My friends and I recently got hooked on the base game and during one of our games a rules question came up that I couldn't find a definitive answer for. On some of the Crisis cards where you can choose one thing or another, one option might be to discard some skill cards. For instance:

FOOD SHORTAGE

President Chooses

-2 Food

OR

-1 food. The President discards 2 Skill Cards, then the current player discards 3 Skill Cards.

If the President or the current player do not have enough skill cards to fulfill the second option, are you forced to choose the first option? Or do the two players just discard as many as they have up to the number indicated?

I figure this is a house rules situation, but I'm curious how others have dealt with this situation.

You can choose either, and then just discard however many you have.

They don't mention this in the section of the rules dealing with crisis cards, but put it on p. 30, next to the credits

Excellent! Thanks for pointing that out. Didn't even see the card clarifications section on that page.

Generally, if you have to "pay" something to "do" something, if you can't pay it you can't do it.

If you "do" something and then have a (or just have a) consequence, you must complete the consequence if possible.

Roslyn must discard 2 cards to activate a location. No card, you can't do it.

If Water Crisis choice results in you having to discard 2 cards, and you have 0 cards, you just cant complete it. If you have 1 card, you would discard 1.