High Middle And Low

Fantasy role-playing often has trouble with feudalism.

The games were written by egalitarian informed authors for an egalitarian audience.

Fantasy is right in the name of the genre.

Traveller is where I first noticed some of what I later learned.

Nobles in a feudal society can mete out justice without consulting a higher authority.  All the way up to and including the death penalty.

Only under very specific circumstances will their decision even be questioned, let alone challenged.  Judge, jury and executioner is the noble who can give justice high and low.

You get a lot for a simple dice roll in Traveller.  Your points can go a long way in GURPS, depending on if the GM has considered something I pondered a while ago.

The implications always hit me when watching The Four Musketeers when Athos, as the Comte de la Fere, sentences Milady to death without a trial.  He's empowered by his title to do so.

It's not really so clear cut in real life, there are, of course, rules for when a count can sentence someone to death.  Milady de Winter is a very clear cut case of someone, whom once caught by someone with the powers to do so, can be executed without trial because she's had her trial and condemnation years ago.

But in gaming...

A GM will have to spend a lot of time and effort figuring out the checks and balances of the society they've created and communicating it to the players.

I've played in several worlds where I understood the feudal power structure better than my GM and where they ended up deferring to MY judgement about it when they should have been telling be how their world differed from medieval France.