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My 3.x character was a Bard, and I wrote up song notes from his first adventure.  The Ballad of the Emerald Princess is an hour-long tale about the salvage of a shipwreck.  Several variants exist; one is a paeon to NG alignment, one discourses on the virtues of a sailor's life; another is a (rather obvious) morality tale; his personal favorite has low-level bardic spells - the equivalent of light, ghost sound, prestidigitation - written into the performance for enhancement value.

Rough plot:  The Emerald Princess is heading home after a profitable voyage.  The ship encounters a storm on the last night at sea.  Unbeknownst to the others, the Executive Officer has hatched a plot to run the ship ashore on an island and loot the cargo.  He tries to enact his plot and wrecks the ship on rocks.  The Captain and crew make it to shore and are attacked by their would-be plunderers.  They find a small boat and escape, then make it back to a civilized port.  A salvage effort is undertaken.  A group of adventurers are taken along as extra manpower.  Two adventurers can't get along; they play pranks and practical jokes on each other all through the voyage.  The crew finds their ship and proceed to unload the most valuable cargo.  A wizard tries to use Tenser's Floating Disk as an underwater elevator (no such luck, alas).  The half-elf (me in musical disguise) locates the Captain's cabin and retrieves his equipment / tools, then gives them to their rightful owner.  The half-orc finds the wine jugs.  ALL of them.  (Hey, for him this is the best part of the cargo !)  An evil-aligned character can't swim worth a d*%$ and gets a face full of water.  Another selfish character finds the crates of Leather Armor (which is only good for repair parts).  Another character, NG alignment, finds a few waterproofed barrels full of spices.  It takes all day to remove the valuable cargo from the wreck.  Near sunset, the Executive Officer and some island inhabitants are seen rowing towards the salvage ship, obviously bent on an attack.  The salvagers are able to escape on a fortunate breeze.  At the end of the song, the Captain gives a small sack to the half-elf; it is full of pearls.  You could buy a ship with this reward !  He does ... and hires the Captain and crew to operate it.  (This is a way to make the world right again, for story purposes.)

My 4e character is a half-elf, and when he retires he wants to build an orphanage or similar home for half-breed children (think Redwall) in a country where two races don't get along well but must live in close proximity to each other.  I think this might qualify as a public works project.