What ever happened to that article? I remember several months ago it was discussed about as another essay soon to be in the Articles section. I've been looking forward to it--and the advice would be greatly appreciated/needed for a project I have.

Hopefully, it will be posted soon and not on indefinite hiatus.

Keith

Hi Keith,

Bad news - that essay is definitely on hiatus. In fact, I've encouraged others to try their hand at writing it. Part of the reason is that my own experience with these games is limited, and most especially I'm not a veteran of Traveller or some of the earlier "parental" games.

Best,
Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks for being honest. Would it be possible to do this as a group project? I have played Traveller, 2300AD, Gamma World and looked at other games in a effort to write my first game: Embers of Empire. Yes, I've written a SF Heartbreaker. And yes I believe the baseline for any SFRPG would have to be Traveller, not Metamorphis Alpha or Gamma World or Warriors of Mars.

I may be able to do a few parts of it, especially the early years as I was more actively gaming at that time. Would it be possible to provide a skeleton or outline of what needs to be in the article. Also how would you solicit other writers for this project.

Keith B. Vaughn

Hi Keith,

Sadly, what you're proposing is a recipe for disaster. Why not just write the damn thing yourself? Think in terms of my own Heartbreaker articles; they're quite short, actually. Just do it!

Best,
Ron

Keith,

You seem well qualified, and as someone who science-fictionally heartbroke at least twice, I'd like to see it be written. Consider this encouragement.

Keith:

Why not consider a "part 1: the early years" article? Then someone familiar with more recent games can write part 2.

KeithBVaughn wrote: Thanks for being honest. Would it be possible to do this as a group project? I have played Traveller, 2300AD, Gamma World and looked at other games in a effort to write my first game: Embers of Empire. Yes, I've written a SF Heartbreaker. And yes I believe the baseline for any SFRPG would have to be Traveller, not Metamorphis Alpha or Gamma World or Warriors of Mars.

I may be able to do a few parts of it, especially the early years as I was more actively gaming at that time. Would it be possible to provide a skeleton or outline of what needs to be in the article. Also how would you solicit other writers for this project.

I've always said it's easy to bitch about something but hard to do something about it. That's how I started my first SF Heartbreaker. Anyway this essay may give me some insights that I was wanting from the Science Fiction Heartbreakers article to begin with.

I'll set a timeframe on myself of a month to have an article completed (Mid-January) and try to have it up to the board.

Ron-do you normally want to review these articles before they go up? And if so where do I send the file?

Keith

Hi Keith,

We do have an automatic article submission process somewhere; check around the top links for it. But I do prefer a direct mailing to me, which frankly has a better chance to get to the top of my mental pile.

Also, the scope of the article is totally up to you. You can limit yourself to a time period, or to particular influence and work from there (as John suggests), or whatever.

Best,
Ron

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.

John Kim wrote: Basically, while fantasy games are dominated by the example of D&D which is often imitated, science fiction games don't have a single dominant model. There are some Traveller imitators, some GURPS imitators, some odd D&D imitators. It might be best to think of them as different fashions of scifi rather than a single category of "heartbreaker".

As long as Brian has his hat in the ring, I'll add a few points.

Aliens
Oh deary deary me. All aliens come from huge monocultures where everybody thinks alike. And you can tell they're alien because they have these absolutely inflexible ideas that cannot be altered by reason.

Aliens come in three varieties in the heartbreaker:

• Bug-Eyed Monsters, suitable for shooting
• Really Alien Guys, who are just like you except anatomically and have a number of deeply-held irrational convictions just to show how alien they are
• Complicated Deep Alien People, who are just like you but with rubber things on their foreheads, and who have complicated and sophisticated cultures that have gone on for gazillions of years and if only we could learn their great wisdom we could all go puke in the corner


Planets
For "planet" read "small town." 'Nuff said.

Historical Reenactment
The Planet of the Civil War People.

Real-World Physics
<boink>

Science To Explain Silliness
See, we have super-duper ultra-lightspeed engines because of the singularity matrix at the yadda yadda. Or how about what John Kim used to call "absolutely-positively-just-can't-break-ium," the stuff that Ringworld is made of? Well, you see, there's this crystalline lattice of carbonoid blah blah. If they try to explain it, preferably at great length and with a few references to Isaac Asimov and Larry Niven, that's a heartbreaker.

Religion
A hint to heartbreaker writers. Frank Herbert got away with it because it was pretty new and he did cool things with it. But Islam In Space isn't nifty any more.

Wasted Space
If there is a lot of detail about just how big space is, and how long it takes to get anywhere, and this actually matters for the players to have to calculate out strategically, which probably means that it's about space battles taking decades or something, and probably gets into quick-and-dirty relativistic effects of the Jupiter Twins or something, that's probably a heartbreaker.

Spaceship Stats
With pictures and deck plans. Lots of 'em. In detail. With names of manufacturing companies. <buzz> Hearbreaker.

----
Some suggestions.

Stop Explaining Things
Nobody cares, really. If they did, they'd read a hard scifi novel. Just lay it out there and get strange. That's one of the things that sucked so hard about the Star Wars prequel horrors: they started explaining stuff like The Force. I don't want The Force explained; that's what's cool about it, dummy. You want to tell me how long it takes to get from point A to point B, fine; I'll look it up. I don't really care how you calculated it.

Stop With The Damn Aliens
Aliens aren't human. You can tell, see, because they're aliens. Unless you intend to go on interminably about exactly how their very intricate and elaborate cultures really work, and that's going to take hundreds and hundreds of pages, don't bother. Stick 'em in and keep 'em weird. Like really weird. And don't explain, either. They're like that because they're aliens.

If You Want a History Game, Write One
Haven't you noticed that it was silly when original Star Trek did the historical moral allegories? It's even sillier now. Stop it.

I guess it's good to ask: what is a heartbreaker? I'm now doubtful if its useful as a term. For Chris' and Bryan's suggestions, I think perhaps "pet peeve button pusher" or simply "game I don't like" would be a better term. Ron at least had specific criteria for his fantasy heartbreakers:
1) in a fantasy genre very close to D&D
2) published independently as a labor of love, with little understanding of the three-tier business model of RPG publishing
3) rules similar to D&D or other games published in the 70's or early eighties

To really do a direct parallel to Ron's heartbreaker article, you should buy a bunch of indie sci-fi games and review them. You could try Dead Night of Space: Psibertroopers, The Colonies, and Red Shift, maybe. On the other hand, I could understand if you're not really interested in doing that. Conversely, though, I think pet peeve lists are pretty personal -- so if you're going to write a pet peeve list, it should just be your own. [/img]

clehrich wrote:
Aliens
Oh deary deary me.

Yes, John. Pardon us for being a little silly.

Look, you've said that there is no one "thing" or genre that is SF, right? So criterion 1 of your list doesn't apply. For the same reason, since there is no central standard, criterion 3 doesn't apply.

Brian's argument, and I agree with him, was:

My impression of the baseline of a 'science fiction heartbreaker' is a game that is based largely on the classic 'space' game featuring a far future setting with spaceshipsnrobotsnrayguns of various degrees of hardness following the paradigm of post E.E. Smith to mid sixties space operatic short stories, embodied by writers like Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov,Robert Heinlein and host of lesser lights. It's a vision of the future that already seems quaint.

To really do a direct parallel to Ron's heartbreaker article, you should buy a bunch of indie sci-fi games and review them. You could try Dead Night of Space: Psibertroopers, The Colonies, and Red Shift, maybe. On the other hand, I could understand if you're not really interested in doing that. Conversely, though, I think pet peeve lists are pretty personal -- so if you're going to write a pet peeve list, it should just be your own.[/img]

I'm a little unclear on why everybody assumes that there is such a thing as a SF Heartbreaker. Ron's fantasy one is a historical phenomenon (or rather, an interpretation of one), based on the popularity of D&D. If there were SF heartbreakers, they would by definition be close imitations of a parent game, made without full understanding of the marketplace.

Traveller has frequently been offered as a baseline, as well as D&D itself, for a genre of SF heartbreaker. I'd say that they are largely the only options; it's not a heartbreaker if it's not a close imitation made under limited understanding of the field, and those are pretty much the only games that even nearly qualify.

So if you want to write about SF heartbreakers, the first thing is to prove that they exist. I for one haven't seen any. Then again, I'm not in America, so it's natural that most borderline games don't reach here at all. Might be that you have a whole subculture of sf games I've never even heard of. If so, let's hear some names and comparisons on how those names are really heartbreakers.

Cyberpunk 2020, Star Wars in it's various incarnations, Shadowrun, Dark Sun, Fading Suns and Blue Planet are not one of them heartbreakers in any sense of the word, to close off the first scifi games that spring to mind. I'm sure there are more, but somebody well versed with them has to comment on that. The point is, I'm not familiar with any scifi heartbreaker phenomenon at all, and here there is a discussion that nearly assumes it's existence.

No, well, this is the same argument I just had with John. Of course it's not the same thing. But haven't you ever picked up a cool-looking SF game, thought, "Wow, maybe this'll really get the whole SF thing like I'm hoping something will," and then you read on and you think, "Oh dear god, somebody spent an incredible amount of time and love on this and it totally sucks, for all the same reasons as all the previous ones sucked, don't they ever learn?"

Isn't that more or less what a heartbreaker is? If not, if it's specific, such that "fantasy heartbreaker" is actually a redundant term because all heartbreakers are about fantasy by definition, then yes, this is a pointless conversation. But it started with the assumption that there was such a thing.

Which still needs to get defined.

But there are plenty of SF heartbreakers around. I think d20 Traveller is one of them (and some might argue for other Traveller editions too).

But there's also things like Reichstar, Shatterzone etc. And just look at John Kim's list of free SF games.

I think many of the games were written for similar reasons to the fantasy ones but SF has its own issues (mostly covered above by clehrich in usual thorough fashion). Also many SF games are fantasy games with a space feel such as Tribe 8, Torg, Shadowrun maybe.

There are few SF space games that actually look at what all that space means and offers as a game. Most of them either use it as an excuse for any old weird stuff goes, or give you space but then reduce the options (Aliens).

Only a few games, such as Transhuman Space, really look at what the change in technology actually means in terms of social development

But there are plenty of SF heartbreakers around. I think d20 Traveller is one of them (and some might argue for other Traveller editions too).

But there's also things like Reichstar, Shatterzone etc. And just look at John Kim's list of free SF games.

I think many of the games were written for similar reasons to the fantasy ones but SF has its own issues (mostly covered above by clehrich in usual thorough fashion). Also many SF games are fantasy games with a space feel such as Tribe 8, Torg, Shadowrun maybe.

There are few SF space games that actually look at what all that space means and offers as a game. Most of them either use it as an excuse for any old weird stuff goes, or give you space but then reduce the options (Aliens).

Only a few games, such as Transhuman Space, really look at what the change in technology actually means in terms of social development

Hello,

This conversation has become a bad thing.

Why? Because there is no topic. People are making a variety of assertions as if they were relevant to a shared topic, and there isn't one. I've found at least a dozen points that deserve constructive discussion, and several which are whiz-bang excellent points, but no discussion.

The thread topic concerned writing an article, and that issue was dealt with.

Theory topics should be taken to the Theory forum. You guys know that; practice some moderating on your own.

Best,
Ron

Thanks to all for some imput, it has helped me to start a train of thought. I'm beginning to recognize some common threads of doomed games in SciFi genre'. I'm starting to see some differences from a Fantasy Heartbreaker that make a SFHB unique. I'm also seeing at least one sure fire way to make a Heartbreaker.

All for Now,
Keith