Game Design Basics: Cost
I'm reposting the "Cost" section from the end of my first blog post here, to make it easier to link to. It's come up a lot in conversations I've had recently.
Cost
Cost creates both focus and a sense of agency. When PCs want to do something meaningful, rather than saying yes or no, offer a cost. When you are making things worse for the PCs, require that they pay a cost. This makes the players feel that they’ve earned their victories and had a chance to avoid their defeats. Cost comes in many forms. Here are some common costs:
•Taking a risk, like a dice roll, with a consequence for failure.
•Taking a risk, like a dice roll, with no consequence for failure but no chance to roll again.
•Spending a tangible limited resource like time, money, or fuel.
•Spending a mechanical resource described by the game system, such as fate points, experience, or hit points.
•Coming up with an effective plan that required exceptional creativity or effort on the part of the player.
•Doing something that reinforces the focus of the game in an interesting way.
•Committing to an action that precludes other actions.
•Suffering an unwanted narrative consequence within the fiction of the game.
The majority of TTRPGs have some form of cost built into their core mechanics. When you’re new to a particular TTRPG, it’s helpful to start by figuring out what ways the designers intended characters to pay costs. Once you understand a game, you can always add additional forms of cost to your adventures to keep things interesting. When you’re having difficulty figuring out what happens next in a game, ask yourself what the PCs want, and present some costs for them to contend with while trying to achieve their goals. Do not attach cost to anything that absolutely needs to happen in an adventure – there’s always a chance a character can not or will not pay it.