Scarcity creates value and decisions

Any resource the player accumulates and spends — currency, consumables, materials, action economy, time. Central to RPG, survival, strategy, and roguellike design.

Value is a function of scarcity: a resource the player has in unlimited supply carries no weight, so decisions about it are hollow (buy everything, use freely, feel nothing) [S-economy-design]. Meaningful resource decisions — this potion now or save it? this upgrade or that one? — only exist when having one thing means forgoing another, which requires scarcity. This is DESIGN-0002 (interesting decisions) expressed through economics: scarcity is what makes a spending choice a genuine tradeoff rather than a formality, and it's what gives rewards their emotional weight. But the dial has two bad ends — abundance drains meaning, and crushing scarcity produces frustration, hoarding (players too afraid to spend), and analysis paralysis. The craft is finding the tension in between.

Tune each resource's scarcity to the weight you want its decisions to carry — tighter for resources meant to create tension, looser for those meant to enable expression. Watch for hoarding (a sign of either too much scarcity or unclear value) and for trivializing abundance (a sign of weak sinks — ECON-0003). Scarcity and the faucet/drain balance (ECON-0001) are the same dial seen from two angles.

Tight scarcity (tension, meaningful decisions, survival stakes) vs. generous abundance (power fantasy, expression, low friction) — both are valid depending on whether the resource is meant to create tension or enable freedom. Over-scarcity's frustration and abundance's meaninglessness are the two failure modes to steer between.

The value-and-decision rationale beneath the flow model (ECON-0001) and a direct economic expression of DESIGN-0002 (interesting decisions) and BAL-0002 (meaningful choice). Confidence 4.