Heartbreaker! Dreammaker! Lovetaker! Don't you mess around with me!

[Kynn]

Anyone else ever finding themselves caught by the urge to just make the most fantasyheartbreakerish fantasy heartbreaker you could make?

I keep being tempted. I have no idea why. But I might try it sometime, just for the heck of it.

I've read Ron's original fantasy heartbreaker essays on the topic. So what else do I need to throw into the mix in addition to what he's mentioned there, to keep up my heartbreaker quotient? Has the term itself had definitional drift in the last few years?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Making an actual Fantasy Heartbreaker is not possible per se for you, as it's an analytical term of cultural history. You might as well try to make a genuine Eskimo folk song - first you need to somehow become an Eskimo before you can even consider it, otherwise your work will just be an academic pastiche - what is called "literary form" in literature. (As in, "literary fairytale" instead of folk fairytale and so on.) Of course, if you happen to be ignorant of non-D&D rpg culture, while being a motivated and skilled individual, then carry on - you'll get there on your own

That being said, it's not a bad idea to fiddle around with basic fantasy adventure gaming. Personally, I return to it every year, it seems; there is lots of untapped potential in the form, and I guess I have some slight hankering to "redeem" it as well from the swamp of mediocrity that D&D culture has largely become. But that has little to do with Fantasy Heartbreakers per se.

Of course, I guess you could make a parody of a Fantasy Heartbreaker. That's not even an entirely original idea, I think that I've seen several of these during the last couple of years. But that kind of meta-writing is, again, it's own thing. The most important thing for that is to properly understand the concept, first: from what I've seen in the Internet, Fantasy Heartbreaker seems to be another one of those terms that get thrown around without even a rudimentary understanding of the phenomenon itself.

[FrankBrunner]

That being said, it's not a bad idea to fiddle around with basic fantasy adventure gaming. Personally, I return to it every year, it seems; there is lots of untapped potential in the form, and I guess I have some slight hankering to "redeem" it as well from the swamp of mediocrity that D&D culture has largely become. But that has little to do with Fantasy Heartbreakers per se.

Right. Unfortunately, a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction to any new fantasy game. They're quick to cry heartbreaker. I actually feel it has stifled development and driven some of the more literary and adventurous people away from the genre. That's too bad because I think you're right. There is a lot of potential in fantasy.

[Adam Dray]

Come now. We all know how Kynn means to use the term "fantasy heartbreaker." Let's answer her in the spirit of what she asked instead of telling her that her question is invalid.

I've had that itch to create an old-D&D-style fantasy game but then I get over it. I want to create a fantasy story game though and have had ideas (the project is called Towerlands) bouncing around for about a year now. I don't designing games that crunchy. I know I cannot design a better D&D than 4E.

[David Artman]

Come now. We all know how Kynn means to use the term "fantasy heartbreaker." Let's answer her in the spirit of what she asked instead of telling her that her question is invalid.

Hear, hear....

So, let's see....
1) Surly dwarves and haughty elves, antagonistic but ultimately on the same side.
2) Black-and-white morality.
3) Focus totally on crunch, mechanics, and simulation while simultaneously purporting that players role play (as in "actor's stance").
4) Monarchical GM with a Golden Rule that he or she can apply fiat whenever it's "more fun." (don't define "more" or "fun").
5) Insist that the players create the story through their character's actions. Insist that they never separate, because it's a hassle to GM that.
6) No metagame mechanics.
7) Copy mechanics and systems and setting details from other games... but purport that it's all innovative! (It's best if you can do this in ignorance, but might be too late for such, per Euro's general point).
The one (or maybe two) REALLY innovative things you add... bury them under a 50-item weapon list or in a surrounding, copied system, or couch it is a throw-away play option.
9) Underground labyrinths mandatory.
10) Vast, rambling setting history, complete with maps, monsters, and supernatural entities... which has no veracity in either geology, culture, or religion.

That ought to do it--pretty much every bullet item from his two essays.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well, sure, Adam, but then you're making a parody of the phenomenon. The real, historical phenomenon of Fantasy Heartbreakers happened due to a given experiental space habitated by many wannabe-designers  all around the world (there are half a dozen Finnish examples, for instance) - it's not something you can duplicate just by going through a checklist, any more than you can create genuine pulp literature, say. The best you can manage is a parody or homage to the phenomenon you research. If you wanted to make the real thing, you'd need to somehow immerse in the experience of being a person who'd create a Fantasy Heartbreaker. Perhaps not completely possible, but I'd think that the results would bear it out that you wouldn't get the same pathos out of it.

I guess I'm meaning to say is that while I appreciate that others find a different understanding of the term "Fantasy Heartbreaker" useful for them, I'm personally more interested in the original, specific phenomenon, and wouldn't want to muddle the issue any more by insisting on sloppy usage where one is not necessary. Of course you can use the term to mean just any vaguely fantastic adventure game (or whatever Kynn might have intended; Adam?), but then we'll need to know more - what kind of design goals would there be? I myself am highly amused by Mazes & Minotaurs, for instance; would something like that be in order here?

[Adam Dray]

I had missed that Kynn asked if there was definitional drift, so I guess all this is on-topic.

I think that people today use the term to mean a game that is a near copy of D&D with one or two innovations or changes, produced with much love and dedication, and often with the designer thinking it's more divergent from D&D than it is. I see people creating that type of fantasy heartbreaker every week here on the Forge.

[Kynn]

I think that people today use the term to mean a game that is a near copy of D&D with one or two innovations or changes, produced with much love and dedication, and often with the designer thinking it's more divergent from D&D than it is. I see people creating that type of fantasy heartbreaker every week here on the Forge.

Yeah, just an old-fashioned, shamelessly derivative, fun and zany and maybe even loaded up on too many rules or crunch for its own good RPG like they used to play back in the old days.

I find myself thinking of more experimental things ("we'll use SCRAPBOOKING as the game mechanic!") as time goes on, but part of me keeps saying "nooo let's just make a crazy swords-and-sorcery game, but make it awesome, more awesome than D&D!"

The historical roots of "that's something from a certain time period and you can't do that again" may be true, but it's immaterial relative to what I'm talking about.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'm cool with that, really; don't take my pedantry as criticism, please.

As I intimated above, I'm a big fan of traditional fantasy adventure games. I'm less hot about historical heartbreakers, mostly because I find them to be hopelessly entretched with mechanical assumptions I find odious: armor class, hit points and such are hit-or-miss for me, and rarely they are used in an elegant manner that would really interest me. Then again, if we're talking about old-school fantasy adventure in general, all that can go out of the window as necessary. For example, my own on and off musings about dwiddling d20 into an usable game are that kind of game design, if I understand your correctly.

[Frank Tarcikowski]

Anyone else ever finding themselves caught by the urge to just make the most fantasyheartbreakerish fantasy heartbreaker you could make?

Sure thing! But then I realize that what I would make would still be way hippie-gameish. Some weeks ago I went through old back-ups to dig up some old Star Wars d6 scenarios and I found a real heartbreaker I wrote back in 2003, called "The Sons of Wodan", and it was so stupid!

But when it somes to "redeeming basic fantasy adventure gaming", as Eero put it, sure, I have that urge, too, and some day I might well follow it.

- Frank

[Grand_Commander13]

That ought to do it--pretty much every bullet item from his two essays.

Hey hey, that checklist  was good enough to drag me out of exile and back to the Forge. :-)

I just see several checks from that list in the game I'm collaborating on, and yet the game is...  Well, it's so different.  Of course, the game fluff is designed to SCREAM heartbreaker ("Because there's always some dungeon that needs to be plundered."), though the mechanics are...  Well, they're different than anything I've seen in my limited experience, though I wouldn't say that they're so innovative I couldn't believe that they may have been done before.

You're right though David: all crunch, no metagame.  I don't really see that as so much of a bad thing though.  My friend and I just have so much experience in freewheeling the RPing (and let's face it: there are plenty of people with no interest in anything but monster bashing).  I'm still hoping to do The Company as my indie cred RPG (and I find that the time spent percolating in the back of my mind has been good for it), but this is going to be a fun RPG I can sink my teeth into.  Must you have so many of its fun points be Signs of the Heartbreaker?

I guess it's to my credit that we're not making a huge sprawling setting for it?  Just a few background pieces, a few locations.  Just flavor so you get a feel for what the world is like, then leaving the players to their own devices for what location THEY want THEIR adventure to be in.

[David Artman]

Must you have so many of its fun points be Signs of the Heartbreaker?

Hey, man, it's not me: I re-read Ron's article while writing that post, and I just broke out each bullet point. I'm not sure Ron even talks about FHBs being "not fun." His point is the breathless prose about innovation and uniqueness... followed by the sound of crickets after announcement, because folks who've done this hobby for, oh, thirty years have seen most of it before. The heartbreak isn't that the game sucks... it's that it brings little or nothing new (and what it brings that's new is buried); and so consumers stick with what they already have and know.

Pay no attention to me or to Ron, if you're loving making the game: by all means, go forth and multiply! Just be advised that it helps to market, present, and frame your work in the context of existing works, to really SHOW its uniqueness, not assert it in ignorance of what's been done decades before you independently got the idea (not saying you would--but that's sort of FHB Flaw #1, by Ron's thinking).

[Grand_Commander13]

Hey, I'm not genuinely upset, I was trying to take on a humorous tone.  I'm a chronic abuser of smilies, and I guess I was just so excited to be back I forgot to use them. :-P

Anyhoo, I may not have PLAYED huge volumes of fantasy games, but I keep my ear to the ground, and so when I profess ignorance...  Well, there's something to that.  Anyway, our Internet playtesters thought it was fun, and I'll be getting a face-to-face group to further polish it, and hopefully we'll have a fun product to release for you all.

I re-read Ron's essays yesterday though, and I'd actually disagree some about the core of a fantasy heartbreaker's identity: they're just so derivative it's not even funny.  Maybe this is just from my personal experience: I've been designing heartbreakers all my life (literally since I was five--though they were "design documents" based on computer games rather than PnP), and some time ago I wrote myself my own PnP heartbreaker (though it was more of a "near future heartbreaker").  It was...  Well, trust me, it was nowhere near as original as I thought it was.

So yeah, while my current RPG takes DnD's flavor (or, more specifically, DnD as played by munchkins), it is not derivative of DnD.  It's its own game, and the flavor was actually an accident of the game's genesis.  And while it has a lot of common elements of the heartbreaker, those elements are primarily coming from the flavor of DnD (which most heartbreakers seek to emulate).  But as I know all so well, you can make a heartbreaker and have it have very very few of the DnD trappings.  I'd say #7 on your checklist, the copying of settings and mechanics, is the most important part by far.  At least the way I read it.

[Kobayashi]

I couldn't help myself but succumb  to the urge of writing a "Fantasy Heartbreaker" (meant as "recreation of D&D type gaming with supposedly better rules').

I found the exercise to be extremely fun to write and play. But most of all it might me considered as a good experience in rpg design. What do you want from a game about dwarves, elves and halflings running around in search of fame and fortune ? What kind of rules do you want ? What type of play do you expect ? GM role ? Player's input ?

If I had to teach rpg design, writing a Fantasy Heartbraker would certainly be the first assignment I'd give.

[Ron Edwards]

Since the essays are being discussed, I should point out that in the second one, I recommend writing one's own heartbreaker, if you haven't already.

When people have tried it, something twists on them - and they find themselves writing something new they really love, with great passion and innovation. It's almost as if starting the process (let's write that heartbreaker) removes the need actually to finish it as such, yet sparks something that's not fettered by prior assumptions after all. This is how The Shadow of Yesterday began, actually!

So enough yipyap about the whats and whiches ... Kynn, what's your heartbreaker like, as conceived at the moment?

Best, Ron

P.S. The games I discussed in the essays do vary from one another in significant ways - there is no archetypal heartbreaker. For example, Dawnfire has the most glaring metagame element in its magic system that I've ever seen, light-years more powerful and usable than most games that feature such things. The points I made were based on trends among games that fit the definition, not themselves defining features.
P.P.S. I just downloaded Gates & Gorgons. I can't resist these damn things!