https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saAoTPXcPSg

Wow. The memories. Best. Game. Ever. for a long time for me. It remained my all time favorite until Gothic (barely) topped it. I used to buy the practice Lutes and would have each person in my party practice every single night before I camped. It paid off later in the game when I remember one specific time that I was totally broke and in a bit of bind and made some good coin playing in a tavern.

I like the idea of an adventurer having a trade to fall back on when there's no goblins to slay. Fable 2 & 3 had smithing, barding, and pie making, but they're presented like busywork and not much fun to actually perform. Fallout: New Vegas has a lot of gambling, including it's own card game which I've never been able to figure out.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Quite a few of them are games I actually have on GOG but haven't got around to playing yet, so that's definitely bumped them up the priority list.

In UnderRail, you can fish!

Dwarf Fortress allows you in adventure mode to go about the land as a bard and perform bardic acts!

XD For some reason, this is the coolest sounding thing I have ever heard.

Realms of Arkania is an excellent series.

Don't most space sims let you do trading (Not even necessarily smuggling, if you don't want to) to progress the game?

Also, in Morrowind, while jut won't progress the plot much (then again, who plays a TES game for the main plot?), I find it very satisfying to just roam the land, scavenge shipwrecks, raid tombs, gather alchemy ingredients and participate in the mini stories you find just exploring.

Well, in Gothic 2 there's several careers (three I think) either one of which you actually needed to do in order to advance the plot (a job was a requirement for becoming a citizen and being a citizen was required to get into the upper town). From what I recall the jobs are hunter, blacksmith and alchemist and all of them have non-combat skills related to them that you can develop just like the combat skills (although skinning animals obviously requires you to kill them first). I think only in the expansion pack they introduced an alternate route that allows you to reach the upper town without having to get a job first.

What's also quite interesting is Wurm Online, an MMORPG that actually pretty much focuses on non-combat careers. Most activities are about crafting and building. I played it for a while and enjoyed it a lot. From what I recall Notch actually worked on this game before creating Minecraft. There's also some weird version of this game titled Wurm Unlimited on Steam (it was included in some Humble Bundle rather recently) that allows you to host your own servers but apparently something's pretty wrong with it judging by the user reviews.

Oh yeah, and in Fable 2 there's also some job system that allows you to make a lot of money through minigames where you make swords, cut wood and whatnot and you do get better at these jobs by doing them frequently, making more and more money per sword etc.. But frankly doing these jobs is pretty boring. Don't know about Fable 3.
Well, the sandbox ones, yes. In Freelancer the collective value of your "bank account", ship and cargo actually serves as experience points and is what you have to get up in order to unlock story missions.

Combine with satanism for Bardanic Acts!

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44359

a nice mod for morrowind to play immersively as a real bard, earning your keep thru singing/entertaining

oh, and in Lord of the Rings Online, their bard class is a battle class, but many role play it and it works pretty good, they sing in bands, put on performances for other players in the commons, make their own music, its a large community there, its one of the better bard classes in mmos ive seen as far as feeling like a real bard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay03kjxZ-wE