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.

 

[Basic Expert]

"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.​

​

Which is why I love designing games (dozens at this point) and happily haven't published a single one of them.

Game design = yes!
Game publishing = no!

 

[jian]

I tend to use the term quite inaccurately about RPGs that genuinely break my heart a little - they’ve got a lot of really good things but have at least one flaw that means I’ll never play or run them.

Good examples include Lancer and Icon (because our group will never run anything using a battlemat or online battlemat platform; we play over Zoom (or rather Jitsi) using theatre of the mind) and Pathfinder (too much crunch and chargen options).

So if possible, I tend to look for alternatives that don’t have as many problems or just take them apart for parts.

 

[billd91]

I think I see it used too often for personal passion projects that are variations on other games, particularly D&D, that aren't really heartbreakers. If it's personal, mainly for themselves and the people they play with and not an attempt at breaking into the industry and distributing a game for at least a little income, then whose heart is breaking? What's breaking anybody's heart?

 

[Jahydin]

I thought the term came from someone having a long relationship with a game, but over the years irreconcilable differences developed that lead to a "breakup" of sorts. This could come from irksome game mechanics, wanting to deviate from the established tone, a shift in one's morals/politics, legal issues, or personal problems with the original creators. The "heartbreaker" game is designed in order to mend those differences and make the relationship work again. Especially important if the heartbreaker designer is making a living off the original in some manner.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I thought the term came from someone having a long relationship with a game, but over the years irreconcilable differences developed that lead to a "breakup" of sorts. This could come from irksome game mechanics, wanting to deviate from the established tone, a shift in one's morals/politics, legal issues, or personal problems with the original creators. The "heartbreaker" game is designed in order to mend those differences and make the relationship work again. Especially important if the heartbreaker designer is making a living off the original in some manner.

This is pretty close to how I always felt it was meant to be used, mainly in reference towards changes that occur in D&D during edition changes.

Someone loved whatever edition of Dungeons & Dragons they were playing so much that when at some point in the future the edition of D&D got changed out from underneath them... they found that the game of 'Dungeons & Dragons' was no longer what they wanted. Their heart was now broken that the game was now different than what they thought was best and it did things they thought were bad or dumb. But rather than just continuing to play the version of D&D that they loved (for any of the reasons people give-- couldn't find players, wanted to be a part of the zeitgeist, players wanted a change etc. etc.)... they decided to try and to "fix" the new version of D&D by re-designing it and just taking out or editing all of the crap rules they thought were now ruining the game.

The problem of course ends up being that (and where they get their heart broken a second time) no one else actually has nearly the same issues with the current version D&D that this person does, and thus their version of "the perfect D&D game" is basically ignored by everyone. Rules changes that are made that the designer thinks are so important get questioned by everybody else. Or things that other people think should have been changed are not actually changed by the designer because the designer never had a problem with it.

Basically to me... 'fantasy heartbreaker' is any edited version of D&D a person puts together (mainly during the 3E and 5E times of the OGL) where that person is not comfortable just being happy playing with their own houserules in their own game... but instead thinks other people should or need to play their version as well. So they try and publish it in hopes that it catches on... but of course it never does.