One of the most important principles in game design is that meaningful benefits should require meaningful costs.

I do not accept this premise.

Resources are what make decisions matter. Hit points, spell slots, limited-use abilities, ammunition, time, and money all impose constraints on what a character can accomplish. Players must decide how to allocate them, when to conserve them, and when to spend them.

This is for specific kinds of games. Not every game is a resource management game. I personally have grown to hate dnd-style resource management.

My favorite games do not ask “can you?”. They ask “should you?”

Maybe you could strain yourself and say that’s a kind of cost. I doubt that’s what the author had in mind.

For example, a starting character in Vampire the Requiem 2e can, with no resource expenditure at all, mesmerize as many people as they want. Another can vanish from sight. Other clans have other cool powers they can just do.

A starting stats Mage can use a variety of means, at no cost, to throw an election the way they want it to go.

It’s trivial, then, to deal with a lot of problems. But that’s not the interesting question. We all know you can get past the bouncer. There are more interesting questions. How are you going to feel about yourself later?

This isn’t even touching on less trad games, which I’m not as familiar with. I’ve definitely played a few one shot games that had no resources management at all. I was a demon, once, and the conflict was about how the wizard room mate never did the dishes.