I had was letting players run free in the settings given, then loot would be dealt with after the exploration is all said and done—like, players could set up an exploration thread and do their thing, and when AC came afterwards the prizes obtained from all of the explorations put there would be RNG'd and given. The heavy mod involvement would come with more important expeditions (ones that end up having new discoveries or important findings), NPC appearances, or random drop-ins (of enemies, of shiny things, of disaster, whatever), but not every single exploration or item found would have to be so big-name as to require constant mod monitoring.

Of course, that idea's not final, and in need of more shaping regardless—there are a lot of ways to get this kind of system going.