Previously, I wrote about debt as a mechanic for motivation in RPGs, and about how games like Traveller can use debt as a motivator. In Traveller, one way to acquire a ship (almost required for the kind of planet-hopping adventure Traveller promises) is to get one with a hefty debt attached. Making payments on the ship becomes a spur to adventure. I called this “high” debt.
But now I want to talk about debt, not as an aspiration, but as a bludgeon.
“Low” debt
Low debt is the debt you didn’t get anything for. Or you got something for it, and whatever that was it’s gone, worthless, or wasted, and you’re left holding the bag. Low debt is what’s left when the good times are over, if there were even any good times to begin with.
Electric Bastionland is a fabulous, lightweight, urban/dungeon adventure RPG by Chris McDowall. When you play Electric Bastionland, the literal first dice roll you make it to find out what kind of person you were before debt ended you. You may have been a disgraced taxidermist, living experiment, or newspaper intern. None of these are glorious careers, but they are, at least, minimally respectable. But in Bastionland, you’re not that person anymore. Because you went into debt, and now even the bare shred of dignity you might have had is gone.
In Bastionland, you’re the sorts of people who venture into dangerous deathtrap-filled underground warrens because there is literally no other option available to you. Your debt is something you make payments on so you can keep on existing. Paying it off is theoretically possible, but, failing an impossibly great score, vanishingly unlikely.
Skeleton Code machine recently reviewed Dead Belt, another game that takes a low debt approach. Dead Belt is a solo strategy PRG from A Couple of Drakes. I haven’t played Dead Belt, but I’m intrigued. In Dead Belt, you’re an asteroid belt adventurer working to pay down your debt. Succeed and you walk away victorious. Fail and you end your days in the “Wealth Reclamation Facility.”
In their review, Skeleton Code does some rudimentary math to simulate how this debt might develop through play. The conclusion is that you might pay it off (and thus win), but it’s far, far more likely you’ll fail. Again, debt provides an in-game reason for the player to take desperate risks—because the alternative is even more desperate.
The debt motivator at this end of the spectrum opens up some very interesting questions. At the Traveller end, paying off your debt is a distant, but achievable goal. Going rogue and skipping on the bank is an option, but it’s quite possibly far more dangerous than staying on the straight and narrow. In Bastionland, failure to pay is a near certainty. Welching out on your debt can be a tight risk/reward calculation to be revisited on a case-by-case basis. In the classic sci-fi calculation, debt is a ticket to the upper classes. In Bastionland, it’s what keeps you down.
Failure to pay
Interestingly, few of these games, to my knowledge, have specific mechanical features for what happens if you decide not to pay your debt. In Dead Belt, you simply lose. In Bastionland, it’s unclear what happens. Once you make the decision not to pay, it’s wild west time. It’s you and the referee figuring out what the game is about now. In a way, you’re making a new game.
Thank you for reading this. Economics is something I think and read about almost as much as game design.
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