Costly choices

Meaningful choices come with a price

The tl;dr

Last week, I discussed hard and soft pressure on constraints. This week, I interrogate those constraints and how they inform player choice.

• Constraints are the quantifiable resources players can use to solve problems

• Pressure forces them to make choices within their constraints

• Players have 3 core constraints: time, supply, and capacity

• Expending constraints makes those choices meaningful

By making choices costly, players can make choices that feel measurable, weighty, and responsive to their game world.

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Defining constraints in TTRPGs

Constraints are the finite, spendable resources players use to solve problems.

Pressure squeezes those constraints, and the story moves after players decide what they’re willing to lose to survive. The GM can affect those constraints with hard and soft pressure, but they’re tools for players to use during their game.

Constraints always have a cost — a price that players can choose to pay.

By paying that price, they can solve problems like darkness, bleeding out, or slogging through the mud after it swallows up their horse (RIP Artax).

It may feel like pedantry, but it’s worth noting: constraints are not limits. Limits are boundaries that contain the game both narratively and mechanically.

• Limit: Teleportation doesn’t exist

• Constraint: Teleportation costs 1 knuckle per mile.

• Limit: You can’t rage as a cleric

• Constraint: You can cast it again…if you lose a pint of blood first

What constraints are not

Constraints are easy to confuse with limits, but they behave differently. They should not feel like you’re saying “no” to player input, but instead asking them what they’re willing to lose.

Constraints are not:

• GM tantrums

• Gear taxes

• Punishments for creativity

Constraints are not designed to deny player choice but instead assess a price for that choice. This is what makes mudcore, grimdark, and Börg-likes meaningful: there’s no hope, but there is always meaningful choice.

Players hate games when:

• The GM moves goalposts

• The fiction bends around the plot

• Nothing they choose matters

They love games when:

• Costs are knowable

• Constraints are fair

• Internal logic is consistent

The 3 core constraints I use

Players have 3 core constraints: time, supply, and capacity

Time constraints

Time is a shared constraint among the players — it gives sequence to their actions and focuses their choices.

This is always the first constraint players encounter because the enemy shares it too, and they’ve already used some of it to facilitate their deadly plan.

I start every quest with a calendar and cut it to the bone. By the time the players learn about the coming Stag Knight pogrom, they’re already on their way.

When I write quests, I check my work for the words: soon, now, after, and before.

• Soon the Blood Moon will rise again

• Now the Marshal has gone missing

• The prophecy says he will burn after midnight

• You must find him before the Xanthic Priest does

Without those, there’s no quest. And for an extra dagger to the guts, I’d say the Xanthic Priest found the Marshal two days ago. Get moving.

Supply constraints

These are the tangible materials and the bric-a-brac characters carry. Supply constraints are diegetic, meaning players understand their use just like the characters do — they have real-world analogs.

The GM can apply some hard pressure to supplies, so players can determine how to use them efficiently.

• Torches: last for 1 watch

• Rations: consume once per day or suffer fatigue

• Arrows: 20 to a quiver; recoverable 1-in-6 times

• A pinch of guano: should fire things up…

• 50 feet of rope: never delve without it

Conversely, players can choose to keep their supplies and risk it without spending them. Rain will dampen the torches, so we’ll march in the dark…but soaked bags is a recipe for moldy rations.

These choices have costs that make them more meaningful than just announcing “I have a torch!”

“But I have darkvision.”

— Chad Multiclass of Minmaxia

Capacity constraints

These represent characters physically, mentally, and metaphysically. They determine the character’s threshold for stab wounds, brain-sucking weavles, and soul-crushing witchery.

It’s stuff like:

• Hit points and Hit Dice

• Spell slots

• Sanity

• Fatigue

• Momentum

Capacity differs from supply because it’s restored by game mechanics rather than player action. You can buy more rope, but you can’t buy more spell slots.

Supply is everything a character has. Capacity is everything they are.

Unlike supply, capacity is seldom diegetic. This often leads to prescriptive, hard caps that are functional (even elegant) but lack a soft-pressure valve — a narrative consequence informed by the player’s choice.

A spent wizard is “out of spells” — whatever that means — until the next day (is that midnight or dawn?). But when the sun rises again, the Vancian brain magic is restored, and the cleric finds god again.

Contrast that with blood magic. A player can cast as many spells as they want…but it’ll cost more blood. Yours…your horse’s…your friend’s.

The blood mage player can respond to both hard and soft pressure.

Constraints in the Wenderweald

The Wenderweald does not care how many spell points you have or if you have darkvision. Everything in this world of mine has a cost and only the strong endure that cost.

In exchange, you rise from the mud a hero. You inscribe your legacy on this grimdark land for eternity. You draw upon witchery that few are daring enough to conjure.

You can certainly try…but it’ll cost you.

Watch for the Wenderweald watching.

—Odinson