Does anybody else get unreasonably annoyed at the vast majority of rpg games that are feudal societys on a surface level but are actually capitalist societys under a thin vineer. I was trying to play pillars of eternity but became incredibly annoyed at the frist quest of the game revolving around a mill which is in a lord’s domain but is privately owned and operated and which the townsfolk sell their grain to in exchange for currency (to later buy back with the same currency). I had to put the game down right there.
I think a lot of the time it’s an outgrowth from developers feeling the need to have a commonly circulated currency. Although the answer in my opinion isn’t to faithfully recreate feudalism but to create a unique social formation for the conditions of the world, I’ve always loved the eberron campaign setting for that reason.
You play as Randian Ubermensch. But the world you’re playing in obeys very different laws. D&D is much more akin to a Calvinist Theocracy, in which the PCs are the Elect and are the prime movers of the setting. Only the PCs get to climb the social ladder. Everyone else is fixed in place, waiting for the PCs to move them - either by violently deposing or benevolently uplifting - those they interact with.
That’s less a problem with D&D than it is with myopic storytelling. Consider any heroic epic - from Homeric Poetry to the new Matrix movie. The only people who really change are the featured characters. Everyone else either falls away or is forcibly molded by the main cast.
