How do you define "Heartbreaker?"

[TerraDave]

If you want to joke that your self-published homebrew is a heartbreaker, thats probably OK, but otherwise it feels like a dated term.

For a long time, Palladium Fantasy and Tunnels and Trolls may have been the only commercially viable altD&Ds. (and these were only so viable). Vs RQ, GURPs, or Vampire Dark Ages, which where fantasy RPGs but definitely not D&D.

Now there is DCC, PF, all those OSR games, the NSR games, alt5s (that people actually buy), 13th age, and others. You could make a whole map of FRPGs and their proximity to D&D with none of the games on it failures, or even out of print.

 

[...m...]

...well if you take it from the source, here are his four distilled nuggets of definition...

• None them demonstrate critical perspective regarding role-playing techniques. The authors played Old D&D, and their decisions demonstrate patch rules, unquestioned assumptions, and "innovations" all founded on this single template.
• They all represent the same solutions to problems in the design of D&D, especially in terms of generating a functional Gamist/Simulationist hybrid.
• The games have one great idea buried in them somewhere. They are not "only" AD&D knockoffs and hodgepodges of house rules; they are products of actual play, love for the medium, and determined creativity.

"That's why they break my heart, because the nuggets are so buried and bemired within all the painful material I listed above."​

• It is killing, just killing, to contemplate the authors' naivete about the actual market and nature of RPGs as a business.

"Economics is the second reason that these games break my heart: basically, they were and are doomed.​

​

It is not fair to dismiss the games as sucky - they deserve better than that, and no one is going to give them fair play and critical attention unless we do it. Those nuggets of innovation might penetrate our minds, via play, in a way that prompts further insight."​

...i think there's an element of each popular interpretation in his essay...

 

[beta-ray]

a dream maker, love taker
Don't you mess around, no, no, no

 

[Hriston]

How do I define heartbreaker?

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well if it's love is like a tidal wave, spinning over your head, drownin' you in its promises better left unsaid, then, my friend, you've got a heartbreaker.