Industrialization the game.
Some of the style of puzzle pirates when it comes to individuals completing "work" in the form of manufacturing puzzles
(stamping out metal, weaving things on big machines etc.), and some of the style of eve online when it comes to making an
economy actually based on players consuming and producing and controlling the markets.
Your character has basic needs (food, clothing, shelter), and then there are the wants of fancy homes and goods to show off
which require money.
Money is not made by killing various things, but by working to create things which are needed. Or, by owning the means of
production.
Say a person gets a plot of land at the start. They can work that land and make food to eat, or use little laborious hand-mills to spin
fibers for cloth and be self sufficient with some effort. Local market placed in the villages help people swap food/clothing/tools and
get by. But maybe they sell the land? Then they up and move to the city where they work in factories which were also
owned and set up by players. Perhaps with the dream of one day setting up their own shop, or crafts factory.
On top of this you can add corporations, trading of goods and supplies, and factional fighting. You could anticipate that
industry might make a good profit from war, producing the weapons that would be needed. Industry could also be behind
the construction and maintenance of trains connecting important locations for the mass shipment of goods and supplies.
Getting to the point where your company could actually produce the trains themselves might be a massive feat of engineering
and organization (kind of end game level stuff), requiring the making or sourcing of all kinds of parts. All along the way
you need actual working joes coming in and doing all of the required work with the machines in a puzzle pirate kind of way.