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.
Imo it literally that the writers can’t imagine anything else.
People are so capitalism brained that they can’t conceptualize anything that isn’t basically capitalism. Feudalism is just medieval times capitalism.
What do they serfs do with the grain they grow? Well ofc they sell it would else could they possibly do. Where do they get their grain to eat? Well they buy it at the store duh
Ironically, the Telvanni in Morrowinds are openly based on ancaps and are the most feudalist of any group in eldar scrolls in terms of structure.
The Telvanni do follow the NAP. If you make too much of a nuisance of yourself a wizard will fly along and blow you up. Don’t do anything that will annoy the wizards. There are no other laws.
I always liked that Telvanni architecture didn’t have stairs because everyone who was important could fly and everyone who couldn’t fly wasn’t important. Nothing says “Slave Society” quite as hard as the masters simply levitating out of reach of their slaves.
what in skyrim? the economy seems entirely unthought through, like not enough thought to even default to capitalism
It bugs me too. It’s interesting how you can tell exactly what an author does and doesn’t know based on how they write, and as expected 90% of people writing games don’t really know much about economics so they just plug in things from the modern world and expect it to work.
One defense of the commonly circulated currency thing though is that designing and implementing something more complex would be a lot of work for something that isn’t very fun. I think boiling cash down to gold pieces is fine, but it would be nice if a game world made it explicit that you only deal in gold because you’re constantly traveling and that most people think that that’s a bit strange.
I can kinda agree with the currency thing, The only system I’ve ever seen that works well is having a reputation with a faction that acts a currency with each faction , I also have seen games where your explicitly trading shavings of precious metals themselves and not a currency.
My favorite “currency” is the bullets in Metro, since being able to shoot your money is an interesting piece of worldbuilding and an interesting gameplay choice.
Metro’s bullet currency was such a great idea. It hammers in to your head that the technological mastery of the past is gone and it’s never coming back. All you have to show for the past is shiny brass cartridges that might save your life, either because they can kill a Nazi before he can kill you, or because you can trade them for food and shelter. It’s as far from a fiat currency as you can get. Every military grade bullet is rare and precious entirely because of it’s utility, and the state of the world is such that no one would think of hording ammunition that could go to the rangers that defend the station from mutants and Nazis.
Pillars of Eternity is deliberately set in an early modern-equivalent era, during the world’s dawn of capitalism. It’s not supposed to be strictly feudal. A better object of criticism would be Skyrim.
Your right that Pillars of eternity probably isn’t a particularly good example it just stuck out to me so much because the first actual quest of the game revolves around a moral dilemma that doesn’t make much sense. The currency isn’t as out of place as it would be in a medieval setting but the operation of the mill that way is still very strange.
It’s a lot more obvious in the second game, as it’s almost entirely about feuds between Caribbean-analogue trading companies
The second game is also interesting as the fantasy expy of Polynesians have totally different concepts of ownership and exist into some form of communes but sadly the devs had brainworms and so had to create some parts that didn’t really mesh and also had to include colonial exploitation.
Oh damn that’s an interesting take and not subtle at all, twenty bucks though it goes over plenty of weeb heads though. Still gonna have to give this game a look though haha
