Very interesting and good. I had always wandered whether indeed there were regular 'wave hello as you pass' arms dealers in medieval Europe. Of course, buying a sword and a suit of armor won't make you a one-man army like it could in in TES or a late-game jrpg town, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to police such a thing.

Well the depiction is an abstraction of reality though. They wouldn't open shop in a town and wait for adventurers obviously. It would probably look more like the local smith fixing up tools being commissionned a few swords for a levy of men. A smith would take any job, so long there is gold involved. Their smithery would probably depend on how often they made weapons vs actual tools, and obviously, it would be easier to field a military axe than a sword as it was closer to tools. But yeah, I would assume it worked roughly that way (I haven't read extensively on the matter though)

However, what might be interesting is if fantasy elements were looked at from a speculative/science fiction standpoint rather than scifi (basically fantasy with sciency stuff; pop-culture science fiction). A world with powerful magic, weapons, and even the possibility of people becoming physically powerful in a long-time medieval Europe world? Has any writer actually delved into that (even if tongue in cheek)? Probably would be too restricting to have fun game mechanics but still.

I don't know about modern, but the viewpoint of medieval writers was very tainted by their strong belief in christianity. To them, immortality would've been a seen you should not even think of without saying 10 hail mary right afterwards.

But I think you're on to something for a topic though, from the narrative standpoint, about perhaps not the lack of realism, but the absence of logic in most jRPGs. We obviously don't want to know the how, as it would probably bore the shit out of us out of disbelief and cheesiness, but we may want to see the why or how this affects the daily life of commoners... for example, seeing a childmage casting water1 on their plants, because that's a logical application of such a powerful gift that makes sense with its associated beliefs, etc.

I think you're touching on the nature of politics here.
I have to agree, that several government instances in rpgs are acting oddly.
In real world...
... you wouldn't let the villagers handle it, with no regard to their methods etc, promising your daughter's hand unless the hero was norotiously more efficient than, say, your personal praetorian guards!

But this never quite bugged me as this is the story of the characters, and its the reason you're picking this particular story: because it is an exception worth mentionning.

Hey guys, Im a masters student working on a thesis to develop a list of guidelines for RPG game developers. Check out this post if you're interested.
Thanks
http://www.gamedev.n...gs-good-or-bad/