Working at rpgnews.com has gotten me thinking about Fantasy Heartbreakers again. Slap me down if this insight is trivial and/or someone already popped out with it and I missed the thread.

A big part of Heartbreakers seems to be a lack of familiarity with anything besides D&D. Yet, it seems to me a lot of gamers ARE familiar with at least a couple of games other than D&D. So why do Fantasy Heartbreakers get made?

Because the gamers with larger exposure find a game they like and go with that. That is, they find D&D unsatisfying, check out another game... and never create their own game, because what they want is out there. They play GURPS or Storyteller or Traveller or whatever. It's only those whose have never seen another game that feel the need to tinker with D&D and create their own to meet a need that already exists. It's self-selecting -- the sort of people who do their homework never make a game in the first place.

Those with the wider experience never make a Heartbreaker at all, so of course there's a bias towards those who are only familiar with D&D -- these are the people most likely not to realize what they want is already out there. Linking in with the wholekit-bashing thing from other threads, most gamers are satisfied with a particular system or two, with perhaps a few house rules, and the dis-satisfied ones are the ones who never realize that they can buy an elf miniature off the shelf, so they end up sculping one from scratch.

Those few who DO do their research, and still don't find what they like... Well, they end up here, making their own games.

Does that make sense? I think this links into Mike's Standard Rant #1 and Chris's standard rant.

I agree with your principal, but, of course, your use of "only" and "never" is bit overstating the case.

Hi Loki,

As a minor point, consider some of those sacred cows or assumptions about games that I mentioned in my rant. Even folks with quite a bit of experience with many games still are trapped in the "this is the only way a game can work" mentality. Stuff like, "you gotta have stats, skills, kewl powers, splats, initiative, damage rules, etc".

I could probably walk up to 8 out of 10 gamers, who have played pretty much any commercial product on the shelves, and show them Inspectres and watch them trip out. I'm sure at least 3 out of 10 will say that such a game is unplayable, not just for them, or their group, but for anybody, anywhere. Now sure, these numbers are all speculative and whatever, but consider walking up to joe-schmoe gamer and how many of those sacred cows have never been questioned.

I'm going to venture that those assumptions are what give us Heartbreakers more than anything else. You can shift the numbers, change the stats, add new races, kewl powers, give us 200 pages of setting, but ultiimately Creative Agenda and System weren't really examined closely in most of the Heartbreaker cases. You still have the same "engine, same chassis" and a new body, and hoping a new paint job will make it "go faster".

Thoughts?

Chris

The thing is, considering some of the innovative nuggets Ron points out in his Heartbreakers essay, that it's not just "new paint, same chassis". I think a lot of these designers WANT a new chassis, but have no idea how to build one -- or that there's one like they want available.

Hello,

I think that Heartbreaker game-writing can spring from a couple of sources.

The first is pretty much as described: the authors aren't familiar with games beyond some variant of D&D, or with very few alternatives that aren't especially alternative (e.g. Warhammer).

The second, though, concerns the emotional angle, based on some of the points in my D&D history article. It's perhaps a desire to heal D&D play in some way.

Best,
Ron

I find myself relating strongly to the various reasons for fantasy hearbreakers already posted above (and likely discussed elsewhere, including in the articles). I'd probably qualify as a near perfect guinea pig for testing them out. Especially that one about lack of exposure. When you live in a place where the only RPG material on the shelves within 500 miles are D20 and White Wolf's WoD series (and maybe CoC if the stars are right), lack of exposure is a fact of life. ;-) Paypal doesn't even accept my credit card!

The inexperience leads to a lack of awareness of the many different ways roleplaying games can be made and played. This, coupled with the sincere desire to make a "kewl new thing" ends up with someone like me going off to write that uhm "great Filipino RPG" and ending up with a steampunk heartbreaker. Scary.

A desire to "heal" D&D is I think simply the momentum that gets a heartbreaker going. At it's core the heartbreaker pitfall is primarily a lack of awareness.

(After the small amount of time I've been spending here at The Forge, I can now hear my sacred cows moo in terror ;-)

Ron Edwards wrote: The second, though, concerns the emotional angle, based on some of the points in my D&D history article. It's perhaps a desire to heal D&D play in some way.

Cadriel wrote: I think D&D3e, which doesn't give fans nearly the same reaction (i.e., you don't assume that the average DM will be making massive rules adjustments), will more or less stem the tide of Fantasy Heartbreakers, at least for the time being.

But there's another culprit that I think bears mentioning here: the overall decline of fantasy literature since the 1970s introduced us to doorstop novels written by the dozen. The Heartbreakers seem to show (some) signs of being a part of the current mainstream of fantasy, a mishmash of assumptions piled atop of assumptions. Gaming is part of the stream now, and it all feeds back into itself.

Hi Ron,

The second, though, concerns the emotional angle, based on some of the points in my D&D history article. It's perhaps a desire to heal D&D play in some way.

I always assumed it was an attempt to improve on something the general experience of which they already liked. And yes, I'd noted that these guys weren't as in the dark as one might assume (they may not know online or niche-market games--but I bet most of them know Gama World and White Wolf and Hackmaster and Call of Cthulhu).

Judging from what I've seen here: every game created by someone with a history of bad experience could be an attempt to "heal D&D" (or whatever they started with).

-Marco

Marco wrote: I always assumed it was an attempt to improve on something the general experience of which they already liked. And yes, I'd noted that these guys weren't as in the dark as one might assume (they may not know online or niche-market games--but I bet most of them know Gama World and White Wolf and Hackmaster and Call of Cthulhu).

Judging from what I've seen here: every game created by someone with a history of bad experience could be an attempt to "heal D&D" (or whatever they started with).

xiombarg wrote:

Cadriel wrote: I think D&D3e, which doesn't give fans nearly the same reaction (i.e., you don't assume that the average DM will be making massive rules adjustments), will more or less stem the tide of Fantasy Heartbreakers, at least for the time being.

Or refocus them. Look at all the mediocre d20 worlds out there. It seems that most people just wanted a semi-decent ruleset to publish a custom D&D world with -- and it's easy to grandfather in stuff specific to your world with Feats and Prestige Classes, without re-writing all the rules.

But there's another culprit that I think bears mentioning here: the overall decline of fantasy literature since the 1970s introduced us to doorstop novels written by the dozen. The Heartbreakers seem to show (some) signs of being a part of the current mainstream of fantasy, a mishmash of assumptions piled atop of assumptions. Gaming is part of the stream now, and it all feeds back into itself.

Shhhh! Don't get Ron started on the difference between D&D fantasy and "real" fantasy! ;-D

Hi there,

Chris wrote,

Emotionalism tends to play heavily in gamers, ranging from the usual fanatic love/hate of System X to a lot of other cherished ideas(Impossible thing, anyone?). How much of this do you think ties into folks looking for a "perfect" ruleset to fix their social contract issues?

Cadriel wrote:
Well, you must remember that one of the big criteria for something actually being a Fantasy Heartbreaker is that it's mostly conversant with roleplaying games through the filter of (A)D&D's basic assumptions, such as classes and levels, and the real shame is that they have so much passion and love invested in what is basically a retread of things that have been around for a long time.

Judging from what I've seen here: every game created by someone with a history of bad experience could be an attempt to "heal D&D" (or whatever they started with).

Not really. When Ron said "heal D&D," it struck an immediate response with me because I've been there. You have no idea of the dimension of the love/hate relationship so many people have gone through with Dungeons & Dragons as a system. A lot of players very dearly love D&D, but at the same time it doesn't work for what they want in their game and they get frustrated with it. For so many people, that involved a billion and one different adjustments to the system (I remember drawing up a document of what modifications I was using at one point!) to try to get it in working order. Some people develop new systems to incorporate these modifications, lovingly re-creating many of the assumptions of D&D as they do, and voila! - a heartbreaker is born.

Good game design is never "healing D&D." It's always sitting back, asking "What do I want to achieve with this game?" and going about designing a system that, quite frankly, achieves it. It has nothing to do with the very confused emotional reaction that leads in to the Fantasy Heartbreakers.

-Wayne

Marco:

What I mean by the confused reaction to D&D is the love/hate relationship for the game. My main point was actually trying to compare how my own reaction and the reaction to many I knew at the time to AD&D to what happens with the creators of Heartbreakers. I was offering my own reaction as part of an attempt to understand what was going on in creating these games; this is, after all, the topic of the thread.

-Wayne

Cadriel wrote: Marco:

What I mean by the confused reaction to D&D is the love/hate relationship for the game. My main point was actually trying to compare how my own reaction and the reaction to many I knew at the time to AD&D to what happens with the creators of Heartbreakers. I was offering my own reaction as part of an attempt to understand what was going on in creating these games; this is, after all, the topic of the thread.

-Wayne

Marco:

I think you're overreacting a lot, and more than just here (the Incoherence thread is what springs to mind). It sounds nasty to say it, but what is essentially at issue here is why people develop games that, while made in love and with all good intention, are frankly bad. My own offering springs from something Ron said that struck a chord with me from my days as a devotee of AD&D, and a recollection of a very powerful love / hate relationship. I feel fit to generalize from my own experience not because I want to feel superior, but because I was awash in the AD&D culture of the mid-to-late '90s, where my sentiment was shared quite openly among devotees of the game. We all knew that AD&D had something very powerful that we wanted (moreso than any other games for a lot of people), but we had to struggle with a system that got in the way a lot.

You are harping on the phrase "very confused emotional reaction" too much. I use it to describe the simultaneous love/hate relationship a lot of AD&D fans, myself included, had with the game. You seem to be trying to make it into a massive attack by me on the creators of the Heartbreakers, but such is not the case. It is extrapolation from my own part of a shared experience into the possible domain of others, in this case those who went beyond rules mods into making full-on roleplaying games that, for all the love and effort put into them, fail to do anything but recreate a variation on D&D.

You seem to object to the entire purpose of this thread, in which case I'm not the one you should be taking this up with. But frankly, I think that the Heartbreaker as a phenomenon is a fairly interesting thing and bears some scrutiny. That can't always involve having the authors come in and give personal commentary, but frankly: their work is open for public consumption, and thereby for general critique. Part of critiquing a work is attempting to get at the motivations behind its creation; read legitimate reviews of any art form and you'll find that. If they wish to clarify their intentions, then that's fine and that's their wish. But other people don't need to wait on their approval to make commentary.

-Wayne

Marco wrote: It reads as though you either do not understand, or do not believe that a person could build a game you'd identify as a heartbreaker for any other reason than yours.
...
Also: I think I'm the only person who posts on The Forge with *any* regularity who sees this thread in that light. That doesn't make it any more correct, nor does it make it any more polite. These are real books, written by real people (in many cases, I expect while there might be a single name on the cover, there will be others who worked on it). Until they come and discuss what or why they did what they did, speaking for them, like that, is not a valid form of discourse.

Cadriel wrote: It sounds nasty to say it, but what is essentially at issue here is why people develop games that, while made in love and with all good intention, are frankly bad.
...
You seem to be trying to make it into a massive attack by me on the creators of the Heartbreakers, but such is not the case. It is extrapolation from my own part of a shared experience into the possible domain of others, in this case those who went beyond rules mods into making full-on roleplaying games that, for all the love and effort put into them, fail to do anything but recreate a variation on D&D.

Cadriel wrote: Marco:

I think you're overreacting a lot, and more than just here (the Incoherence thread is what springs to mind). It sounds nasty to say it, but what is essentially at issue here is why people develop games that, while made in love and with all good intention, are frankly bad. My own offering springs from something Ron said that struck a chord with me from my days as a devotee of AD&D, and a recollection of a very powerful love / hate relationship. I feel fit to generalize from my own experience not because I want to feel superior, but because I was awash in the AD&D culture of the mid-to-late '90s, where my sentiment was shared quite openly among devotees of the game. We all knew that AD&D had something very powerful that we wanted (moreso than any other games for a lot of people), but we had to struggle with a system that got in the way a lot.

You are harping on the phrase "very confused emotional reaction" too much. I use it to describe the simultaneous love/hate relationship a lot of AD&D fans, myself included, had with the game. You seem to be trying to make it into a massive attack by me on the creators of the Heartbreakers, but such is not the case. It is extrapolation from my own part of a shared experience into the possible domain of others, in this case those who went beyond rules mods into making full-on roleplaying games that, for all the love and effort put into them, fail to do anything but recreate a variation on D&D.

You seem to object to the entire purpose of this thread, in which case I'm not the one you should be taking this up with. But frankly, I think that the Heartbreaker as a phenomenon is a fairly interesting thing and bears some scrutiny. That can't always involve having the authors come in and give personal commentary, but frankly: their work is open for public consumption, and thereby for general critique. Part of critiquing a work is attempting to get at the motivations behind its creation; read legitimate reviews of any art form and you'll find that. If they wish to clarify their intentions, then that's fine and that's their wish. But other people don't need to wait on their approval to make commentary.

-Wayne

John Kim wrote:
Well, Marco, I post regularly and I share similar sentiments. I have frequently been disturbed by condescension towards what people call "heartbreakers". Unfortunately, I'm still not familiar with any of the twelve games that Ron originally defined as "heartbreakers" in his two essays. Thus, I feel I can't say a whole lot about the topic. On the other hand, I sometimes get the impression that others talk about these games as well without having played them or even read them.

Woah, woah, woah, woah.

As the originator of this thread, the whole point of it is to speculate on what's going on with the authors of Fantasy Heartbreakers, using what information we have available. If the authors of any of these games are available to comment, then wonderful -- I'd be glad to add some hard data to my speculation. But, currently, as we have only the games themselves to work from, that's the data we're using.

Whether or not Fantasy Heartbreakers are bad or good is off-topic. I'm only interested in why people make them.

Also, in terms of the idea that "legitimate reviews of art don't do what you're doing: playing telepath"... Well, um, I see that in art reviews all the time, though I'd phrase it in a less pejorative way. Lacking access to the author directly, sometimes its all a reviewer CAN do.

However, this is all perilously off-topic. Marco and John, while I value your input, and find it interesting insomuch as you wish to contribute ideas as to why Fantasy Heartbreakers exist, claiming that such threads are offensive is off-topic. If you want to start a thread in, say, "Site Discussion" about the intent of such threads, I welcome you to do so, and would willingly participate in such a thread -- but it isn't on-topic for this one.

Now, whether such talk is offensive or not, Marco seems to assert that the real motivation behind a heartbreaker is to capture the "essence of D&D" with better mechanics. If this is so, why do several of them seem to rail against the assumptions of D&D even as they validate them, such as assuming characters will be greedy and then moving to counteract this?

Also, the idea that the authors want to improve on D&D is perilously close to asserting "A is A". We KNOW that's one of the author's motivations -- but why don't they, say, question more of D&D's assumptions? I assert it's because of lack of awareness that those assumptions CAN be questioned. (That doesn't mean the authors of the Heartbreakers are bad or wrong.)

xiombarg wrote: As the originator of this thread, the whole point of it is to speculate on what's going on with the authors of Fantasy Heartbreakers, using what information we have available. If the authors of any of these games are available to comment, then wonderful -- I'd be glad to add some hard data to my speculation. But, currently, as we have only the games themselves to work from, that's the data we're using.

xiombarg wrote: Also, the idea that the authors want to improve on D&D is perilously close to asserting "A is A". We KNOW that's one of the author's motivations -- but why don't they, say, question more of D&D's assumptions? I assert it's because of lack of awareness that those assumptions CAN be questioned. (That doesn't mean the authors of the Heartbreakers are bad or wrong.)

xiombarg wrote: Woah, woah, woah, woah.

As the originator of this thread, the whole point of it is to speculate on what's going on with the authors of Fantasy Heartbreakers, using what information we have available. If the authors of any of these games are available to comment, then wonderful -- I'd be glad to add some hard data to my speculation. But, currently, as we have only the games themselves to work from, that's the data we're using.

Whether or not Fantasy Heartbreakers are bad or good is off-topic. I'm only interested in why people make them.

Also, in terms of the idea that "legitimate reviews of art don't do what you're doing: playing telepath"... Well, um, I see that in art reviews all the time, though I'd phrase it in a less pejorative way. Lacking access to the author directly, sometimes its all a reviewer CAN do.

However, this is all perilously off-topic. Marco and John, while I value your input, and find it interesting insomuch as you wish to contribute ideas as to why Fantasy Heartbreakers exist, claiming that such threads are offensive is off-topic. If you want to start a thread in, say, "Site Discussion" about the intent of such threads, I welcome you to do so, and would willingly participate in such a thread -- but it isn't on-topic for this one.

Now, whether such talk is offensive or not, Marco seems to assert that the real motivation behind a heartbreaker is to capture the "essence of D&D" with better mechanics. If this is so, why do several of them seem to rail against the assumptions of D&D even as they validate them, such as assuming characters will be greedy and then moving to counteract this?

Also, the idea that the authors want to improve on D&D is perilously close to asserting "A is A". We KNOW that's one of the author's motivations -- but why don't they, say, question more of D&D's assumptions? I assert it's because of lack of awareness that those assumptions CAN be questioned. (That doesn't mean the authors of the Heartbreakers are bad or wrong.)

John Kim wrote: There is another possibility: that the similarities to D&D are there because they were intended. That is, the authors did consciously question whether to use a particular mechanic -- and they concluded that it was one of the parts of D&D which was good for their purposes.

Marco wrote: If I were to start a thread on why indie games get made and postulated that they were "the result of emotionally troubled people who couldn't cooperate with the majority of the gaming population and therefore had to create games that would only attract other like-minded players", would you see that as valid, insightful, and worthy criticism? I wouldn't. I'd be kinda offended.

This just occured to me: Would this be considered Drift? That is, the "desire to heal D&D" in the form of fantasy heartbreakers are examples of Drift but on a completely massive scale. What many of the authors of say D&D-based heartbreakers are doing is really just trying to drift D&D into a form that fits their needs (based on all the stuff that's already there).

Roger that.

I stand by the System Does Matter assessment. I think seeing the development process as drift makes a lot of sense as well.

-Marco

Very well, then:

System Does Matter would seem to apply to mechanical rules as well as GNS mode of play (despite the fact that here, I almost always see it applied to GNS mode*). Therefore a proliferation of different rules along the same themes would be expected (although I'd have thought that would have generated a lot of excitement over, say, Runebearer early on, really). If one looks at it in that light, the answer is trivial**

I think I've got a couple things to add; but I want to begin with

What Kirk wrote: Also, in terms of the idea that "legitimate reviews of art don't do what you're doing: playing telepath"... Well, um, I see that in art reviews all the time, though I'd phrase it in a less pejorative way. Lacking access to the author directly, sometimes its all a reviewer CAN do.