Breaking the Heart of the Universe

[contracycle]

I think the point to purpose of play is very interesting indeed.  But it jibes with an issue I would like to raise as well: as SFRPG's SF at all?  Maybe  most SFRPG's are damp squibs rather than heartbreakers, perhaps.

I'm quite struck by komradebob's point about SFRPG's feeling insufficiently space opera-ish.  I think there is a vast gulf between science fiction proper and science fantasy, and the opera variety definitely falls into the latter.  But as komradebob remarks this is mostly due to exposure to SF as a visual medium rather than a written one - I think real explorative SF is more likely to occur in print; certainly there have been very few representations on screen as far as I am aware.

I suspect that this problem lies at the root of most problems in SFRPG.  Traveller proposes lots of technology, but the technology poses no important questions.  It could be - and I might hazard going as far as saying it is - the Age of Mercantilism in space.

I think rather more SFRPG's have been designed based on duplicating precursors in visual media than have been built around concepts expressed in written media.  And because most of the visual media have not been hard SF but have instead have been opera, the purpose of play may be rather confused.  But What You Do in most of these is fly space-ships manually, shoot blasters at each other and swing over crevassess on a super-strength cable.

From this angle it may be that the 'heartbreaker' concept can be rehabilitated because it is still external expectations of what will work, what the audience wants, only vaguely understood, that drives much of the design as it appears in final draft, perhaps.  IOW the orthodox reference point for SFRPG is not a prior D&D but instead Star Wars and Star Trek, and perhaps some cartoon shows.

Now the RPG sub-genre which suffered least from this effect was Cyberpunk, I feel.  IMO there have been a couple of really solid Cyberpunk games that came very close to posing real questions about technology - the empathy/humanity ratings associated with implants.  While these were pretty crude, they were at least heading in the right direction; these could have been the venues for some interesting play around such themes.  And yet they didn't go there but instead got railed down new avenues of orc-smiting.  In large part I blame the industry - pulling in many authors to mass produce supplements probably produced stock RPG tropes automatically.

My main candidate for an actual heartbreaker would be Blue Planet.  There is excellent science; fantastic attention to meteorology and geology for an RPG, a stonrgly drawn setting with many implied questions... and yet the stock mode of play appears to be a caribean crime drama on the lines of Magnum PI, or wild west  lawlessness on the open frontier.  All the science in the setting is pretty much lost, and the opportunity offered by truly non-human PC's wasted.

[timfire]

I think the issue of whether or not a SF Heartbreaker is 'true' SF - whatever that may be - is a red herring. I mean, can you really call DnD 'true' fantasy? Where's the hard questioning of good vs evil? But that's besides the point.

While I don't mean to put words in Ron's mouth, he appears to have called Heartbreakers 'Heartbreakers' because the dream/innovation/etc. of the game was mired in assumptions and imitative design. What are the assumptions SF Heartbreakers make? What sort of system designs do they imitate? What areas of design do they try to improve?

[jc_madden]

The problem with creating something decidedly alien comes from the fact that we are human.  Humanity is all we know.  When we DO manage to create something un-human it is often ugly and wrong.  It is instinct to take two things miles apart and squish them together to simulate something alien.  Heinlein's spiders with lasers, cat-people samurai, Star trek's unending multitude of prosthetic head aliens....

At the center of any good sci-fi RPG ultimately are the players and the game master (if applicable).  As a labor of love the creator of the SFHB can only put so much into the game.  What we do with it is up to us.  What is so wrong with incredibly lethal combat?  If every time someone goes waving around a black laser pistol a whole bar gets cut in half, I HOPE that people figure out to stop waiving the dang things around.  Case in point: Niven's Ring World the book has very little actual combat and what it has is very lethal.  The people of Niven's far future science world have innate FEAR of what their technology can do and thus they avoid it if at all possible.  Further more even though the book DOES have a race of sentient cat people they are very thoughtful and realize the futility of fighting a loosing war with mankind and the very alien race called the puppeteers.  Larry Niven's book is a very good example of what a sci-fi rpg could be like.  But if you were tasked to design a game around it sooner or later someone's going to need rules for what happens when you go shooting off your laser pistol, and at that point the fatality comes into play.  Ultimately even if the combat system is a mere afterthought to the carefully designed social interaction system (and believe me you'll get criticized for that) combat will still arise and it will still be lethal.  It's up to the people out there running the game to make it a heartbreaker or not.  When someone shoots someone else do we blame the gun?

[greyorm]

While I don't mean to put words in Ron's mouth, he appears to have called Heartbreakers 'Heartbreakers' because the dream/innovation/etc. of the game was mired in assumptions and imitative design. What are the assumptions SF Heartbreakers make? What sort of system designs do they imitate? What areas of design do they try to improve?

Personally, I think a lot of gamer-folk tend to think that Science Fiction equals 1) WOW technology and 2) spaaaaace. SF is not. Or at least it doesn't have to be. The vast majority of science fiction I have read has not involved either WOW technology or spaaaaace.

Yet the vast majority of SF games I have seen tend to follow in the footsteps of Star Trek, copying those two overt elements from it, while ignoring the social and personal issues that made those episodes fly as stories: because, really, the heart of science fiction as literature (especially as good literature) is not the science.

[Ron Edwards]

Tim nailed it. Screw the whole issue of "whether SF" or "real SF." Screw it right in the ear.

The issue is not, whether SF Heartbreakers are or are not SF / science fiction / sci-fi / speculation fiction / etc. The issue is, given this set of role-playing design and publishing goals, which is manifest in the presence of the games that really do exist, what set of aesthetics seems to be foundational to their creation?

And indeed, is the aesthetics-set internally contradictory, as it is for the fantasy heartbreakers?

Best,
Ron

[Kedamono]

OK, so Tim proposes that we examine the aesthetical assumptions of SFRPGs, and why those assumptions make many of them Heartbreakers.

From the top of my head, here is my list of assumptions:

Everyone has to have a spaceship/starship.
SFRPGs have to be set in Future and in Spaaace.
Space combat is just like (pick one) air combat, sea combat, Star Wars, Star Trek.
Simple ballistic kinetic energy weapons, (AKA rifles, pistols, etc.) will be replaced by "ray guns" and hand-held laser weapons capable of killing with one short burst.
All worlds have a monoculture.
All worlds can be represented by a code and description of the spaceport.
Aliens are, well alien and we have nothing in common with them.
Aliens are just like us, but with a funny looking nose or ears.
Humans Über Alles.
Humans are the rodents of space.[/list:u]

There is probably more, but just this short list we can see how expectations are set for SFRPGs.

For example, the very first assumption: "Everyone has to have a spaceship/starship." is one most space based SFRPGs support. And I'd like ask, "Why?"

Why can't you have a space based SFRPG, where spaceships are very expensive, government owned, and that travel between worlds is a once in a lifetime event for the average citizen of this game universe? This way, when the PCs get a chance to travel to another world, it is a major event. However, for the most part, the game revolves around the people and places of the one world they start on.

Another favorite assumption made by SFRPGs is that all worlds have a monoculture. Hell, that's not even true for our own world, not for a long, long while, if ever.

Currently I'm part of the design team that's been tasked to produce the next version of Tri Tac Game's SFRPG Fringeworthy. (It was the first Alternate History RPG.) I'm working the world and racial descriptions for the game. One of which is Victorian Earth. And I'm doing my best not to do a pastiche of Space:1889, but a different POV, and try to deal realistically with the fact that this world is not a monoculture under British rule, but a spectrum and several spectrums in fact. Heck, even the British Isles are not a monoculture, let alone the British Empire. So from the very start of the description of this world, I'm trying to show that it is a multicultural and diverse society.

And this is the trap every, and I mean, every SFRPG I've ever read or played in has fallen for. Aliens are represented by a monoculture. You are a Klingon, so you behave thusly. You are a Zhodani, so you behave this way. You get the picture. That's about as useful as saying all Earthmen are just like Americans from the 1960s.

So if we are serious about ending the heartbreaker syndrome for SFRPGs we need to figure out all the traps that designer fall for when they design one.

[daMoose_Neo]

This really is a situation where the literature cannot be touched by another medium. It was stunning to see Tolkiens Middle Earth in Jacksons movies, but so much of good sci-fi is internal that we cannot really see it.

The Dune series is one of my all time favorites. While the Jr. Herbert has done admirably with his prequels, Frank Herberts books are...wonderful.
A number of planets do suffer from the mono-culture syndrome- Calladan is a fishing world, Arrakis is a desert world (though there IS a reason for that!). But one of the fun things is...there are no aliens. SF, and not a traditional alien in sight. There are Humans, everywhere.
From the desert nomads the Fremen, who live quite differently than the citizens of the watery fishing world of Caladan, who are all together different than the Guild Navigators using Spice to ferry ships through space, the Bene Gesserit, women of power using Spice to shape their minds and bodies into the ultimate tools, the Mentats, human computers, even the Swordsmasters of Ginaz. All human, yet so alien to each other.
99% of the conflict, the REAL conflict, here is internal or political- the wranglings of the Nobility, the Bene Gesserit and the Guild, the internal turmoils as Paul and his children trancend humanity, knowing things people weren't meant to know. The fear that understanding brought, or the empowerment, and the madness. Some very alien concepts, all factions quite alien to one another, all represented so nicely within ourselves.

[M. J. Young]

I've been thinking about this, and I keep coming back to Star Frontiers. It was not the first sci-fi RPG I played, as I played both Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World before it. GW I found disappointing because of its harshness--the problem already alluded to, that at any moment the next bunny rabbit could be a deadly killer that would take out the entire party in seconds. With MA, I think the referee had trouble figuring out a direction (it was her first game to run) and she abandoned it. She had wanted something more space-opera anyway.

I think that Star Frontiers was not a heartbreaker. We played it for a few years in roughly monthly sessions (we intermixed several different games) and most of that was in the Volturnus module series.

It's been said that these games are always focused on combat. This one was not. Our biosocial specialists did many things, all the time. The psychosocial skills enabled us to work out much about the alien cultures we encountered, much as if we had a team anthropologist; they also gave us some interesting skills to use in dealing with our enemies. The medics of course took care of us, treating not only our injuries but our exposures to various environmental hazards. Our environmentalists not only kept us alive in the hostile environs, getting us potable drinking water and edible food and decent shelter, they also built supplies for us, including ropes, protective clothing, and other useful tools when we were cut off from supplies. Part of the time was given to their explorations of the world, identifications of new species and mapping of the world's resources. In the technology specializations, we had computer experts hack into systems to get us tremendously valuable information about our enemies, technicians operate vehicles and repair equipment to keep us moving, and roboticists shut down enemy robots and reprogram them to work for us. We also had military specialists. When we got in a fight, they were a little better than the others and carried their own weight--but everyone could fight, and always did when it came to it. The one military skill that stood out was demolitions, as our demolitions expert both disarmed a bomb that could have killed us all, and used the TD19 explosive from it to take out enemy fortifications. So the game really did use all our skills, to the point that a lot of characters cross-trained to make sure we had enough people skilled in every area.

Aliens are tough for any game. The original Star Frontiers had three player character alien types. The Vrusk could be criticized for being a monolithic stereotypical alien--giant insectoid creatures whose social structure was very like a complex corporation, with everyone focused on the profit of the whole. However, they were alien--humans couldn't really be like that. The Yazirians could be targets of the opposite criticism: being mammalian humanoids, they weren't all that different from humans, save for a few cultural nuances. At the same time, this allowed for a greatly diverse race. Every yazirian was said to have a life enemy, but in modern times someone's life enemy could be cancer or poverty as easily as a military enemy. The dralasites were in some ways the most alien. They were amoeba-like in form, but that's not a completely accurate description. They changed gender over their life cycle, reproduced by airborne spores causing budding, and had no family relationships whatsoever. You could play them, if you thought about it, but they had very little that was like humanity about them.

Sure the alien races encountered elsewhere were considerably more stereotypical; but given the difficultly of creating alien races in the first place, and of communicating the concept sufficiently that they can be presented as alien secondly, it's a bit much to expect a game to produce consistently original aliens for what are essentially minor parts in play.

Combat wasn't always deadly, nor was it particularly safe. We lost a character to an unexectedly potent attack once, and we always tried to fight smart because of the hazards.

We never owned a space ship, and had little hope of doing so; we traveled as passengers on hired liners and other ships, mostly.

I'm curious that the original post did not mention this game. The impression given was that the writer had tried many science fiction games and found none that were satisfying. I'm curious as to whether there was a heartbreaker aspect to Star Frontiers that I overlooked, or whether it was ignored when it came out, possibly because it was a TSR game. The core set was not complete; the detailed space ship rules were a second installment which worked pretty well and made the technology skills far more important, as these were prerequisites to most space ship operation skills--in turn making the spaceship game more of an upper level play concept, as you had to have reached top skill levels in some of your technology skills to get even basic scores in pilot, astrogation, or engineering. There was a shortcut to getting to the spaceship level of play, if you wanted (I tried it in a separate game), by being a cadet training for space fleet. I didn't do much with that, but it seemed to work. The late supplement Zebulon's Guide to the Galaxy Volume I was interesting in some of its expansion ideas, but much of it relied on the anticipated Volume II, which WotC reliably informs me was never published.

--M. J. Young

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

How many times do I have to say it ... Star Frontiers by definition cannot be a heartbreaker, and neither can Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller, or Skyrealms of Jorune. Heartbreakers are published in a later historical period - again, by definition. We are discussing these earlier games in order to understand the aesthetic parameters that were treated as rock-solid by later authors. M.J., does that make more sense?

Kedamono, that's a great list. I also think that the assumptions about aliens can be specified even tighter: they include the short, agile, and smartmouthed race; the big, lumpy, but perhaps quite bright race; the Kzinti/Klingon race with all the combat adds which always goes off about honor; and the ethereal psychic race.

Thomas, you're missing the point - in SF role-playing games, the humans are often very diverse, and in fact, Dune is often a major starting-point for the authors. The point Kedamono and others are making is that the aliens are not diverse, but rather serve the role they serve in much literary and cinema SF - to dramatize a particular human issue. This may or may not be a bad thing or a good thing - which again, is not the point. What matters in this thread is whether science fiction role-playing games take this idea as a starting point for their design parameters, which I think they do.

One of my frustrations with discussing science fiction (or various stories which are labeled whatever they're labeled, SF, etc), is that fandom crops up sooner or later. Someone feels the need to rave about how great such-and-such author is, and someone else feels the need to enter into a debate about some nuance of such-and-such author's work, and then someone starts talking about how cool or uncool whatever film adaptation of such-and-such author's work is ... So, to be blunt and clear, everyone, please leave your SF-convention hats at home when posting here.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

One problem with the Heartbreaker mode as well is that while there was really not published fantasy that fit the D&D model to any deep extent there certainly is a lot of SF that fits the space/laser-gun/funny-headed alien model.

In terms of 'narrative elements'  IME, Traveler does kind of mimic the actual fiction. Not exactly, of course, but the standard Traveler universe isn't a very far cry from Star Trek, Star Wars, or Ring World.

[Yes, in specifics there are vast differences but in generalities you could play the crew of a starship on a 5-year mission in Traveler, or fly a spacecraft past Imperial Blockade ships, or investigate a massive alien construct]

The fact that major generic system's space books fall into this model is pretty indicative that there's a different underlying set of assumptions. Fantasy Hero and GURPS Fantasy did NOT re-create the D&D model with any serious fidelity, IMO (elves and dwarves aside, there was no real 'cleric-role,' lots of world-stuff in Yirth, etc.)

But the fact is, these games, the ones I'm even passingly familiar with (and I would exclude cyberpunk games from the list) that portray a space-opera world do so not because of fidelity to the source game as the Fantasy Heartbreaker shows but actually to the source fiction to one degree or another. Traveler's shotgun-weilding space-traders are, if anything, somewhat removed from the standard space-opera fiction.

That makes them a fundamentally different animal from the Fantasy Heartbreaker.  One can look at design limitations one precieves but, IMO, the later space games weren't really all that much like Traveler systemically. Certainly we didn't see a lot of games where you could lose a character during chargen.

I think the charge of Heartbreaker (and in the essay, I think it's clearly a 'charge') is being leveled, improperly. Much of the accusation applies directly to the fiction being emulated and little applies to the mechanics which one might presume are derravitive (James Bond also includes a vehicle system, a combat system, and some general assumptions about what badguys would be like within certain stereotypes--that doesn't make it a Science Fiction Heartbreaker and the traditional model of game with a character generation system and a combat system isn't enough to hang a Heartbreaker lable on either, IMO).

-Marco

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Marco, I do see your point that the source fiction plays a greater role in the design of SF role-playing games than it does in fantasy role-playing games. However, I don't think that point negates the heartbreaker designation. There does exist a body of role-playing games, published from the late 1980s to the present, which conform to a fairly strict set of aesthetic and rules standards concerning "science fiction," and which are commercial disasters. The relationship to sources just works a little differently, that's all - not only a standard set of source games, but also a standard set of SF motifs from the larger pop culture. I think the two sources are sufficiently tightly linked not to offer any sort of conceptual difficulty.

Did you see my post at the end of the first page? It was directed to some of your earlier points, among others.

Best,
Ron

[Marco]

Hi Ron,

I did see it, yes--and the conclusion that SF HB's were weak on purpose of play is, I think, insightful (being in the space-FBI in Star Frontiers did make the game more purposeful, IMO). But then, if the game has a different relation to the fiction, I think there are two points that need to be examined.

Firstly, why are we still using the Heartbreaker designation? What is it that breaks the heart about these games? In the original essay it seemed that it was the elements of design (and, mostly, not setting per-se) that were really and truly good--but were, in your analysis, shackled due to either not being incorrectly presented innovative or due to not overcoming the baggage of the basic non-literary D&D mythology.

Originally it was not simply that some designer poured his heart into a game that was not a comercial succes. Does Encounter Critical* count? I would think not, since I don't believe that it would contain the innate value that the Fantasy Heartbreakers did--but it certainly fits the mold of traditional design (from the 70's), lots of weapons and combat, and I don't think it could really be counted as a commercial success (although the authors were probably pleased with its run).

If we've moved from analysis of the evolutionary tree of game-design to genre critique (look at all those books and movies with mono-culture planets, simplistic aliens, and laser-gun centric resolutions) or a question of commerical success then I think it's becoming a different and, IMO, less insightful form of commentary.

Specifically it is becoming what the term Heartbreaker is commonly used as--rather than how you, to my understanding, first meant it: a term used to designate a game in a given genre as lackluster or inferior.

Seecondly, Star Hero was not, AFAIK, a commercial success--and it gave no guidance to the players about what they were supposed to do. Structure wise it had skills, a combat system, and a spaceship system.

How do we distinguish it from any other Heartbreaker (considering that it contained the char-gen rules in the book, making it different from GURPS Space in that regard).

If it is a Heartbreaker then it gets the status purely on it's application to genere in a broad manner. The term is more about setting than mechanics--and I think that simply calling the games 'space-opera' might be more meaningful.

-Marco
* Encounter Critical: does it count?
http://www.pen-paper.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=viewdownload&cid=7

[John Kim]

How many times do I have to say it ... Star Frontiers by definition cannot be a heartbreaker, and neither can Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller, or Skyrealms of Jorune. Heartbreakers are published in a later historical period - again, by definition. We are discussing these earlier games in order to understand the aesthetic parameters that were treated as rock-solid by later authors. M.J., does that make more sense?

We should clarify about the definition, I think.  The provisional glossary doesn't define "Heartbreaker" separately from "Fantasy Heartbreaker".  "Fantasy Heartbreaker" is defined as "A published role-playing game which retains specific aesthetic assumptions from pre-3rd edition versions of Dungeons & Dragons."  

So here are you defining "Heartbreaker" as "a published role-playing game which retains specific aesthetic assumptions from a well-known earlier game", yes?  If so, I tend to agree with Marco.  I don't think complaints here particularly come from earlier games.  For example, Kedamono/John Reiher's complaint about monoculture aliens or worlds is just as prominent in novels and movies.  It applies just as much to, say, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels or the Firefly TV series as it does to any of the games in the list.

[Caldis]

The original fantasy heartbreaker article was interesting because it showed examples of these heartbreakers that had great ideas for a few simple things then fell back on what they knew (d&d) for everything else.  For me at least something like that will be necessary for sci-fi.  Where are these games that fall back on how it was done in x?  I havent seen any really but that may just be me.

That's another problem for sci-fi rpg's there is no monolith like d&d to fall back to.  Traveller was pretty big as was Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and a few others but none of them were big in the way D&D was big in the fantasy market.  In fact I would think that where the designers looked to for how it was done before was often outside sci-fi rpg's, back to d&d or something else they'd played before.

One thing I think Ron touched on when he spoke of lack of purpose for most Sci-fi games is the inherent sim basis of most of these games.  They were very focused on detailing the setting and how the universe worked for the most part without bringing up what to do within the universe.    You could choose from dozens of types of weapons, professions, or races, but had little guidance on how to develop a story within said universe.

[M. J. Young]

Star Frontiers by definition cannot be a heartbreaker, and neither can Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Traveller, or Skyrealms of Jorune. Heartbreakers are published in a later historical period - again, by definition. We are discussing these earlier games in order to understand the aesthetic parameters that were treated as rock-solid by later authors. M.J., does that make more sense?

It makes perfect sense in the context of fantasy heartbreakers. I'm not as persuaded that it makes sense in the specific context of this thread. There are a few reasons I question it.

[*]In his initial post,

It's easy to me to write about SF heartbreakers because SF rpgs have always broken my heart.

Perhaps it was not intended, but I infered from that that the writer had never found a sci-fi game that was not itself a heartbreaker. As someone else observed, he appears to class Traveler in the heartbreaker category when he uses it as an example of a game with a single non-combat aspect that is well-covered but somewhat separated from the rest of the design. At no point does he suggest that there are games that are not heartbreakers, although he does single out Traveler as the original game everyone is copying.[*]The original post, and the consensus of subsequent posts, suggests that the sci-fi heartbreaker is not attempting to copy an original game, but a very narrow selection of the literature, specifically the space opera materials. If that is so, the materials on which these are based is considerably older than the earliest games, and it is entirely reasonable to identify these as heartbreakers if they are attempting to copy the literature instead of the parent game.[*]I'm not persuaded that Traveler is the seminal game, or indeed whether there exists a seminal game. I suspect it was the first; but if Metamorphosis Alpha was at all inspired by it, it took a very different tack, which led to the design of Gamma World, which would seem to be the seminal game for all post-apocalyptic sci-fi heartbreakers. Star Frontiers has much more in common with Traveler in that regard, but hardly seems to me to have copied it, and all subsequent games may be drawing on the combination of the two, a sort of pooled foundation. It might be considered a heartbreaker if we said it drew on Traveler to fill in the gaps, but it doesn't seem (to me) to have the feel of such a thing, even if it fits some of the requirements.[/list:u]
So the question is, what does heartbreaker mean when Brian uses the word?

--M. J. Young