RPG Resource Management, Your Insula, and You
How We Decide, reviewed earlier, describes the cognitive mechanism that apparently governs our spending decisions. When we consider spending cash in hand, the insula, an area of the brain that reminds us to husband our resources, sends us a jolt of anxiety. (Author Jonah Lehrer then explores the way that credit card purchases do not trigger the insula, leaving the brain to follow its default preference for immediate gains over long-term consequences.)
When designing RPGs I often gravitate toward resource management mechanisms that require players to weight the trade-offs of immediate versus long-term need. Examples include hero points in HeroQuest, which can either be used to boost rolls in the moment, or to add to your ability ratings like experience points do in other systems. Dying Earth / Skulduggery and GUMSHOE both give you pools of points keyed to each ability, which you can spend to reroll failures or increase your chance of success, respectively.
These mechanisms elicit a certain degree of resistance during playtest. Compared to straight up rolls, resource management decisions make some players uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s because these decisions get their insulas firing. Pool or hero points are a resource in hand, like cash, which the miserly voice in the decision making process hates to part with. Spending makes us antsy. There’s even an element of gambling to many of these decisions, as they typically increase chances of success without ensuring it. (In the case of GUMSHOE general abilities, you can guarantee success by spending lots of points, if you have them. But you don’t necessarily know the difficulty you’re shooting to overcome and may overspend. Or may spend conservatively and then lose. That’s gotta piss off the insula.)
I value these moments of displeasure, and the corresponding micro-shot of dopamine that presumably accompanies success, because they emotionally cement players to important moments in the narrative. Strong drama is about tough choices. Dramatically resonant rules should mirror this essential narrative dictum by requiring tough choices from the players as well as the characters. These rules mechanisms require players to decide just how much they care about a given turning point. By spending a limited resource, they’re investing in the moment in both senses of the word. I can’t help thinking that these cognitive mechanisms are partnering with me, and the GMs, in bringing impact to that decision to care.