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One of the defining aspects of a medieval society is a generally imbalanced social order (often in the form/as a result of feudalism), but games never seem to get this right. You mostly see the nicest quarters of town, with commoners' residences only serving as a half-assed wallpaper on the horizon. On the occasion you do see a less desirable part of town, it's always the criminal underworld. You never see acres of farmland in the hinterlands of cities, presumably because developers want to fit in more wilderness content. But it begs the question, where does the food come from? Is there a magical source of food in this setting that has only a few significantly sized farms over the whole thing? Where are the commoners whose labor supports the social system that our characters seem to benefit from? Are the craftsmen really the lowest class in the IG society, despite artisans being fairly well off relatively speaking in the Middle Ages? Taking it a step further, what about lumber and stone? Which logging yards (deforestation is a historical problem, not just a current one) and quarries do they come from? while the temptation is for developers to create a pretty, unadulterated map with an artificial distinction between settlement and wilderness, that comes at a cost. Am I really the only one tired of seeing patently unsustainable social and economic systems in RPGs? Bring on the peasants and the (medieval analog of) suburbs! How convincing is a medieval fantasy setting with early modern era technology but a dark ages level of development? Perhaps this is a successor to my real estate thread.
