[Want] Tuning Hatred

[Ben Lehman]

This is a thread regarding Want, my entry to Ron's contest.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I don't agree with him that the game is half-baked in terms of overall story structure, but I do think that the currency (Hatred / Frustration) is broken.  You can go nab the PDF here

My question for the group has to do with the whole reward / resolution system, which is this case is pretty much the whole game, except for character creation and gathering scenes, and the character creation section has some terms that you don't want to miss, so you should probably just read the whole game, and it's like, 17 pages, and two of those are example characters, so really, what are you complaining about?

Read it?  Good.

Okay.  I want to talk strictly in terms of playing strategically to win the game, even though that isn't exactly the game's point.

Given the system as it stands, is it really ever useful to accumulate or spend Hatred?  I think that there are two big problems here.

First off, that little line "If you succeed, your target gains Hatred equal to the Value of what you destroyed."  The first problem with this is that, because this Hatred is likely to be used for revenge, there is a real disincentive to go after the other players.  The second problem with this is, without the rules that give Hatred to targets, there really isn't enough Hatred in the system to make the game back-stabby.  So what I really need is another way to introduce Hatred into the system.

Secondly, the value of Hatred in terms of winning the game is inversely proportional to the number of players.  I'm not sure if this is a really terrible thing, mind you, but it does mean that two player games are more likely to end in apocalyptic destruction, and seven player games are more likely to be more peaceful.

Likewise, I am deeply uncertain about the value of Frustration.  As it is, you are effectively required to spend Frustration as soon as you accumulate it.  While this is fine, in theory, I'd like it more aesthetically if there was a more concrete choice.

In general, I'm looking for suggestions about improving the value of Hatred and Frustration and also introducing a little bit more Hatred into the economy of the game without giving it directly to victims.

Thoughts?

yrs--
--Ben