Breaking the Heart of the Universe

[b_bankhead]

Breaking the Heart of the Universe: Life and times of the Science
Fiction Heartbreaker


Ron Edward's concept of the 'Fantasy Heartbreaker' has really caught on, it's become the dominant epithet for describing a certain all too familiar type of RPG whose natural habitat seems to be the bargain bins of gaming shops.  Since the late 70's I have been calling them, 'Another way to hit an orc over the head', as in: 'The World doesn't need another way to hit an orc over the head'. But Ron's phrase really is a lot catchier.
Often lying along side them in the Milk Crate of Doom are their brothers in the science fiction.  There aren't as many of them, but there they are,dust-covered and marked down to hell,  the Science Fiction Heartbreakers.
Like Fantasy Heartbreakers, SFHB's follow the same pattern established by their science fiction brethren:
         1/ The are deriviative a very narrow category of science fiction concepts.
         2/ They are derivative of a narrow base of gaming concepts.
         3/ They are produced with great naivete' about the marketplace.
         4/ They are produced as a labor of love by amatuers.

The Galaxy of Broken Dreams
I have a confession to make. It's easy to me to write about SF heartbreakers because SF rpgs have always broken my heart. First I like SF a lot better than fantasy and there are a LOT fewer gamers playing SF games, so I got relatively little chance to do much of it. But that isn't the only thing about them that has broken my heart.

A Word to the Agnostics
I have heard some question whether the phenomenon of the SFHB really exists, I am quite sure it does, as I have played, read, and bought quite a few of them. here are some excellent examples.
2070
Battlelords of the 23rd Century
COSMOS
FTL 2448
Imperium 52nd Millenium
Marauder 2170
Shatterzone
SLA Industries
Red Shift
High Colonies
Justifiers
Raven Star
Star Guild
Riech Star
Gatecrasher
Other Suns
Aurora
Future Shadows
Frontier Horizons
GateRunner
Challenge the Future
Albedo the RPG

The sky is not the limit
The primary reason I prefer SFRPG's is because I prefer SF literature to fantasy. Mostly because SF is a much more varied genre.Science fiction ranges from 'Man in the High Castle' to '2001 Space Oddessy' to 'Darwin's Radio' to (maybe) 'Perdido Street Station' and beyond.
Fantasy only has a couple of examples to work from (or better to say it only works from a couple of examples). Tolkien and to a lesser extent Robert E. Howard. American fantasy literature has settled down to endlessly replicating these writers. (mostly Tolkien). It has therefore become predictable and repetetive. And thus so have the games based on it.
One of the tragedies of the SFHBs is that theydo nothing to take advantage of this freedom. They are as repetetive as their fantasy brothers. Arguably they are even MORE so.

One Raygun to Rule them All
SFHB's invariably take their lead from Traveler, first published by Game Designers Workshop in 1977. Typically the SFHB is even less innovative in game mechanics than the FHB. While Traveler was quite innovative in it's time, being a sharp break from the pattern set by D&D the SFHB usually has even less to differentiate it from Traveler than the FHB does from D&D.  Ron Edwards noticed that the FHB's often enshrine some core mechanical innovation at their heart, but you can look long and hard for such attempts in the SFHBs. It seems that once they heard of skill systems and chucked character classes they seem to think that the prospects for innovation in mechanics has ended,although a number of them have point build systems rather than random generation ( Although a few even had character class systems!).  It's amusing to note how many of  Traveler's almost 30 year old innovations are still being touted by FHB's down to this day as 'revolutionary'.

The Science Fiction Heartbreaker is almost invariably  based in. the golden age, space operatic,SF universe. It's a  far future setting with spaceshipsNrobotsNrayguns of various degrees of 'hardness' following the pattern established by  E.E. Smith, Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov,Robert Heinlein and a host of lesser lights in the world of pulp fiction. It's a vision of the future that has already transcended mere obscolescence into actual quaintness. (Traveler computers for example, were starting to look old fashioned even in the late 70's....)
Coupled with this a system wedded to paradigms established by miniatures wargaming. Complete with highly gamist, crunchy combat, and elaborate weapons lists. Usually there is a complex spaceship design system, with attached minuiature wargame like space combat system. The SF heartbreaker will often have ONE well developed system for doing things other than combat. Its usually either mind numbingly boring (Traveler trade rules) or has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing (cyberpunk games netrunner rules).
Sometimes there is a 'magic system' based on the 'classic' psi abilities telepathy,clairvoyance,precognition, sometimes teleportation. Although SFHB's desperately need them, they rarely have psychic surgeons or faith healers.... Although some of them include rules for actual Bell, Book and Candle magic, apparently becuase you can't write an rpg without it  (and I'm not talking about games where there is an actual setting reason for it, a la 'Spelljammer').

The Alien Perspective
Finally we come to aliens.  Once again the SFHBs neatly sidestep creativity to provide three basic types:
         1/ The BEMs-SFHBs use them for the same reason Heinlein used them in Starship Trooopers and          D&D has orcs, you need SOMETHING to kill in massive amounts without feeling too guilty.
         2/ The history textbook in space-These are the aliens that are Nazi's,Samurais, or some iconic earth          culture but have 3 eyes, alternately they are human colonies with cultures that duplicate these icons          for no apparent reason.
         3/Aesop in Spaaaaace!- Cat people, Dog People, Gila monster people, Naked Mole rat people.          And  I'm not talking about 'Furry' games like 'Albedo' or 'Uplifted' earth speices, but independently          evolved sentients just like Earth animals.

Loosing the Battle for the Future
Because they are based on miniatures wargames the best developed aspect of the SFHB is always it's combat system. Thus  the primary form of conflic tends to be combat.

Many people have commented on the problem of combat in science fiction games. The weapons in SF games are often exceedingly deadly. With the concentration on combat as the almost only form of conflict this means you will tend to loose lots of characters. In many spaceship combat systems the entire campaign can be exterminated by a SINGLE die roll. 'Oops made a critical on the nonsensium matrix of the bafflegab drive, you all go up a in a flash of light, time to make new characters....'
Why SF rpgs aren't D&D in space
D&D was based on miniatures wargames too. But it did a better job of dealing with the problems this presented.
One solution to the problem of a combat based game is Segregation of Challenge. I've never seen any SF game, heartbreaker or not that developed anywhere near as effective a mechanism. If you don't go to the 10 level of the dungeon you won't run into the 10th level monsters, 1 HD goblins won't be packing Stormbringer.  . In most SF games any joe can have a black hole bazooka or an an antimatter projector. Also in SF games 'magical' healing is generally much more restrained than in fantasy. D&D had the 'Heal' spell , and that that more than almost anything else in the game, made the overwhelming  concentration on combat sustainable. That and hit point bloat.  The simulationist in the SFRPG gamer found hpb 'unrealistic' but it's a practical gamist answer to a systemic problem with a highly gamist system.(many of the surrealistic, convoluted justifications for the weird aspects of the D&D system are the result of trying to 'justify' gamist solutions for a gamist system in simulationist terms.)  The overall effect is that the survival rate in SF campaigns can be very low without plenty of fudging by the GM.

Sure there is plenty of military SF, but the major failing of the Sf heartbreakers is that that they never found any way to make anything but combat interesting or exciting. There are many other kinds of science fiction heroes,Doctors ,scientists, Diplomats , Merchants,even Galactic Pot Healers.

SFHBs look like you can have heroes like this. They usually have extensive skill systems with all kinds of non-combat skills. But with a wargame at it's heart, these are mostly just wasted paper. Your doctor, engineer, space archeologist etc, will be dragged from one firefight to another as, of course you can't have an rpg without all the characters in a PARTY can you?
And if the GM thinks to try to give them something to do, it will be a single  skill roll done after a 2 hour battle, which the player is just as likely to whiff
This is the big thing heartbreaking about these games, they repeat the same mistakes,obsessively. And they make promises their systems can't keep.
.
Why a Medtech is not like a Cleric

Traveler has been so influential that it even defines the design of SF games in other subgenres.  R. Talsorian's Cyberpunk, had Techs and Medtechs,and Fixers and Medias and Corporates, with no real guidelines for using them, (and inadequate rules for netrunning) but had an entire BOOK of combat rules (Friday Night Firefight), the second edition only improved the situation slightly, you had to buy an entire extra supplement to get anything out of your non-gunbunny. Again the promise, again the failure.
Cyberpunk was supposed to be a genre about the rule of information, but most people in cyberpunk rpg games make more use of their guns than their terminals, and indeed use the 'net' a good deal less than I do.....

The state of the market and the SF heartbreaker
The problem of the SFHB as a phenomenon in the rpg marketplace begins with the fact that SF is less popular  Mr. Dancey's 'network effects' allow for a far smaller number of potentially successful SF rpgs. Therefore any dominant SF game will be even MORE dominant in it's genre than D&D is in fantasy (which is saying a LOT!). So there is even LESS reason to buy a Traveler look alike than a D&D look alike.  Particularly since the actual differences between the SFHBs are usually much smaller . Real innovation in anything is difficult. but real innovation is the only thing that would give most SFRPGs a chance to survive much less triumph.

Want to avoid the pain of an SF heartbreaker?  
Thinking of writing an SF game and want to avoid the Milk Crate of Doom? Avoid making the same mistakes AGAIN!

Focus on a clear single concept of what your characters are supposed
to be doing in this setting.

Make it a form of conflict with high stakes.

Make is something other than shooting things

Write your physical combat system LAST.

If you insist on making a combat based game, have systems to deal with the problems this creates as least as effective as those in D&D, but preferably don't just duplicate them....

By the way if you have an attached miniatures-based mass combat system or space combat system. you are probably writing a heartbreaker.

Figure out what the game is really about and design to that. The newest Albedo game (really an Erma Felna EDF game)'Platinum Catalyst' makes this error, it includes an (admittedly mechanically interesting) mass combat system. But 'Erma Felna EDF' ,although it takes place in military environment really isn't about firefights, any more than a Harlequin Nurse Romance set in a hospital is really about medicine.  Its about Erma's relationships. Its Trollbabe in space, with furries.

There is plenty of room for innovation in SF games. Here are some ideas I've been wanting to write for a long time, I may have to do them myself:

L. Ron Hubbard's Old Doc Methusaleh, and Jame White's Sector General were about futuristic doctors and managed to create excitement and drama, indeed medicine is widely mined for this by popular entertaintment....

Dune, Megacorps or some similar environment with deadly byzantine politics, and physical combat is a duel after numerous session of elaborate, political manuvering, or death comes by poison or assasin's dagger.

A game of interstellar commerce that is narrativist, because simulationist ones always turn into accounting exercises, and gamist ones are just hand operated versions of a hundred 'build your space empire' computer games or they become a board game without the board..

Anyway that is my hat in the ring for what constitutes an SFHB, and my reccomendations for avoiding them....
There's a whole universe of gaming and game designs out there. Lets stop breaking my heart, PLEASE?
_________________

[clehrich]

I'd just like to say that this is a very good start.

I would like to see a little close analysis of Traveler and how it worked and set the standard.  You mention a lot of points; can you be specific about how these things got implemented?

I'd love to see some discussion of how these games do and do not "accurately" represent the sorts of novels and whatnot they have in mind.  What about games explicity based on particular SF universes?

Anyone else have comments?  Presumably the typos will be worked out before you "go to press"....

[daMoose_Neo]

Well, there have been a few more main stream SF titles far more recent than Traveler, including TSR's own Alternity.
The others out there are based on a specific property, so I don't know if you'd want to count them among the games examined in this article. I've heard some of these points said for a few of them though, too. Last Unicorn's Star Trek was supposed to have a couple little gems, namely ship to ship combat and the "Technobabble" charts, but aside from some good press in InQuest Gamer magazine, I've seen little praise from others.
You also have instances of d20 "IN SPAAACE" games, where they slap on the setting over top of the d20 rules, getting (as you phrase ^_^) Bashing Orcs...IN SPAACE! Might have a little material you could mine from there as to more recent attempts?
d20 also seems to be the lisence of choice for lisences as well right now. Farscape and Stargate, two of the most recent, most popular shows have d20 games (I'm pretty sure they're both d20). Farscape itself I would say is actually D&D in space, as you have a party, going from world/dungeon to world/dungeon, an ongoing plot with recurring villians and all sorts of little sub stories.

Just a couple of others to look at ^_^

[komradebob]

I always felt the problem was that SFHBs weren't space opera-y enough.

Part of this may be that for me SF was more inspired by visual mediums (movies, tv, comics), while fantasy was always inspired by books.

You mentioned the more wargame sorts of rules common in SFHBs. From a personal p.o.v., those systems have never successfully captured the feel of space opera, especially as based on movies or tv shows.

Put another way, and looking solely at space opera inspired stuff, isn't the real heartbreak that the games failed to capture the feel of the source material?

Robert

[Ben Lehman]

I am very unconvinced that the combat systems of these games are, explicitly, Gamist.  The ones that you mention that I have played have highly detailed combat systems that, nonetheless, don't make astoundingly good Gamism.  Detailed combat ≠ Gamism.

Also, I find it strange that you dwell on Cyberpunk, which is arguably one of the few not-highly-derivative SF games out there (different setting, sizably different system than most SF games.)  Heck, it was even a (marginal) commercial success.  I want to hear more about these other games you list.

yrs--
--Ben

[Halzebier]

The primary reason I prefer SFRPG's is because I prefer SF literature to fantasy. Mostly because SF is a much more varied genre.Science fiction ranges from 'Man in the High Castle' to '2001 Space Oddessy' to 'Darwin's Radio' to (maybe) 'Perdido Street Station' and beyond.

I'd personally label "Perdido Street Station" as fantasy, but this just shows how blurry the line between fantasy and sci-fi can be.

(Modern day CoC, Star Wars and Dragon Mech also come to mind.)

Anyway that is my hat in the ring for what constitutes an SFHB, and my reccomendations for avoiding them....

Some counter-examples would be useful, I think. I'd point to "Living Steel" (militaristic and combat-heavy, but highly focussed), "Paranoia" and "HOL" (great satire with questionable playability, though I have in fact run it), but I have little experience with SFRPGs. I'd love to hear of some original SFRPGs (or would this derail the thread?).

There's a whole universe of gaming and game designs out there.

Sci-fi is an incredibly rich genre, but as the short story is its natural (but certainly not only) medium, believing that this richness translates into equally rich game opportunities may be a mistake.

Most short stories explore a single concept or question, often in order to make a single, surprising point. Such one-trick ponies would probably be unsuitable as the foundation of a game design (whether aiming for a campaign, one-shot or something else).

I think the key question is indeed what you've said earlier:

What are the characters supposed to be doing in the setting?

("Or situation", I might add, because I have a feeling that one-shots might be the way to go to capture much of sci-fi [the difficulties I mention not withstanding].)

Excellent article, BTW!

Regards,

Hal

[greyorm]

Excellent start, Brian. I will be taking notes as I start real production on "Dead Space" next year. Do you have any examples of "SFRPGs done right"? Can you compare and contrast them to SFHBs?

[Callan S.]

Ron Edward's concept of the 'Fantasy Heartbreaker' has really caught on, it's become the dominant epithet for describing a certain all too familiar type of RPG whose natural habitat seems to be the bargain bins of gaming shops. Since the late 70's I have been calling them, 'Another way to hit an orc over the head', as in: 'The World doesn't need another way to hit an orc over the head'. But Ron's phrase really is a lot catchier.
Often lying along side them in the Milk Crate of Doom are their brothers in the science fiction. There aren't as many of them, but there they are,dust-covered and marked down to hell, the Science Fiction Heartbreakers.
Like Fantasy Heartbreakers, SFHB's follow the same pattern established by their science fiction brethren:
1/ The are deriviative a very narrow category of science fiction concepts.
2/ They are derivative of a narrow base of gaming concepts.
3/ They are produced with great naivete' about the marketplace.
4/ They are produced as a labor of love by amatuers.

Umm, another way to hit an orc over the head isn't really the problem. For example, TROS presents just another way to hit them over the head.

The thing is TROS actually is different enough to present a different product (facilitating nar, for example...while you hit an orc on the head). Those four points aren't the problem (though the can cause problem), its basically that if the product is very similar to one the customer already owns, why on earth would she buy it?

The idea of a heartbreaker is that these games often have some part of the system which is very different, enough to make them a destinct and thus viable product. But they are lost in a sea of almost identical mechanics and the baby gets thrown away with the boring bathwater.

[Kedamono]

Thanks Brian for the analysis! To let you know, I'm one of the original playtesters for FTL:2448 and did some design work trying to un-bore the trade rules for FTL:2448 second edition and I'm still not happy with the result.

One way I found in my FTL:2448 games to stay away from the Heartbreaker syndrome was to setup the campaign such that it took place on a single space station, though in this the station was Fomalhaut station, a massive, several miles long space station, and ran a detective game, but tried my best to include as much future tech as I could. And since I was introducing it, I could also introduce the flaws and ways around it as well. (No magical device to sweep through a room and gather all the DNA samples, you still had to find them and dab them up.)

But by setting a game where the players didn't own their own spaceship and didn't have a need to have one, the game actually became more interesting.

One problem I had in Traveller was that every world was reduced to a code and monoculture. But to do otherwise meant that I would have to either railroad my players to stay where I had created world descriptions, or make stuff up on the fly as we went along.

FTL:2448 was worse, as the designer, Rich Tucholka, was of the same opinion, but created this massive chart that you rolled dice on, such that it would take hours to properly create one world. At least Traveler kept that down to about fifteen minutes per world.

And there is the rub. To do a world real justice, you should spend hours on it, detailing out the races, the cities, etc. Otherwise it's a one line code string.

I've seemed to have wandered here, mainly because I have lots of opinions as well on SFHBs.

One thing I'd say is that SFRPGs come in two main variants: Soft Science, and Hard Science. The degree of softness or hardness depends on how much the Designer wants to make the games playable and understands what makes a game playable.

Most games that pass for SFRPGS are really SFnRPGs or "Science Fantasy RPG". They are soft as a baby duck's fuzz.  About the only time science comes into play is in the science of ballistics. Orcs in Spaaace stuff.

The rest are semi-hard, as they don't want to make the game universe too strange and different. Any setting more than 50 years in the future if done hard as diamond, will not be recognizable by anyone.

Which is why in FTL:2448 we pulled back on tech, so that we could have something more playable and didn't require a masters thesis to understand. Even now, if given a chance to redo FTL:2448, I'd still pull back on the tech, just so the game isn't too cerebral, as well as not put in some bit a tech, a la Star Trek's Transporter, that will come back and bite us in the butt.

Basically, try to create a Modern era RPG as a Future era RPG. Provide a place where the players feel comfortable with the setting, and not view it as "Orcs in Spaaaace". And not as "Cargo run #22,345" which Traveller was prone to do. Don't make it easy to pick up cargo, don't make it easy to treat a world as a village inn. Make it something that will engage the players and their characters.

How?

You tell me, because I'm still trying to figure that one out.

[greyorm]

And there is the rub. To do a world real justice, you should spend hours on it, detailing out the races, the cities, etc. Otherwise it's a one line code string.

That's part of the point, perhaps: that you don't need to create a detailed world for every single world the players might encounter. You only need to create as much of the world as they interact with. After all, how much did we know about Tattooine, Endor, Yavin IV, or Geonosis?

Each was neither heavily (pointlessly) detailed, nor was each simply reduced to a string of code. The need to create pointless detail is, I suspect, a big part of what makes a heartbreaker a heartbreaker, especially in science fiction, since it copies so heavily from the norm, and for no particularly good reason.

[timfire]

Mostly because SF is a much more varied genre.Science fiction ranges from 'Man in the High Castle' to '2001 Space Oddessy' to 'Darwin's Radio' to (maybe) 'Perdido Street Station' and beyond.

Fantasy only has a couple of examples to work from (or better to say it only works from a couple of examples). Tolkien and to a lesser extent Robert E. Howard. American fantasy literature has settled down to endlessly replicating these writers. (mostly Tolkien). It has therefore become predictable and repetetive. And thus so have the games based on it.

I would drop this entire section, or at least drop any referrence to fantasy. Fantasy is a very varied genre. It's true that RPG's tend to focus on Tolkien and Howard, but that can't be blamed on the genre. Besides Tolkien fantasy, you also have anything fairy tale-ish, and anything mythological, and there are plenty of examples of those types of games. That section is just asking for a flame war.

[edit] Slightly re-worded things, because I wasn't making sense. [/edit]

[Marco]

Ron's Heartbreaker essay wasn't focused on decrying 'another way to hit an orc over the head' but instead (mostly, IMO) focused on games that he (and this is my read) felt had actual gems of RPG-goodness in them but were self-limited by adhering to the D&D design or else had hit on 'innovations' that simply were not innovative.

Although I find the term 'Heartbreaker' a bit unfortunate, the essay is, IMO, looking at what is good about those games. It has muated, IMO, from the orignal meaning to simply become a way to describe a game as inferior.

This:

Sure there is plenty of military SF, but the major failing of the Sf heartbreakers is that that they never found any way to make anything but combat interesting or exciting. There are many other kinds of science fiction heroes,Doctors ,scientists, Diplomats , Merchants,even Galactic Pot Healers.

Is pure opinion and doesn't square with either my analysis of those game's systems nor my experience playing them.

In Traveler the majority of my time was spent being a merchant and figuring out how to open up new markets. In fact the merchant-goods, travel time, and world-gen systems were far, far more detailed, IIRC than combat.

I think you are miss-calling this topic badly.

-Marco
[NOTE: that doesn't mean that I think you wrote the essay badly. I think it's just an example specific kind of narrow-focused combat-system = war-game mentality that I don't agree with nor especially like. ]

[John Kim]

This

Sure there is plenty of military SF, but the major failing of the Sf heartbreakers is that that they never found any way to make anything but combat interesting or exciting. There are many other kinds of science fiction heroes,Doctors ,scientists, Diplomats , Merchants,even Galactic Pot Healers.

Is pure opinion and doesn't square with either my analysis of those game's systems nor my experience playing them.

Hmm.  Which games are you thinking of?  I'm not very familiar with most of the games in the list, except for Shatterzone and Aurora.  I'd agree with you in the case of these.  His two points about aliens and combat both completely miss the mark on these games, in my opinion.  Shatterzone has completely freeform aliens, so while it is possible to reproduce stereotypes it's not a part of the game.  And its rules have about equal focus on social interaction, drama deck card use, and combat.  Aurora completely blasts apart his idea of aliens, providing aliens which are well and truly alien.  It also has an innovative core mechanic which provides choice in risk, that adds interest to any skill resolution.  

On the other hand, there are certainly games on the list which seem clearly combat-focused, like, say, Battlelords of the 23rd Century.  I think it might be that the two which I'm familiar with are ones that I thought were interesting -- and his points apply better to the others.  On the other hand, I think it's pretty silly to demand that BLot23C be not focused on combat.  If you set out to do a combat-focused game, I think that's a valid choice.  The problem is if you want to do a non-combat focused game and end up with a combat focus simply because of ignorance or accident.

[Marco]

Albedo and SLA for the most part. I also played ... (IIRC) FGU's Space Opera (I believe that was the title) and Star Frontiers. Both of these, IMO, fit his description mechanically (weapon lists, star-ship systems, etc.)

For that matter, GURPS Space and Star Hero (both of which I played*) would also fit the bill. Each makes exactly the 'mistakes' that he lists where there is no 'what the characters are supposed to be doing' element and when the GM and players decide it surely could involve 'shooting things.'

Tracing some of the patterns in games back to Traveler (which I'll get to in a moment) is, IMO, an acceptable way to look at things--but there's a good deal of editorializing that I don't think is either analytical nor correct in context.

Traveler, if it's the first space game, can't honestly be a Heartbreaker under Ron's description but it gets its own commentary here:

Coupled with this a system wedded to paradigms established by miniatures wargaming. Complete with highly gamist, crunchy combat, and elaborate weapons lists. Usually there is a complex spaceship design system, with attached minuiature wargame like space combat system. The SF heartbreaker will often have ONE well developed system for doing things other than combat. Its usually either mind numbingly boring (Traveler trade rules) or has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing (cyberpunk games netrunner rules).

Emphasis added. I think that's telling. From the text, Traveler is an example of a heartbreaker and its 'ONE system' is certainly not placed in a beneficial light.

I think that gigging a game in a military environment (Albedo) for having some military rules is an example of philosophy over substance--which, IMO, is missapplied philosophy.

The essay, IMO, uses the reductive, deragoratory usage of the term Heartbreaker.

-Marco
* I played a medic in Star Hero with a space-ambulance.  The rules didn't give me any help there in terms of guiding me into that field but it was a character I much loved and the starship construction rules were my friend there.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Here's an idea which might help reconcile some of the points of debate in this thread.

Unlike the fantasy heartbreakers I wrote about, in which "what we do" is absolutely rock-solid (team up, confront things, level up, repeat), most of the science fiction role-playing games are a little squishy when it comes to general player-character "function."

In the D&D based games, "what do we do" is top-down, based more on player's approach to the strategic and tactical challenges. In the SF-ish games, "what we do" seems to be treated as an emergent property of whatever setting-based choices one makes about one's character, i.e., his or her species, job, homeworld, etc.

Therefore instead of providing very specific niches aimed at characters' roles during confrontations, the emphasis seems instead to be on wide-open diversity of skill sets and professional labels, which exists kind of uneasily next to very niche-y aliens. (A bit like second-edition D&D, in which proficiencies and character classes sort of rubbed shoulders for no good reason, only more so.)

The sense I get from reading these games and making up characters for them is often a peak, during character creation, followed by a "flatline" - OK, now I have my frog-guy with his Engineering profession and a few espionage-style skills thrown in. Pause. Now what? There's no sense of purpose that I get from making fantasy-heartbreaker characters, such as "OK, I have the cleric-y type guy, so let's get in a fight I so can heal folks."

On a related point, the fantasy heartbreaker games also seem to be much better constructed in terms of reward systems (usually just character improvement, as in most RPGs). The authors really seem to have cared greatly about smoothing character-improvement relative to play, and also about just what can be improved when. Whereas most of the games I think of as SF heartbreakers instead seem to be not-very-well-thought-out copies of GURPS in this regard - "Um, you get more character points, like the ones you bought your skills with, so, uh, you spend them."

So here's my thought - that the SF heartbreakers are characteristically weak on purpose of play, whereas the fantasy ones are (as I wrote in my essays) usually rather strong, in fact, better than any pre-3rd version of D&D. Therefore trying to characterize the SF-games in terms of purpose and themes is going to be awfully messy and vague.

I'm also thinking a little differently now about the foundations/sources. The literary or "structural" features of these games seems to be solidly based on Star Trek + Niven's Known Universe, as opposed to the original Traveller's wide-open, DIY approach. In fact, I'm beginning to think that the main model for play wasn't Traveller in its original form, but rather Star Frontiers and later editions of Traveller ... perhaps with the extensive adventure supplements for Star Wars as the foundation for "how to play."

Best,
Ron

P.S. Two titles to add for sure: Xro Dinn Chronicles and Manhunter