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View Full Version : D&D Can't do that! What's so bad about a fantasy heartbreaker?



Talakeal
2014-11-11, 03:16 PM
So when I was developing my RPG system one piece of advice I heard over and over is to not make it a generic fantasy system. Try and avoid the fantasy genre as much as possible, and focus on unique gimmicks and hooks. I you attempt to redefine D&D or make something similar to it you will wind up in the dread category of "Fantasy Heartbreaker" and be doomed to failure.

On the other hand I have noticed that in the past week I have seen people post threads about how to do a specific "thing" in D&D: Low magic, more lethal combat, recreate Lord of the Rings, recreate Conan, introduce strategic play, etc. Invariably they will be bombarded with responses along the lines of "D&D doesn't do that! Don't try and fit a square peg in a round hole! Play a different game!."

These two opinions seem to be in contradiction. There is obviously a large portion of the player base who wants a game that does these things that D&D cannot or should not do. Yet at the same time people are discouraged from trying to make these games? Why is trying to make a game that people want to play a bad thing?

Now, I agree that it probably won't be a financial success; but in the current era I am not sure if any RPG outside of various iterations of D&D can really be a big commercial success regardless of genre or style.



On a related note, can someone actually give me an example of a fantasy heartbreaker? Most of the other fantasy RPGs I know of are pretty well liked, even indie efforts like The Riddle of Steel, although I am sure there are loads of them that I haven't heard of simply because they are so bad. Also, where does one draw the line between Fantasy Heartbreaker and OSR, and why is one looked down on while the other is praised?

Arbane
2014-11-11, 03:55 PM
The essay that coined the term. (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/) (Edit: And the sequel. (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/10/))

You might be a Fantasy Heartbreaker if.... (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?325357-You-might-be-a-Fantasy-Heartbreaker)

Personally, I'd say a game qualifies as a Fantasy Heartbreaker if reading the back cover and ad-blurb makes it obvious that the writer hasn't played anything BUT D&D, and thinks that '13 kinds of elves! More Realistic combat! Wizards can wear armor!' are somehow groundbreaking. It's a game that was painstakingly made and published... that basically amounts to someone's D&D house-rules.

During the OGL d20 glut, a lot of games avoided FH status either by using innovative mechanics (Mutants and Masterminds), being specifically about a genre that D&D didn't serve so well (Iron Gauntlets, Blue Rose, M&M again), or being about a specific world (Midnight, Wheel of Time) as opposed to D&D's Extruded Fantasy Product implied setting. (This only comments on whether they're FHs or not, I make no claims as to quality otherwise...)

As for examples of FHs, the folks at 1d4Chan provided a list:

FATAL (yes, it qualifies, but being a FH is the LEAST of its problems.)
Dragon Hunters
Fifth Cycle
Hahlmabrea
Of Gods and Men
Darkurthe: Legends
Legendary Lives
Neverworld
Pelicar
Forge: Out of Chaos
Dawnfire
MYFAROG

Oh, you've never heard of any of them? There's a reason for that.

I think OSR games get a pass because they're specifically and deliberately trying to play like the writer's memories of older D&D, rather than blindly copying D&D's rules out of ignorance of any other possibilities.

Need_A_Life
2014-11-11, 03:56 PM
There are plenty of excellent systems available for nearly every type of campaign you could imagine from the gritty to the heroic, low-magic, high-magic, simulationist or narrativist. The key, as far as I'm concerned isn't to find "the" system for fantasy, but for people to find out what people mean above and beyond the rather uninformative category of "fantasy" (Game of Thrones is fantasy, but so's Name of the Wind and the Chronicles of Narnia, but I doubt there's a system that would deal with all of them well).

So, from my perspective, there's the question about whether to simulate the setting (I would argue that Green Ronin's A Song of Ice and Fire does a good job at this) or if the mechanics are only there to serve the narrative (one might mention Dungeon World here) or some mix (say, Savage Worlds).

Then there's the take where making a character and reading a character sheet inevitably requires and thus (somewhat forcibly) encourages players to get a grasp of the fluffy aspects of the setting (like, Midgard, I believe the name is) and quirks of systems that can enthrall or turn people off from it entirely (I've played a homebrew game where we'd use randomly-drawn cards to dictate whether we'd use melee or ranged attacks on a given turn and where "to hit" was skipped entirely, moving straight to damage).

Then there's the trickiness of magic; it's much like hacking in cyberpunk, space combat in sci-fi and so on, in that it either uses a different system from everything else, making it a separate thing to grok - and possibly more bookkeeping-intensive - or streamlines it with the rest of the system and makes it no more exciting than swinging a club*.
Maybe one uses some sort of limiter - spell slots, plot points, milestones etc. - to keep mages from just steamrolling everything, maybe one limits them to be more of a support-role, granting re-rolls, bonuses and divinations or maybe one throws balance out the window and goes "yes, mages are more powerful. That is intentional and part of this game" which is a (controversial) valid approach, too.

There are these and more dials to turn in building a system and there's barely any objectively wrong combinations, since each combination gives the game a given tone; if the basis of the system (for example) leans on a "roll d6 when being opposed; highest roll wins. Passive opposition has a dif. of 2-6" approach, peppered with, say, cards that dictate what actions you can take in a given round (say, pick one of 5 cards each round) and plot points that can power special abilities, it'll have a very different feel from GURPS or any version of D&D I've ever tried, no matter what flavour you throw unto it.

* Not that playing fighters should be boring, but if I'm playing a mage, I want to feel different from a fighter.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-11-11, 04:09 PM
The Fantasy Heartbreaker really is a sort of stage in the development of many game designing paths. It's the idealistic young'un who sees the problems with the state of D&D, and by gummit they're gonna fix them all! Eventually, it becomes clearer that the problems are a lot more complex than previously thought, and that others have trod the same path before. The term came about because of the unending frequency with which people got to this stage. Nowadays, it exists a good bit on Kickstarter, where you have an enthusiastic project creator promising a new, innovative fantasy RPG system that will change everything about the genre. It's class-less! It's level-less! It emphasizes the story!

It's not a bad thing per se, but it's a step that needs to be moved beyond.

Talakeal
2014-11-11, 05:04 PM
FATAL (yes, it qualifies, but being a FH is the LEAST of its problems.)
Dragon Hunters
Fifth Cycle
Hahlmabrea
Of Gods and Men
Darkurthe: Legends
Legendary Lives
Neverworld
Pelicar
Forge: Out of Chaos
Dawnfire
MYFAROG

Oh, you've never heard of any of them? There's a reason for that.
.

Wow, no I haven't heard of any of them. Except FATAL of course, but that is notorious for other reasons. Perhaps the reason is that the were all published before I (and I imagine most of the community) visited forums like this to talk about them?

Also, I can't help but wonder if it is a bit of a "no true Scotsman" effect. Maybe these RPGs are only put here because they aren't successful. Why are they relegated to Fantasy Heartbreakers but games like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rolemaster, Runequest, Exalted, The Riddle of Steel, WoD Dark Ages, and the various OSR and Movie / Book / Video Game / TV tie in RPGs are not? Is the "heartbreaker" part of the title just applied to any fantasy game that fails due to either game quality or marketing reasons?

Thrudd
2014-11-11, 05:54 PM
Is the "heartbreaker" part of the title just applied to any fantasy game that fails due to either game quality or marketing reasons?

That's my understanding of the term. Calling your own game a "heartbreaker" implies that you have prematurely decided it is going to fail. The other games you listed were all fairly successful, in that they were relatively long-lived or based on popular settings or both. A heartbreaker certainly wouldn't have had a 2nd edition, unless it was self-published or free online.

A game being called or calling itself OSR does not preclude it being or becoming a "heartbreaker". The term "OSR" now seems to be applied to such a variety of games that I think it doesn't really have any meaning, except that the people who made it or play it thinks it evokes some feeling of nostalgia for the "old school", whatever they think that is.

If I were you, I would try to describe your game in more precise terms than "heartbreaker" or "OSR", because neither of those really say anything about your game or what people can expect from it.

Knaight
2014-11-11, 06:35 PM
Also, I can't help but wonder if it is a bit of a "no true Scotsman" effect. Maybe these RPGs are only put here because they aren't successful. Why are they relegated to Fantasy Heartbreakers but games like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Rolemaster, Runequest, Exalted, The Riddle of Steel, WoD Dark Ages, and the various OSR and Movie / Book / Video Game / TV tie in RPGs are not? Is the "heartbreaker" part of the title just applied to any fantasy game that fails due to either game quality or marketing reasons?

The big thing is that they are very strongly recognizably D&D, while also very obviously trying to be different. Everything else on that list was clearly made with the understanding that there are other RPGs, they pulled mechanics, organizational procedures, etc. from other RPGs, so on and so forth. Often a heatbreaker could have been really good - the authors clearly poured their hearts into them, they often have something truly innovative somewhere, and if the authors had only known more about the field as it was and had more to work with from the beginning the game could have been truly great.

Red Fel
2014-11-11, 07:09 PM
So when I was developing my RPG system one piece of advice I heard over and over is to not make it a generic fantasy system. Try and avoid the fantasy genre as much as possible, and focus on unique gimmicks and hooks. I you attempt to redefine D&D or make something similar to it you will wind up in the dread category of "Fantasy Heartbreaker" and be doomed to failure.

On the other hand I have noticed that in the past week I have seen people post threads about how to do a specific "thing" in D&D: Low magic, more lethal combat, recreate Lord of the Rings, recreate Conan, introduce strategic play, etc. Invariably they will be bombarded with responses along the lines of "D&D doesn't do that! Don't try and fit a square peg in a round hole! Play a different game!."

These two opinions seem to be in contradiction. There is obviously a large portion of the player base who wants a game that does these things that D&D cannot or should not do. Yet at the same time people are discouraged from trying to make these games? Why is trying to make a game that people want to play a bad thing?

Well, here's the thing - I don't think they are in contradiction.

The first position, distilled: If you try to make "D&D but different," your idea is doomed.

The second position, distilled: If you try to do a specific thing, D&D may be the wrong system for that.

What this says to me is that there are things that D&D cannot do (the second position), and that if you try to come up with a new system that is "D&D but does the thing D&D doesn't do," your idea is doomed (the first position). They don't contradict.

Now, let's be clear. Having a "fantasy heartbreaker" game doesn't mean that the game is bad. Often, far from it, as the original articles on the subject note. Rather, it means that the game is unlikely to be financially successful, for various reasons, and may well vanish from the earth before long. If you are trying to create a game for marketability purposes, yes, you should probably avoid falling into the fantasy heartbreaker category. If, however, you're creating a labor of love for your friends and/or community, you should absolutely do it! The fate of fantasy heartbreakers doesn't apply to games that are designed for personal use - because, as the original article suggests, they're basically house rules or modifications of existing game mechanics and systems, and those are still going strong.

The original articles make a very good point - instead of being "D&D plus X," consider designing your game as "X, with assorted other mechanical elements." I happen to think there are still plenty of good ideas out there for X, and building the system around X rather than installing X into an existing system will give you a higher success rate.

Illogictree
2014-11-11, 10:03 PM
A fantasy heartbreaker, as I understand it, is roughly the equivalent of someone who's never played anything other than the original Super Mario Bros making a video game that s/he touts as being "innovative" when it's really SMB with maybe a new mechanic or two on top... in today's marketplace. It isn't that it's necessarily bad, it's just that it's obvious that the person is completely unaware of what else is out there and that video games are so much more nowadays than SMB.

Also, just to be clear, making a fantasy system isn't bad. Sounds more like either the people giving you advice weren't quite clear with what they were trying to communicate (and may not have been all that sure themselves on what they wanted), or you were misunderstanding it. I'll admit the genre is a little overcrowded, but that just means you will need some hook to make it stand out. Building "D&D but..." isn't going to cut it, it's just going to get lost in all the other "D&D but..." systems out there.

The reason you're seeing so many homebrewers try to fit the square peg in the round hole is down to system familiarity. Whether they don't want to spend time and money on learning a new system, or just that they're not aware of the other options, or something else entirely, is kind of down to the individual case. It might even be the challenge, getting that square peg to fit can be pretty satisfying if they find a way.

Sartharina
2014-11-11, 10:58 PM
A fantasy heartbreaker, as I understand it, is roughly the equivalent of someone who's never played anything other than the original Super Mario Bros making a video game that s/he touts as being "innovative" when it's really SMB with maybe a new mechanic or two on top... in today's marketplace. ... and yet, Braid managed to be a success.

Illogictree
2014-11-12, 01:27 AM
... and yet, Braid managed to be a success.

Well, yes, but in that case, the creator was working from a position of knowledge of what had come before (at least presumably) and managed to create something unique. The difference I was trying to capture is that our hypothetical Platform Heartbreaker is made from a position of ignorance and the creator thinks that features like scrolling the screen both left and right is innovative.

Frozen_Feet
2014-11-12, 10:46 AM
The difference between Fantasy Heartbreaker and OSR is precisely in the statement "D&D can't do that!" The typical FB is what says that; typical OSR game, on the other hand, says "actually, D&D does that just fine. Let me show how."

This was most apparent with the first generation of OSR games, like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord. A typical FB is "D&D but different!"; the first OSR games were "as close to D&D as I can legally get!". These early OSR games were made out of effort to give new generation of gamers a chance to enjoy systems that'd long been out-of-print and unsupported. (Another way to describe OSR: "Let's climb back to the tree, there's still bananas there!")

Since then, the OSR label has gotten much wider (almost to the point of becoming semantically meaningless), but I think there are still two major trends within it, as best exemplified by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The first of these trends is to emulate the feel, rather than the exact rules, of old D&D editions. This is by and large what LotFP basic rules do. They dust off, clarify and put into easily-read, alphabetical order the same basic mechanics as Basic D&D had. Using some minor tweaks that became common in later editions but don't radically change the nature of the game are typical (ie., using ascending armor class, flat bonuses instead of attack matrixes, thief specialist skills use d6 instead of d% etc.)

The second trend is to continue and elaborate upon elements that were in early D&D editions but became less prominent or abandoned in later ones. LotFP takes cosmic horror and early modern elements of early D&D and then gets really hardcore about them. The rules stay in the realm of simple D&D retroclone, but the scenery surrounding them gets increasingly weird with each new publication.

Arrows of Indra, from what I've heard, is also a good example of this second trend. It looks at the class system and heavy mythological inspiration of D&D and then says "hey, what if instead of just ripping off Hindu myths, we're going to translate them into this environment as accurately as possible?" It's Oriental Adventures written large.

Also, thought for the day: Pathfinder is to D&D 3.x what OSR is to earlier editions.

CarpeGuitarrem
2014-11-12, 02:39 PM
... and yet, Braid managed to be a success.
Eh, I wouldn't call Braid a "Mario heartbreaker". The time-twisting mechanics are the core game, building on Mario as a foundation. Well, that, and the Mario elements are a very clear pastiche and homage. Braid uses the 2D platformer chassis as a vehicle for the real game, which is time-manipulating puzzles.

(My analogue there is Torchbearer, which takes D&D's chassis of "let's loot dungeons and kill monsters!" and builds on that with mechanics that do something else entirely.)

kyoryu
2014-11-17, 12:27 AM
The point of "fantasy heartbreaker" is really two things:

1) It *blindly* apes D&D, typically out of ignorance of other games or design ideas. Choosing to use mechanics or ideas because they work for the particular game you're making is one thing. Doing so because you don't know of any other ways to make a game is something else.

2) It has some *really cool stuff* that would make an awesome game if it wasn't held back by the unthinking application of D&D-like rules.

Also, originally, the OSR retroclones were about making the old-school rules available when they were out of print and WotC wasn't making them available. That's why the rules are so close to the original ones - the whole point was to make a clone as close as legally possible.

That's kind of irrelevant now, since WotC is making .pdfs or hardcopies of the rules available.

Knaight
2014-11-17, 01:35 AM
1) It *blindly* apes D&D, typically out of ignorance of other games or design ideas. Choosing to use mechanics or ideas because they work for the particular game you're making is one thing. Doing so because you don't know of any other ways to make a game is something else.

I like level systems as an example of this. If you're deliberately trying to create a zero to hero, archetype based system, consciously choosing a class and level system makes sense. Plenty of other systems try really hard to get away from both those things and still have a level system where it makes absolutely no sense - it's probably because the authors didn't know that classless systems exist.


Also, originally, the OSR retroclones were about making the old-school rules available when they were out of print and WotC wasn't making them available. That's why the rules are so close to the original ones - the whole point was to make a clone as close as legally possible.

That's kind of irrelevant now, since WotC is making .pdfs or hardcopies of the rules available.

The OSR retroclones also quickly got to reclarifying, deliberate document reorganization, etc. The early editions of D&D were not exactly well organized from a document design perspective, and a lot of the wording was needlessly obtuse - they also aren't exactly concise even by RPG standards.