Wildfolk Update
This pseudo update serves as a replacement/overhaul of villagers. The primary goal is to make interacting with "villagers", known now as wildfolk, significantly less of a chore and hopefully more fun.
Wildfolk
Wildfolk are humanoid animals that completely replace villagers in the overworld. Wildfolk come in multiple different species depending on the biome their village generates in.
Blubberfolk - Cold non-mountainous biomes like snowy plains or taigas, based on walruses
Merfolk - Ocean or swamp biomes, based on fish
Featherfolk - Temperate biomes like forests and plains, based on birds
Slitherfolk - Hot biomes like deserts and badlands, based on snakes
Mountainfolk - Mountains, based on alpacas and rams
Cavefolk - Very rarely underground, based on beetles
Trading
Wildfolk trade by being thrown emeralds, like throwing gold to piglins, which they will exchange for items based on their job. For example a farmer would give the player a large bunch of crops when given an emerald.
Wildfolk do not accept anything other than emeralds, which means that emeralds are far more rare as they can't be obtained from trades like they can in vanilla.
Jobs
Wildfolk can have jobs just like vanilla villagers, with their job being determined by a job block. In the list below the job block is put in parenthesis next to the jobs name, and the bullet point below it is what a wildfolk can give in exchange for an emerald.
Farmer (Composter)
Crops; only way to obtain your first corn, which can then be planted and grown by the player.
Butcher (Smoker)
Raw and cooked meat, leather and feathers.
Cartographer (Cartography Table)
Maps to structures and biomes. Tries not to provide the same map twice.
Cleric (Brewing Stand)
Golden apples, or potions.
Fletcher (Fletching Table)
Tipped arrows or more rarely enchanted crossbows and bows.
Librarian (Lectern)
Enchanted books and bookshelves.
Mason (Stonecutter)
Stones; like normal stone, diorite, or terracotta.
Lumberjack (Woodcutter)
Logs. Usually of local types but more rarely of farther biomes.
Tailor (Loom)
Colored wool.
Blacksmith (Anvil)
Iron, coal, copper, and more rarely enchanted iron equipment.
Engineer (Autocrafter)
Redstone, redstone components, and mechanical brains.
The wandering trader is a unique wildfolk job that is not assigned by a job block. Instead there is a small chance each morning for a wandering trader to spawn, with its species being random instead of based on the biome they spawn in. At night, right around when the player is able to sleep, wandering traders will despawn.
Wandering traders provide items from their travels when given emeralds. These items include saplings and logs from biomes outside the current biome, mob crates of various mobs, flowers from other biomes, and some hard to get blocks like coral, sea lanterns, and froglights. They have a much wider trading pool than other jobs making trading with them much more random.
Zombiefication
The chance for wildfolk to become a zombie wildfolk when killed by a zombie can be modified using a gamerule. Whether or not wildfolk are even targeted by zombies can also be disabled or re-enabled with a gamerule.
When a zombified wildfolk is cured, they will show their appreciation by giving the player an emerald. They will not provide another emerald for being re-zombified and re-cured unless they have spent a minimum amount of time as a villager before becoming a zombie again.
Design Goals
Vanilla villagers have a problem in that they make getting certain resources much easier as long as you are willing to engage is lengthy and tedious trading processes, essentially encouraging boring gameplay. Needing to trade large amounts of sticks in order to get a mending book for instance just isn't really fun despite being the most efficient way to do so.
Wildfolk instead make trades less common due to emeralds being harder to get but more substantial as each emerald gives a large chunk of materials. In a sense each emerald is like a goodie bag with loot that can be influenced by choosing which wildfolk job you want to trade with.
This encourages more of a gameplay style where instead of trying to outright replace collecting certain types of items by trying to mass produce emeralds like vanilla encourages, instead you will find emeralds naturally in your time playing and can choose to trade them in order to get items you might need more of at the moment or don't enjoy getting.