Isn't it odd. I've read that everyone with even the slightest aspiration toward game design should try their hand at a heartbreaker. Yet for all my genius, I cannot do it! I can't think of one! How pathetic eh! I look at settings like Iron Kingdoms and Eberron and for all their faults I think 'this is pretty fun'. But by god anytime I sit down with similar intentions my brain goes dry.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;508000Isn't it odd. I've read that everyone with even the slightest aspiration toward game design should try their hand at a heartbreaker. Yet for all my genius, I cannot do it! I can't think of one! How pathetic eh! I look at settings like Iron Kingdoms and Eberron and for all their faults I think 'this is pretty fun'. But by god anytime I sit down with similar intentions my brain goes dry.

Wait... when did we start referring to campaign settings as heartbreakers?

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;508000Isn't it odd. I've read that everyone with even the slightest aspiration toward game design should try their hand at a heartbreaker. Yet for all my genius, I cannot do it! I can't think of one! How pathetic eh! I look at settings like Iron Kingdoms and Eberron and for all their faults I think 'this is pretty fun'. But by god anytime I sit down with similar intentions my brain goes dry.

Well, Iron Kingdoms and Eberron are neither fantasy heartbreakers by any stretch of the definition. You might try looking at The Imagine Players Guide, Legends of Zarrakan, or Legends of Atlantasia. But all you really need is to pick up a copy of any edition of TSR D&D, think to yourself "I could do this better", and then proceed to make the game that you would have made when you were 13 years old if Gygax had come to you and asked you to rewrite D&D to make it cooler.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;508122Wait... when did we start referring to campaign settings as heartbreakers?

As far as I can tell, he's just pointing out that he feels they're well-crafted settings, and that he'd like to try his hand at creating something just as awesome, but he doesn't feel up to the task.

But Justin is partly right in that the original Ron Edwards essay focused on systems, rather than settings. "Fantasy heartbreaker" being one of several fantasy role-playing games riffing off of D&D but using different systems, mostly unremarkable (featuring such "innovations" as skill systems, point-based magic, etc.).

So, GW, first point of order would be to make it clear: where does your stumbling block lie, system or setting?

A wise man once told me that you start off with the stuff you're familiar with and sure about, the better to infer what's happening under the shroud of the unknown and the unfamiliar. So I'd try this:

If setting is a problem, I'd start tinkering with the system, and playtest it using a setting I was fond of, and familiar with. Then slowly adapt the setting to the system; e.g. if Fire Wizards are dominating combat, and you solved it by making Fire Wizardry the most expensive magic school in your point-buy game, the setting should reflect that Fire Wizards will be as rare as hen's teeth. Maybe they have a monastery in the caldera of a volcano in the middle of a fucked-up, monster-infested wilderness, and only those who survive the trek may train at the feet of the Crimson Archmage, the Sorcerer-King of the Godsfurnace Volcano.

If system is the problem, I'd start working on the setting, and playtest it with a system I was comfortable with. That's even easier. If your setting has cat men, bam, stats for cat-men. If D&D's AC makes everyone bedeck themselves in steel, and bare-chested savahes get the short end of the stick, bam, armor isw now DR and AC is replaced with a level-dependent Defense stat.

Corollary to both of the above. Whatever it is that you're doing, if you mean to publish it, playtest the hell out of it. With several different groups, with different GMs and all.

Last, but not least, you are a very, very critical guy. This much is evident from most of the stuff you've posted that I've read (though I confess to not having read all your posts). Could it be you're being too critical of yourself as well?

Those are ridiculously simple examples, and I'm not sure they apply to your problem at hand. Good thing we have a forum full of smart and helpful (if snarky, at times) people at hand, to help with that.

I think it's setting. I can come up with a couple of little nuggets; little ideas or perhaps vague concepts but fleshing them out is difficult, and then I find myself considering if they have any worth. It's no good designing something that you don't believe in.

The original fantasy heartbreaker article is worth reading, even if you hate the author. It's not even about making a D&D-wannabe. It's about RPGs that are almost awesome, but kneecapped themselves with D&Disms or poorly thought out responses to D&Disms.

Palladium Fantasy 1e isn't a heartbreaker because even though it is clearly an evolution from AD&D 1e, it has its own flavor and a clear development that its own.

It will be interesting to see if the DCC RPG is a heartbreaker, or whether the final version shows it to be an evolution like PF was in the 80s. Based on the beta, I think the final version might be interesting.

I'd argue that the original Hackmaster was a deliberate heartbreaker.


PS: Don't shit your panties. I don't think "evolution" means that PF is better than AD&D, just that Kevin Siembieda took the core ideas of 1e and went in his own direction.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;508179It's no good designing something that you don't believe in.

That's the crux of it. The reason they're "heartbreakers" is as much the one or two innovative ideas buried within as it is that the authors are VERYVERY passionate and earnest about how great the game and gameworld are. These are labours of love, you shouldn't bother doing it simply because someone said "every game designer should". I'm guessing that piece of advice was more of an exercise to indulge, identify, and expunge bad habits or holdover notions of adapting, much in the same way that art students learn by doing copies or pastiches of old masters.

Quote from: Spinachcat;508204The original fantasy heartbreaker article is worth reading, even if you hate the author. It's not even about making a D&D-wannabe. It's about RPGs that are almost awesome, but kneecapped themselves with D&Disms or poorly thought out responses to D&Disms.

The original article is an exhortation to game designers to give up trying to improve D&D because it sucks, go to the forge, and start designing indie RPGs about gay cowboys eating pudding*.  

I'm not sure if the OP realizes that "Fantasy Heartbreaker" refers to systems rather than settings?

*South Park reference

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;508179I think it's setting. I can come up with a couple of little nuggets; little ideas or perhaps vague concepts but fleshing them out is difficult, and then I find myself considering if they have any worth. It's no good designing something that you don't believe in.

Throw us a couple of nuggets and let's riff on it. On this thread or a new one, whichever suits you best.

I think i'd like to do something steampunk, whatever that means, that tag has gone to mean all sorts of things these days including fantasy, furries, anime and even post apocalypse. Perhaps a sort of Victorian Mad Max (Polite Maximillian and the Gentlemen of the Road!)

I always though Etherscope had some potential, but I never picked it up because, despite haveing some very cool ideas, I couldn't think what on earth you'd do with it. Besides the idea of taking 'scope tabs' was awful beyond measure, and the d20 system was as uninspired as mud.

Perhaps i've been reading too much 40k, but British (in that I'm british) dystopian SF does appeal. Is there such a thing as a British Dystopian SF heartbreaker?

In the world of British Dystopia, what aspects of that genre do you feel have not been explored in RPGs?

Quote from: Spinachcat;508488In the world of British Dystopia, what aspects of that genre do you feel have not been explored in RPGs?

Couldn't rightly say.

What motivates me to play/try and write games is more about what 'seems cool': a setting that grabs me. The best rpg's are those that just drip with possibility. That's why I think Etherscope is flawed. Where are thse possibilities?
Castle Falkenstein appealed because it offered a credible mix of magic and vivid mad science; the fantasy races (as opposed to magic) I ignored completely. Didn't want that at all. Shadowrun also: the gonzo mix works (unlike CF) and so there's lots of mad shit you can do, and the pop culture aspect is what allows the gonzo mix to work. I think Victoriana tried being a steampunk version of Shadowrun, though it never appealed so I never read it (didn't they call the players 'gutter runners', as opposed to shadowrunners).

I will post my current 'riffs' here and everyone can point, laugh, appluad or ignore as they see fit . These ideas, presented as is (that's how I roll people), stem from a concept that a few others have momentarily dabbled with in their own quest for something new. I've no idea whether it's a concept that's made of win, fail or just plain meh or desperation. The idea of mixing superheroes with fantasy - though not quite fantasy, more steampunk fantasy (ie science with some magic). If it helps, I'm currently listening to some early Autechre.

Before the Empire's founding there was an age when gods walked the earth and battled against each other using mortals as pawns. Eventually their tyranny was stopped by a cabal of their kind who stood against their excesses. Using their power they fashioned a means to strip the gods of their power and imprison this immortal essence into the Shadowcage, itself sealed within the earth. This conflict was the War of Powers. Members of this cabal, along with those tyrants that eventually surrendered to their authority, fearing the Shadowcage, saw they had no place within the world and removed themselves to the realm of magic.

The Chantry watches over the city day and night. They are always on the lookout for people exhibiting superhuman power. Their eyes and ears are everywhere; they have mortal agents as well as devices such as the magic powered Overeyes and Seneschal automatons. Law and order do not concern them and they remain the only legal practitioners of magic in the Empire, holding jealously to that power. They are answerable to no one - not even the Emperor is secure from their gaze. In return for keeping the Empire safe from those that manifest the Power, they control all magical teaching and knowledge.

The Great Guilds of the Empire are it's economic and manufacturing heart. They control the centres of industry and territory. Very few citizens do not live on Guild land. Among the most powerful of these guilds are: Greyhaus, Artifex Prime, New Corinth Industries, Lux Korda, and
House Morrow.

The capital of the Empire is the vast city, the largest of its kind, called Imperial Bright City. Despite it's name it is a place of great division: rich and poor, poverty and riches. It is the home of the Emperor's Palace as well as the Guild Quorum and the headquarters of the Chantry. Within the city borders, on a small island on the Great River, is the Strangeweather Home for the Criminally Insane. This complex is built, unknowingly, above the Shadowcage.

Most agents of the Chantry are trained in sorcery. These are people gifted with Power capable of learning to use it in a way sanctioned by the Chantry, according to its own, fledgling, understanding  of the phenomena. This is sorcery and it requires the agent undergo mechanical augmentation whereupon the agent is fitted with a Strangesuit that allows them to, safely, channel their power. The form the suits grant is as oppressive as the suit itself, which cannot be removed. Agents are Chantry property and are taken, according to Imperial Law, as soon as their power is discovered. If they happen to be too old at that point, they are either quietly disappeared or taken to Strangeweather Home for the Criminally Insane.

An Alchemical Engine is lauded as the symbol of modern technology and is a Calculation Engine capable of crossing into the Azoth. This is the realm of magic into which travelled the cabal of gods after the War of Powers. This Engine thus taps a source of great power.

The line between a homebrew and a heartbreaker has become fuzzy now that you can "publish" your homebrew to a site that does POD and not lose your kids' college funds on a print run.

It's nice to be a Published Game Designer; it might be more fulfilling to put your homebrew up on a website and get useful feedback than to maybe make a paltry sum by casting it into the sea of content on PDF/POD sites.

Either is good. If one can make a few quid from doing so then so much the better. Given how dead the market seems to be regarding new settings (as opposed to license based rpgs like Dresden Files, the new Marvel Game, etc) there isn' tmuch chance of anything succeeding.