Once you learn how to understand and apply historical materialism and break out of capitalist canards like the myth of barter, it becomes much easier to come up with the things that make societies feel evolving, nuanced, and alive: internal struggles, subcultures and countercultures, political movements, economic bases, social mores and customs. That, plus having a variety of real-world examples to draw from to avoid falling into the trap of capitalist realism.
Lmao on the other hand it has made my lib DMs worldbuilding seem pretty barren. He had a sport of company town with no formal government, but the police still existed. We asked who employed the police, and he said the government. We asked him what government, and he said “the important people pay them.” So far so good if you wanna make a crypto fascist Dystopia, but he didnt. He wanted it to be kind of a fantasy company town with a repressed working class, but he also wanted to have cool wacky frontier type of government that were the good guys, so they couldn’t be repressive. So he imported social and material conditions of the time period around Battle of Blair mountain, but sort of took everything in our modern society for granted. Police, the law, who makes it, why we follow it, why the cops uphold it, that kind of stuff.
We asked him “why does everyone else go along with the police being around?” And he said “its the law” and we asked “what law?” And he said “you know, the law” and we said “no we don’t know, what law? Like the police say they are the police, but on what authority? What is the social contract that makes them be accepted by society if it is not just brutal repression?” And he went “well it’s not repression unless you break the law.”
And we said “BUT WHO MAKES THE LAW AND WHY WOULD WE GO ALONG WITH IT IF WE HAVENT ELECTED THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE LAW OR GOTTEN THE SHIT BEATEN OUT OF US FOR NOT SUBJUGATING OURSELVES?WHY DO PEOPLE ACCEPT THAT THEIR FRIENDS GET KIDNAPPED AND PUT INTO LOCKED ROOMS FOR BREAKING AN AGREEMENT THEY HAVE NEVER ACCEPTED?” and he said “oh they’re elected!” And we said “SO THERE IS A GOVERNMENT?” and he said “no. The people in charge make the law” and we went “but that’s what a government is!” And he went “but nobody pays taxes” and we asked “but then how are the cops being paid?” And he said “the important people pay them” and we said “why do they do this?” And he said “its the law, and also they control the police” and we said “so they’re the government” and he said “no not at all, they don’t make the laws and also they don’t actually control the police” and we were just like
It was like he was pretty much the entire way at describing a fascist police state, but he kept insisting it wasn’t, it was just like now… It was making us crazy because he couldn’t see it himself. Like it wasn’t a joke or some sort of commentary, it was just the most “well it’s a town so it has police. They uphold the law, which people obey, and if they don’t they go to jail, which is how the law works”
He kept trying to insist that the cops ruled by consent, but they had their wages paid for by the corporations, the laws were made by the corporations, people lived in absolute squalor, but kept moving to the town, despite there being nothing (materially or socially) barring them from moving to other towns less than 5 days travel away, or fighting back (despite having established that the working class people were more numerous, had access to FIREARMS in a fantasy setting) They had every reason and means to do an uprising, yet somehow didn’t. It was all just aesthetics. He’s good at aesthetics though, but yeesh guy if you’re gonna do political stuff read a book or two please.
tl;dr my DM assumed the existence of police was a natural occuring phenomen. My DM also assumed “the law” to be some sort of natural occuring phenomenon.