Breaking the Heart of the Universe

[Valamir]

First off, lets put some perspective back into the Heartbreaker moniker.  It is not a perjorative term.  It is a term that aptly captures the essential point of the entire concept.

A Heartbreaker is a game that we the consumer wanted so very much to love.  The cover was engaging, the blurb on the back promised excitement and adventure, the art was evocative, and man...wouldn't it be great to have a really good space game to play...look at that dude...I wanna play him.

And then we get it home...and read it.  We can see the author's devotion.  The game isn't some slapped together PoS...if it was we never would have fallen for it in the first place.  There's some REALLY cool stuff in there...stuff we REALLY REALLY want to like.  But ultimately...the game taken as a whole is just warmed over "x".  And that's where the Heartbreak part comes in.  Like a crush that turns out to not really be "all that" after the first couple of dates (if it takes that long), the game that we were so excited about and held such promise winds up being disappointing.

THAT's what being a Heartbreaker is all about.  I don't care "Fantasy" from "Science Fiction" from "Zombie Cowboys".  The adjective in front of it is material only in so far as it points out which "x" (or Xs) the game is derivative of.  

Calling something a Heartbreaker isn't another way of saying "it sucked".  "It sucked" is easy enough to say, we don't need a jargon word for that.  Calling it a Heartbreaker represents the actual feeling of sadness a lover of RPGs feels when they find a game that tries so hard, but ultimately doesn't work.


The only question is then...what didn't work?  Where did the game fail?

IS there actually a common theme, a common failure, among these games that disappoint that can be described as characteristic of games of this category.  OR is the disappointment so based on individual preference that the game is only a "heart breaker" to you.  In other words: are these various disappointing titles repeating the same mistakes?

That's where the characteristic lack of familiarity with other games out there comes in.  If these designers had familiarized themselves with more than just the core game lines then they might have noticed that they were making the same mistakes as others who went before.  They might have realized how common place their "revolutionary" idea actually was.


Whether Sci Fi Heartbreakers exist or not then comes down to whether we can identify consistant, commonly repeated elements across the majority of potential candidates that (in my non exhaustive list):
1) simply duplicate with little substantive value added what the "ancestor" game(s) already did.
2) make extreme effort to "fix" a "problem" that is only a problem for the hardest core niche of gamers (Entire games have been published for the sole purpose of fixing D&D HPs or the Class system).  The rest of the game falling back to #1
3) Often includes 1 highly original innovative subsystem that was the designer's primary motivation for the game...the rest of the game falling back to #1.


For a Sci Fi Heartbreaker, what are we looking at?

What are some common features that we see over and over again.

1)  Be anything character creation.  Very rarely do we see a Sci Fi game where you are limited in your options.  Even though most sci-fi stories are very limited in scope (some occuring entirely on a single ship, or to a single family, or about a single conflict)...game designers have this irrational need to let you create the Junior Assistant Bantha Stall Mucker character.  If its possible to conceive of a person like that existing in some far corner of the universe, then (the reasoning goes) you should be able to create them as a character.  That "should" is to me one of the most telling features of impending Heartbreak.  No one can give a satisfactory answer to "why should you" that amounts to anything more than "because".



2) Missing the point of the literature.  This is where Sci Fi and Fantasy Heartbreakers have a lot in common.  Both are highly derivative of the source literature but both completely miss the point of the literature in their eagerness to emulate the trappings.

Good Sci-Fi literature are morality plays.  They take an issue and they use the flexibility of fiction to address it.  Most of the best sci-fi stories are highly focused.  You don't get details about the rest of the universe in Starship Troopers or Forever War.  You don't read about how the common folk live in Dune.  Planets and aliens are one dimensional ("the desert world" the "water world", etc.) because they serve a specific function in the story and do not need to be developed beyond that function.  Its when hack authors miss the purpose of those functions and just start creating Desert Worlds and Water Worlds because "that's all those other authors did", that you wind up with mass produced Sci-Fi Drek that's every bit as prevalent as the mass produced Fantasy Drek.  RPG designers then do the same thing and Voila...yet another ho hum sci-fi setting.

People miss the point that every planet the Enterprise visited was just a stage for the "issue of the week" to be played out on.  It wasn't meant to be a complete world, a complete culture, or a fully diverse people.  So simply copying the format into a game without copying over the purpose (of presenting an issue to wrestle with that the world is just a back drop for) is, for me, a key "Heart Breaker ahead" sign post.

Even the Venerable Traveler was guilty of this.  At least, I don't remember any "random issuer generator" alongside the atmospheric content generator.


3) The one cool idea.  Go down the list of of some of the games that have been mentioned here.  Chances are you'll be able to identify what the one cool idea was that motivated the designer to write the game in the first place.  Some times its a Fix.  Other times its an original idea.  Maybe its a really neat alien.  Or a piece of technology of the "what would the world be like if "X" existed" nature.  The "Cool idea" will often resemble other "Cool Ideas".  Frex, in Dune people fight with knives because shields render firearms ineffective.  That's a cool idea.  Once a gamer gets an idea like that into their heads, they often feel the need to design an entire game around it.  How many games can you identify that had a cool idea like that and then the rest of the game was just thrown together around it?

And THEN...and here's where the Heart Break comes in...instead of JUST making the game about that cool idea and the select types of characters involved with it...we revert back to "be-anything character creation" and the Cool Idea just gets lost in a world populated with Bantha Stall Muckers.

[Marco]

First off, lets put some perspective back into the Heartbreaker moniker.  It is not a perjorative term.  It is a term that aptly captures the essential point of the entire concept.

Well, first off--it clearly is a perjorative term in the essay here. Magic systems are included in games because you 'can't make a game with out them,' Traveler's trade system is deadly dull, and Albedo has mass combat rules. All of these games have been disappointments.

I wanted to like Cool World and I didn't--and, you know, that sorta broke my heart--but the fact that I wanted to like it doesn't mean that there's a world of difference between saying "it had a really cool idea--but it sucked" and saying "it sucked."

In Ron's original essay the term was applied because of things the game actually did do right.

Here it's applied because of stuff the buyer thought maybe it would do right.

From day one, I've said that the term Heartbreaker would (and is) used in the common language as a way to give a game you don't feel is up-to-snuff a good condescending pat on the head and send it on its way. That wasn't the original meaning--but that's how it's used here and how it's being defended.

1)  Be anything character creation.  Very rarely do we see a Sci Fi game where you are limited in your options.  Even though most sci-fi stories are very limited in scope (some occuring entirely on a single ship, or to a single family, or about a single conflict)...game designers have this irrational need to let you create the Junior Assistant Bantha Stall Mucker character.  If its possible to conceive of a person like that existing in some far corner of the universe, then (the reasoning goes) you should be able to create them as a character.  That "should" is to me one of the most telling features of impending Heartbreak.  No one can give a satisfactory answer to "why should you" that amounts to anything more than "because".

If the game is very focused in one part (the intended action) and not in another (char-gen), then, yes, that can be a problem in design--but that isn't the same thing as 'make anyone you want' for a 'play in a far-future universe' game which I think a lot of these are.

If a game is NOT strictly limited in it's context (you play a member of the Robinson family who is lost in space, forex) then the open char-gen shouldn't be a sign of a Heartbreaer at all. If it is, this makes Star Hero a Heartbreaker. And GURPS Space. Hell, it makes Transhuman Space a heartbreaker because you can be anyone in that universe.

I can see that saying that a game which is highly focused should maintain that focus (you can't make a medical doctor in Top Secret, IIRC)--but if the game takes place in a fictional world with some breadth and the focus is not intensive then limiting characters just produces limited games.

That isn't any kind of objective improvement.

It's also different from Ron's objection, IMO. Ron noted that you could get your froggy engineer and not know what to do with him. I agree--that could be a problem--but if, in a free-form game, like Traveler, you make a froggy engineer and come to the table and go "what happens?" then you are at least, IMO, 70% responsible for that condition.

Expecting some direction to come from the players and GM's isn't unreasonable (although I concede that most games--especially earlier ones--could do better in laying out how to organize games). Most games from the 70's and 80's did a mediocre job of hand-holding in this respect, IMO.

2) Missing the point of the literature.  This is where Sci Fi and Fantasy Heartbreakers have a lot in common.  Both are highly derivative of the source literature but both completely miss the point of the literature in their eagerness to emulate the trappings.

Good Sci-Fi literature are morality plays.  They take an issue and they use the flexibility of fiction to address it.  Most of the best sci-fi stories are highly focused.  You don't get details about the rest of the universe in Starship Troopers or Forever War.  You don't read about how the common folk live in Dune.  Planets and aliens are one dimensional ("the desert world" the "water world", etc.) because they serve a specific function in the story and do not need to be developed beyond that function.  Its when hack authors miss the purpose of those functions and just start creating Desert Worlds and Water Worlds because "that's all those other authors did", that you wind up with mass produced Sci-Fi Drek that's every bit as prevalent as the mass produced Fantasy Drek.  RPG designers then do the same thing and Voila...yet another ho hum sci-fi setting.

I think that 'missing the point' is often part of the translation from static-story media to dynamic RPG media. And as we see with Lord of the Rings, many fans don't like what they did. Many do. Saying that the movies 'missed the point' is, IMO, missing the point.

Lots of SF is, indeed, wrapped around a moral-issue. Take Star Trek (but then, would you consider Prime Directive, which really 'misses the point of the show' to be a Heartbreaker?) but this is not so true for, say, Known Space.

While Ringworld is a pretty cool book and could be written up in a literature class, when I look over the various KS stories, I can, you know, get a sense that one might 'actually play' in that universe without having to have a mechanic or a limted system that directs me to 'the point.'

Actually wanting to play in those worlds and imagine them as real outside of the constraints of a specific morality-based structure is a strong appeal--one that can apply evenly to Narrativist or Simulationist gaming (even without a morality-of-the-week structure, the Star Trek universe contains plenty of moral gold to mine).

3) The one cool idea.  Go down the list of of some of the games that have been mentioned here.  Chances are you'll be able to identify what the one cool idea was that motivated the designer to write the game in the first place.  Some times its a Fix.  Other times its an original idea.  Maybe its a really neat alien.  Or a piece of technology of the "what would the world be like if "X" existed" nature.  The "Cool idea" will often resemble other "Cool Ideas".  Frex, in Dune people fight with knives because shields render firearms ineffective.  That's a cool idea.  Once a gamer gets an idea like that into their heads, they often feel the need to design an entire game around it.  How many games can you identify that had a cool idea like that and then the rest of the game was just thrown together around it?

This is much closer to the Fantasy Heartbreakers original concept. But the games I am familiar with didn't draw mechanically from each other (granted, I do not know most of them--but I do know many SF games that would fit in the category of trying to be Space Opera with a cool idea or two).

If you can find games that 'fixed Traveler' (what was broke?) and added their one-cool idea, then I think you would have a Heartbreaker essay on par with the original.

But this one--the one you're addressing--isn't it. In this case, there is no good game. Everything is a disappointment. The 'one good idea' is usually very poorly done. Where a mechanic might seem to make sense and isn't described as poor (Albedo's mass-battle rules, which I don't really remember) it's out of place.

I mean, read the essay: other than a set of expectations, where did the 'heart' come into the picture at all? The essay is about how all the games are broken.

-Marco

[M. J. Young]

Missing the point of the literature.  This is where Sci Fi and Fantasy Heartbreakers have a lot in common.  Both are highly derivative of the source literature but both completely miss the point of the literature in their eagerness to emulate the trappings.

Good Sci-Fi literature are morality plays.  They take an issue and they use the flexibility of fiction to address it.

I think this is dangerously close to saying that a sci-fi game that doesn't support narrativist play is a heartbreaker. I'm doubtful. After all, it suggests that it is not Star Trek if the focus of the players is on the gadgets and technology, even if every scrap of that aspect is ripped from the show. I don't buy it.

--M. J. Young

[John Burdick]

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.

Once when I suggested Heavy Gear (Dream Pod 9) in response to a forum inquiry for a scifi game, the response treated it as an oddball idea. Not really proper scifi in the sense of the poster's original question. I think your list of assumptions illustrates the contrast. None of them (except being in the future) apply to Heavy Gear. The suggestions fitting the list were accepted as normal.

John

[Storn]

Well, ideas are cheap... so here are mine.

I actually started a scifi game where there are starships and such, but the players are on one planet.  They are P.I.s and they often work for offworld insurance companies checking claims on a tapped out mineral planet.  Pretty mundane stuff.  The emphasis is on retro 20th century fashion (flappers and spats mixed with disco, to the future, it is all the same of the wacky creativity of the 20th) and a pulpy noir feel.  I also use a lot of my copywriting background as pointed satire of current advertising trends.  But that idea isn't really original (Bladerunner's coke ads come to mind).  I'm starting out small.  Just twin cities at the moment, no attempt to do anything with the planet except general info and terms for the players.

The other idea I always wanted to PLAY, but never wanted to run (hence, it ain't happenin') is that the conflict is with a biosphere of a planet.  The players and allies are colonists, dropped off.  The planet is wily (psychic planets have popped a couple of times in my readings) and voracious... tame the place (or at least your corner) or perish.  So sociology and biology and engineering are just as important as knowing which end of a blaster to point at the target.

So, in one idea, the tension is mostly social.  Who you know, who'd ya piss off and who rubbed who out... pretty much any Dashell Hammet story.  The other idea, the tension is mostly man vs. nature.  Just an alien nature, so the GM can whip out lots of surprises.

Sure.  Combat can happen in both settings, but it doesn't have to dominate.  Not relying on combat for tension/drama/conflict in the colony scenario would take a lot of work, that I admit.  More science that I can bring to bear for sure.  But I believe it could be done.

What breaks my heart... or at least my head... is the technobabble lists of gear in Gurps or Hero or Traveller.  I used to think such shopping lists were cool.  Now, I just find them distracting to the actual story/plot/characters.  I just don't care.  They don't generate story.  My players hate equi9pment management.  Sure, cybernetics and genesplicing can CREATE cool characters... but rarely does a Tivo PulseMod Scanner Alpha do much for me.  Trinity had such a small amount of gear that I actually found myself being more interested.

I'm not sure how to make technology more accesible to story.  Each little leap of techno extrapolation can have huge social (environmental/business etc etc) implications.  At some point, ya gotta draw the line and say "the game starts here and this stuff is in play".  I think fantasy is a lot easier to control the info because while a scimitar and a broadsword ARE different, they are still sharp things to swing and hurt people.  A magnetic railgun has implications, but an anti-matter gun has even greater ones.

If you can make the tech cool and interesting and accesible ( huge, tall order here), then I think there is a better chance of avoiding heartbreak status.  Of course, what *I* find cool & interesting, the next gamer might find yawn-worthy.

[Valamir]

From day one, I've said that the term Heartbreaker would (and is) used in the common language as a way to give a game you don't feel is up-to-snuff a good condescending pat on the head and send it on its way. That wasn't the original meaning--but that's how it's used here and how it's being defended.

You can see condescending if you like.  I don't.

The original essay was very clear that despite the effort and the buried gem to be found that ultimately these games were failures.  They were failures because, despite the gem, there was a laundry list of things they did wrong.

Not, "things they did that I don't personally like".  But "things they did wrong and you should learn from that and not repeat those mistakes".


That isn't perjorative.  That's applying professional criticism.

If the game is very focused in one part (the intended action) and not in another (char-gen), then, yes, that can be a problem in design--but that isn't the same thing as 'make anyone you want' for a 'play in a far-future universe' game which I think a lot of these are.

If a game is NOT strictly limited in it's context (you play a member of the Robinson family who is lost in space, forex) then the open char-gen shouldn't be a sign of a Heartbreaer at all. If it is, this makes Star Hero a Heartbreaker. And GURPS Space. Hell, it makes Transhuman Space a heartbreaker because you can be anyone in that universe.

I don't buy it.  Once again the question of "why" is answered with nothing more than "because".  Under what set of circumstances is "Make anyone you want" a good value added design goal?  How does that help capture the feel or flavor of science fiction.  What was the designers purpose for going that route rather than a more tightly limited one.

If the designer can't list off a half dozen bullet points for why its a superior option for this setting for this game...and the best he can do is come up with an answer that amounts to "because someone might wanna play a Bantha Stall Mucker"...then this is a design flaw.  Not a feature.  Its a choice made with no real reason behind it other than the assumption that "that's how its supposed to be".  And THAT speaks to the very core of why the game is a Heart Breaker.

"Be any Character you want" is a design flaw...period.  Unless, and only unless, the designer has a damn good reason for why that option is superior to a more limited option.  And "Maybe someone might want to play 'X'" is not a damn good reason.  "Maybes" are damn poor reasons to base critical design decisions on.

Expecting some direction to come from the players and GM's isn't unreasonable (although I concede that most games--especially earlier ones--could do better in laying out how to organize games). Most games from the 70's and 80's did a mediocre job of hand-holding in this respect, IMO.

I don't disagree.  But expecting MOST of the direction to come from the GAME is not unreasonable either.  The fact that historically most of the direction was left to the players/GM is one key reason why the hobby never grew beyond niche levels.

I think this is dangerously close to saying that a sci-fi game that doesn't support narrativist play is a heartbreaker. I'm doubtful. After all, it suggests that it is not Star Trek if the focus of the players is on the gadgets and technology, even if every scrap of that aspect is ripped from the show. I don't buy it.

Not exactly.  The point is that things are portrayed a certain way in the literature for a reason.  That reason being what they contribute to the overall message of the story.  In other words:  Form follows function.  What isn't necessary to deliver the message is ignored, pruned, swept aside.

If you're going to create a sci-fi game, but you aren't interested in building a message into it (say you're going for a sim rather than a nar facilitating design), then you shouldn't simply copy the trappings from the source material.

Those trappings have the form they do because they performed a specific function.  Copying the form but ignoring the function is pointless and is "derivative" in the worst sense of the word.

Invent your own function...then invent your own form.

Klingons in the original series had the form they did because they were a not so subtle analog to the Russians and the Cold War.  They were a product of the time the series was made and the message Roddenbury was conveying through the medium.  Take away that context and the Klingons are just plain dumb.  

Where SF Heartbreakers "miss the point" is when they copy the Klingons without understanding that the only reason the Klingons worked was because of what they represented.  Take them out of that context and they don't work.  And you just have yet another Sci-fi game with aliens with funny clothes.

[Marco]

You can see condescending if you like.  I don't.

The original essay was very clear that despite the effort and the buried gem to be found that ultimately these games were failures.  They were failures because, despite the gem, there was a laundry list of things they did wrong.

Not, "things they did that I don't personally like".  But "things they did wrong and you should learn from that and not repeat those mistakes".


That isn't perjorative.  That's applying professional criticism.

Let me be very, very clear: Other than the specific turn of phrase, I am not finding fault with the original essay--and even there, other than noting that 'this is how I thought it'd be used' I am not especially concerned by it. I find that the orignal essay has merrit as criticism.

In numbered points:
1. I find the term Heartbreaker to lend itself to condescention.
2. I find the orignal essay, outside of the term to be professional criticism.
3. I find the present essay to be devoid of the aspects that made the orignal use of the term palateable--specifically, I find the present essay condescending to each and every one of these games (including Traveler) and every element of them.

The original essay remarked on the "gems" that the games contained and wrapped its focus (and use of the term Heartbreaker) around that. This essay finds no gems and simply declares all these games have been failures. Thus present essay is doing exactly what I suggested the term would be used for when I saw it in the original.

IMO the present essay is not performing useful criticism in the manner of the original.

I don't buy it.  Once again the question of "why" is answered with nothing more than "because".  Under what set of circumstances is "Make anyone you want" a good value added design goal?  How does that help capture the feel or flavor of science fiction.  What was the designers purpose for going that route rather than a more tightly limited one.

The answer is that the game designer may not know better than the GM and players how the group wishes to approach the fiction. If I give you Known Space, how am I to know what position you wish to take in it?

You can say that's not a good idea for a game but, frankly, that's your opinion. Speaking as someone who always wanted to play Harry Mudd in Star Trek, I find my opinion disagrees.

Where SF Heartbreakers "miss the point" is when they copy the Klingons without understanding that the only reason the Klingons worked was because of what they represented.  Take them out of that context and they don't work.  And you just have yet another Sci-fi game with aliens with funny clothes.

One of the great strengths of RPG's is the ability for the players to take the elements of a fictional universe and use them to tell a different or even contradictory story with them (much to some author's horror, apparently).

Taking that away in the name of good design strikes me as a very narrow point of view.

-Marco

[Kedamono]

I don't buy it. Once again the question of "why" is answered with nothing more than "because". Under what set of circumstances is "Make anyone you want" a good value added design goal? How does that help capture the feel or flavor of science fiction. What was the designers purpose for going that route rather than a more tightly limited one.

If the designer can't list off a half dozen bullet points for why its a superior option for this setting for this game...and the best he can do is come up with an answer that amounts to "because someone might wanna play a Bantha Stall Mucker"...then this is a design flaw. Not a feature. Its a choice made with no real reason behind it other than the assumption that "that's how its supposed to be". And THAT speaks to the very core of why the game is a Heart Breaker.

"Be any Character you want" is a design flaw...period. Unless, and only unless, the designer has a damn good reason for why that option is superior to a more limited option. And "Maybe someone might want to play 'X'" is not a damn good reason. "Maybes" are damn poor reasons to base critical design decisions on.

Tri Tac Games put out two SFRPGs where we wanted the players to create any character they wanted to: Fringeworthy & Incursion.

Incursion was your basic Alien Abduction SFRPG, where your character was picked up and somehow, took over the alien starship. But, as you can see, we put the PCs in a situation where they had a purpose: Find Earth. The ship was idiot proof and pretty much flew itself and the PCs had to negotiate with it. Combat in all Tri Tac Games RPGs is always deadly, but you could learn skills OJT and Accuracy was a stat, not a skill.

Fringeworthy is an Alternate History SFRPG, where only one person in 100,000 has the ability to use the Fringepaths and Portals. (We predate Stargate by a few years BTW.) So you could literally be anyone, from an ex-marine/short order cook to a Bushman from the Kalahari. (Both are actual character types.) However, the PCs would then go through a training program and gain new skills and abilities to help them deal with the Fringepaths.

In both cases a good case can be made for the "Be anyone you want to be" method of character generation/design. But in one, you had to deal with what you created, but you could learn new skills fairly easily. The other the PCs were "enhanced" after character generation and gained skills appropriate for the mission they had to perform.

Then there is FTL:2448 and I think you nailed on the head why the game didn't take off as well as others did. Here, the "Be anyone you want to be" method left the players floundering, trying to figure out what to do, and they for the most part ended up doing the Traveler thing, and become space truckers. But that was only a small portion of the game universe and attempts by the designer to add conflict and intrigue just didn't take off. If we do this game again, at least I will make sure that there are roles to be followed or fulfilled.

However, this brings up something I've run into: During the initial redesign sessions for Fringeworthy, one of the designers dragged his feet at every revision and rule, stating that we were railroading the GM, and forcing him to run the game a certain way.

The counter argument was that we were providing a framework for the GM to use to run game so that he would have some idea about what was going on. And now I'm sure of that. We will have to provide guidelines on how to run a Fringeworthy game. A good GM will take those and make them his own, a so-so GM will thank us for the assistance.

[greyorm]

Marco,

Much as I can understand your point, and where you are coming from, I think you are wrong. And I think you are wrong because we are talking about Science Fiction as a genre, as opposed to fantasy as a genre.

As a genre, Science Fiction is not about spaceships, technology, aliens, or the future. Science fiction, much moreso than fantasy, is about dealing with modern humans and modern or timeless issues. The "futuristic setting" that comes with them is a stage, rather than the point.

In any science fiction literature you care to talk about, the technology and the year are nothing more than Color...they are Plot Device.

Science fiction is not and never has been about realistic portrayals of actual humanity in the future. Big spaceships, laser pistols, cryogenic suspension, teleporters, etc. are all props. One thing doesn't change in all those stories: they're about very modern people who just happen to live in a future era, who are wrestling with either notably modern or timeless moral/ethical issues.

You could rewrite those stories into the modern age, and the people would not change, only the backdrop. THAT is the point of science fiction: "What would we be like if we had this stuff?" not "What would it be like if we had this stuff?"

This is why the question: "Why can't I play Harry Mudd?" is a red herring -- science fiction literature has never been about "what it would be like to live in the future." Yet SF RPGs are. Being able to play Harry Mudd misses the point of the whole of the genre!

Science fiction isn't about the science, or the technology, or space, or the future, or "being there." It never has been. It's always been about us, right now, today. This is the element that defines science fiction as a genre, and has since its inception.

Science Fiction is defined by being a morality play: whether any of us like that or not, or whether we become incensed that Science Fiction isn't about Exploration at all.

Perhaps this is what Brian refers to as "breaking his heart" -- SF RPGs fail to be about what Science Fiction itself is about at its central axis? Instead, they attempt to be "really being in the future"?

[Kedamono]

The answer is that the game designer may not know better than the GM and players how the group wishes to approach the fiction. If I give you Known Space, how am I to know what position you wish to take in it?

You can say that's not a good idea for a game but, frankly, that's your opinion. Speaking as someone who always wanted to play Harry Mudd in Star Trek, I find my opinion disagrees.

Problem was that Harry Mudd was not playable in the original Star Trek RPG because the role of civilians, especially traders and merchants let alone con men, was never defined. FASA, God bless them, did their very best to flesh out the universe and try to make it work. Especially the TNG Trek. But unless you bought every book and supplement, you couldn't play Harry Mudd out of the box, so to speak.

As for Known Space... Hmm, I could be a... um what? I could be 300 years old and maxed on all skills... The ARM will definitely clamp down on any activities in Human Space and the Kzinti will eat us if we went into their space... Let's go to the Ringworld! What kind of character am I? Does it matter? I'm 300 years old, I can be any thing I want to be. See the problem? A real fan of Niven can really tanj the game with an old character.

However, as you pointed out, the GM may have an idea of what he wants to run. He may decide to run a ARM game, and the PCs will be ARM agents, hunting down organleggers and other criminals.

And what did the GM do? He narrowed the focused and forced the players to create characters of a certain type.

So why is it good for the GM to do that and bad for the game's designer to do so? IMHO, it's in the game designer's best interest to narrow focus as well, even to provide two or more narrow focuses that a GM could use to run a campaign in game universe.

Limitations are good, they provide something for the GM to play against and keep the players from floundering trying to find a role.

[NN]

I think this is dangerously close to saying that a sci-fi game that doesn't support narrativist play is a heartbreaker. I'm doubtful. After all, it suggests that it is not Star Trek if the focus of the players is on the gadgets and technology, even if every scrap of that aspect is ripped from the show. I don't buy it.
--M. J. Young

Id say that Simulationist and Gamist play is much much trickier in a sci-fi setting than a fantasy one.

[Marco]

Raven,
I have a great deal of appreciation for what you (and Ralph) are saying--so much so that I'm really reluctant to argue it any more. I'm not unaware of methods of translating fiction to RPG-formats in ways other than a straight-up virtuality.

On the other hand, I wouldn't write an essay talking about these story-games that break my heart because they don't get cause-and-effect right and clearly don't understand immersive play.*

So I am going to keep going.

1. As a critique of games the essay is co-opting the Heartbreaker term and methodlogy in order to argue against a certain translation of fiction-to-game. The idea of taking a fictional universe and faithfully reproducing the cause-and-effect world is, IMO, a very, very legitimate way to render that fiction accessbile across the GNS and GDS spectrum.

He is not doing the same thing that Ron did in the Fantasy essay although it wears the same clothes--and I find the repeated charges (again, Traveler's trade is deadly dull--huh?) to be exactly what I didn't like about the term's use in general conversation.

NOTE: The essay doesn't evidence any appeciation of the games the same way that Ron's did of the fantasy games he chose.

2. A game that lets me 'live in the future' (as a method of translating a fictional reality into a RPG) is a very effective tool in the with which to explore human-experience issues (or to keep some sort of 'point' as per GNS-Sim, I would expect too). Consider:

(a) Taking away my ability to play Harry Mudd, just because the game designer thinks it's missing the point is a lot like an author complaining that RPG'ers in his world are bound to miss the point by playing in it.

(b) Being Harry Mudd is full of wonderful premise: faced with self-righteous but enlightened federation goons, being a rebel has deep potential, IMO. Taking that away because you don't t think it's the point is just limiting to me--I'll keep looking until I find a system that works for me. My story isn't invalid just because it's different from Star Trek's main stories

But my Harry Mudd story gains its power and accessibility from being in the Star Trek world. So I have an authentic use for those elements even though I'm not using them the way the Star Trek-Play-A-Federation-Officer game wants me to.

(c) Looking at this:

You could rewrite those stories into the modern age, and the people would not change, only the backdrop. THAT is the point of science fiction: "What would we be like if we had this stuff?" not "What would it be like if we had this stuff?"

This is true only to an extent. If we are exploring issues of emotion and intuition over logic, having tools like Data and Spock or Asimov's robots creates characters that would change in a modern setting. Some of Walter Jon Williams short stories deal with post-human characters who have no simple modern-day equivalent but cast, IMO, a great deal of light on the human condition.

Science fiction isn't about the science, or the technology, or space, or the future, or "being there." It never has been. It's always been about us, right now, today. This is the element that defines science fiction as a genre, and has since its inception.

I don't want to argue against this--but I do want to note that a great deal of SF gets its 'kick' from the grandeure of the Ringworld or the strength of a General Products hull (it survives a crash into a Neutron Star). These concepts, properly served up are awesome and inspiring. We owe a great deal of our technology today not to human-interest family dramas but to science fiction that created an interest in, yes, the science.

Give the the game that actually lets you carry a black-hole bazzooka and I will give you a game that is inhernetly rife with premise (if you had the ultimate weapon and faced a governemnt that did a lot of good but also a lot of bad what might you do?)

Granted, most games don't do this. But I think that the fantastic elements of good science fiction are integral to the power of the story if not its basic nature.

Perhaps this is what Brian refers to as "breaking his heart" -- SF RPGs fail to be about what Science Fiction itself is about at its central axis? Instead, they attempt to be "really being in the future"?

Perhaps, but "really being in the future" is, IME, a legitimate way to get to the human-interest stuff that SF 'is about.' The virtualist-approach that those games give you is, IMO, every bit as valid as one that comes pre-packaged with a premise mechanic.

If you are right then Brian is speaking for a certain method of translating an imaginary game-world into an RPG and finding fault with it--not acknowledging or perhaps realizing that, for me, his approach is going to be as bad as mine is for him.

And to be clear: if someone is going to strongly tell me that an approach I like is objectively wrong, I'm not going to find that very convincing. If the article had been written without the snark, It'd look a lot more like a suggestion that people write some more 'Narrativist' SF RPG's instead of calling every SF game printed a heartbreaker.

-Marco
* Not my actual feeling about 'story-games' (whatever they are).

[John Burdick]

Id say that Simulationist and Gamist play is much much trickier in a sci-fi setting than a fantasy one.

I think it has to do with a discussion's affinity to the respective literature. Making gamist play feel like Stephen R. Donaldson fantasy is a stretch. Extending a small team wargame like Necromunda (Games Workshop miniature game featuring gangs on colony world) into gamist rpg play is simple. Many players don't expect D&D fantasy to be anything other than itself. First edition Gamma World didn't feel to me like it was trying to be the literature.

John

[Marco]

Problem was that Harry Mudd was not playable in the original Star Trek RPG because the role of civilians, especially traders and merchants let alone con men, was never defined. FASA, God bless them, did their very best to flesh out the universe and try to make it work. Especially the TNG Trek. But unless you bought every book and supplement, you couldn't play Harry Mudd out of the box, so to speak.

This is one of the reasons I find systems like GURPS and Hero to be my personal penacle of design. But I wouldn't presume to write an essay on all those 'limited-scope games' that have broken my heart.

And what did the GM do? He narrowed the focused and forced the players to create characters of a certain type.

Yes--and there's a world of difference between the game designer doing it and me doing it. If you do it as a designer you'd better hit all my plot points directly or you've created something that's inferior for my uses.

If you release Harry Mudd: See How The Other Half Dies then, you know, I'll buy one--but I might be the only one (I bet I'm not--but there you go).

If you give me GURPS Prime Directive, although I don't think they cover Mudd specifically, because the game is designed with go-anywhere-do-anything capablity then, you know, I'm rockin'

On the other hand ADB's Prime Directive, IIRC, did not really do Mudd all that well and so, for my purposes, is inferior.

I want to play in 'Star Trek.' Not Joe-designer's Star Trek (which maybe is limited to smarmy command-deck officers who beam the ship's doctor down into unsecured zones with frightening regularity)--and not 'Roddenbery's' either. As has been pointed out, once I start making it my own I'm not really in his Star Trek anymore--I can't play there: he created a TV show, not an RPG.

But as an RPG designer you have the option to get down with me enough to understand that 'because I want to' really is a good enough reason that I should.

-Marco

[John Kim]

I think you are wrong because we are talking about Science Fiction as a genre, as opposed to fantasy as a genre.

As a genre, Science Fiction is not about spaceships, technology, aliens, or the future. Science fiction, much moreso than fantasy, is about dealing with modern humans and modern or timeless issues. The "futuristic setting" that comes with them is a stage, rather than the point.
...
Science Fiction is defined by being a morality play: whether any of us like that or not, or whether we become incensed that Science Fiction isn't about Exploration at all.

I'm a little stuck here.  Even if I accept your definition that the true Science Fiction genre is a morality play, how does that contradict what Marco wrote?  I agree with Marco that one of the strengths of RPGs is that you need not be tied down to exactly reproducing the tropes of the genre as it is in books or movies.  

So, for example, I really like the original Traveller, and in fact it was important to me.  I can go on for a while about it, but I'm a bit stuck.  Are you saying I'm wrong to like it because it is objectively a failure?  As far as I can tell, it was about as commercially successful as a game of that era could be, and had enormous popularity.  And yet you're correct, that it didn't support being a morality play and thus doesn't qualify for the label of "Science Fiction" by your definition.  It is rather just a fictional game which involves science in an imaginary future.