This isn’t a new idea but it’s a good exploration of scarcity in many different contexts and it’s worth a listen. The main idea of the episode is that scarcity causes a kind of tunnel vision that makes you focus on what’s missing, causes you to make bad decisions because you’re blinded to the big picture/long term view, causes thoughts about those scarcities become intrusive, and impairs your overall cognitive ability. In the real world, the experience of scarcity is the worst. At the table, it makes for good drama! This has me thinking about how to amplify this effect in games that are about scarcity like AW (or The Quiet Year or Fiasco). One way is to model the cognitive effects of scarcity. Keep bringing the conversation back to those scarcities, keeping the focus on them and their immediacy.
New GM Move: Ask them about what they don’t have.
When it’s your turn to make a move and particularly when play slows and players look to you, ask them about their scarcity. At the beginning of play, ask players what is the most pressing thing they lack. Have them write them on note cards and then leave them in front of them where everyone can see them. When you make this move, ask them about what they’ve written on their card. Is it still the thing they need the most? What’s the worst thing about not having that thing? Do they know what they could do or where they could go to get that thing? Is there something you could do about this scarcity right now? This is a soft move but make it often.
Yum, that is delightful and gamable.
Bookmarked
This is almost mandatory for games ABOUT scarcity, like (hah) apocalyptic scenarios. It makes that desperation for essentials front and center, so when they become available, frenzy kicks in.
As I MC I always taken as an unwrittena assumption, that whatever players don’t declare as available during creating of the world is scarce.
I like that. I keep overlooking scarcity and players tend to treat it as colour rather than a fundamental part of the game. This will help a lot! Thanks.