Fantasy Heartbreakers -- Why So Damn Many

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:49 am

Note, I'm using a really narrow and idiomatic definition of Fantasy Heartbreaker here: games that have the same basic setting, genre, and gameplay as D&D, but arbitrarily different rules and [optional clause alert] are disappointing in some way (hence the "heartbreaker" part, although the truth is everyone uses the term "fantasy heartbreaker" a little differently).

Every other time--literally HALF OF THE TIMES--a new game has come to my attention in the past five or ten years that I've been heavily involved in tabletop gaming, it's literally been a ripoff/clone/variant of Dungeons & Dragons. This means that about half of the games I see coming out don't inject any actual originality or even bother to rip off anything even slightly less done to death or thoroughly saturated. Everytime I've seen one of these games, I've thought "if I wanted a game like that, I'd probably or certainly just play D&D instead" whether it was Pathfinder, Essentials, or something genuinely "third party".

As each one of these that's been released has cumulatively crowded the market and both increased the competition for this particular niche and decreased the NEED for such a game, why do so gosh darn many of these keep coming out as every single one makes every one that follows it more and more redundant and superfluous?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:57 am

Popularity begets imitation.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:58 am

But doesn't that have its limits?

At all?

EVER???

K · Post by K » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:06 am

People are deeply afraid to try new ideas AND they don't have any new ideas.

I mean, in another thread I proposed using abstract positioning system that made ranged attacks like melee attacks so that the Flying Archer problem wouldn't happen any more and it was greeted with derision, anger, and rejection.

I expect to see White Wolf, DnD, and Shadowrun clones for decades to come.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:15 am

I'm actually unaware of any Shadowrun clones except, well, Frank's.

Shadowrun and CP2020 are kind of clones of each other, kind of, but that's just because they're both Neuromancer clones.

I haven't seen many White Wolf clones, although IIRC Demon the Fallen BY White Wolf was a clone of this French game In Nomine (I owned both, as a kid.)

Mainly it's just D&D, kind of.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:23 am

While people are always guilty of getting stuck in a paradigm, the lack of creative thinking is merely a side effect of not being a genius. Most people will want to be creative in a fashion and will fail to do anything truly 'new'. Another factor is that people can see/experience the limitations of their chosen system and feel compelled to fix them.
Unfortunately, like the writers of 4E, they lack the ability to correct one issue without creating 2 more.

K · Post by K » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:28 am

Schwarzkopf wrote:I'm actually unaware of any Shadowrun clones except, well, Frank's.

WW's base system is basically ripped unapologetically from Shadowrun (and the advancements of SR 3e led to them ripping that base system for nWoD).

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:28 am

Sketchy fantasy is easier than sketchy modern or sci-fi gaming. In fantasy, the details of civilized society don't matter. Focusing on something other than generic D&D in a product means you need to present a unique setting, and in doing so you close off a lot possibilities. That reduces your potential buyers significantly unless you can produce something compelling and/or sound.

Also, many people are pretty happy with D&D in general, but might like a chance to keep things fresh by running with slightly different adjudication. This creates a market for fantasy heartbreakers.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 3:53 am

Schwarzkopf wrote:I'm actually unaware of any Shadowrun clones except, well, Frank's.
.

Ex Machina by Guardians of Order
OGL Cybernet
d20 Future
Cyberspace
Halcyon

Tokyo NOVA and Cyberpunk 2020 are in the same neighborhood.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 4:19 am

K wrote:
WW's base system is basically ripped unapologetically from Shadowrun (and the advancements of SR 3e led to them ripping that base system for nWoD).

Are you referring to White Wolf's World of Darkness?

One of the designers for the Shadowrun game worked on Vampire: The Masquerade's system, so it's not so much "ripping off" as re-using the dice pool idea.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 4:33 am

K wrote:
Schwarzkopf wrote:I'm actually unaware of any Shadowrun clones except, well, Frank's.
WW's base system is basically ripped unapologetically from Shadowrun (and the advancements of SR 3e led to them ripping that base system for nWoD).

Yes (although I actually didn't know which was the chicken and which the egg in that case) although I think you must mean SR4E as only SR4E has fixed target numbers like nWoD, not 3E.

Anyway, MERELY ripping off mechanics OR setting elements isn't what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the bewildering number of D&D clones that rip off BOTH. LOTS of games have dice pool systems and pretty varied settings/premises.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:07 am

Leress wrote:
Ex Machina by Guardians of Order
OGL Cybernet
d20 Future
Cyberspace
Halcyon

Tokyo NOVA and Cyberpunk 2020 are in the same neighborhood.

Shadowrun was published in 1989 (1st ed) and 1992 (2nd ed).
Cyberspace was published in the exact same years (89 and 92 for 1st/2nd editions respectively), so that's kind of a chicken-egg question. Not to mention that Cyberspace is more pure cyberpunk than urban fantasy.

CP2013 came out in '88, and CP2020 (derived from it) in '90...so it's hard to see how that's a Shadowrun clone (besides not being urban fantasy).

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:10 am

You got your answer in the first reply, Schwartz; popularity begets imitation. D&D isn't just popular either, it's archetypical. It's what people know, and it's what people like. It's a brand.

The d20 system from 3e on is a solid base mechanic to run off of, that allows for easier probability calculation than dicepool stuff. Previous system heartbreakers cling on to the stuff from the past out of nostalgia. The system's been around in some form for damn near 40 years now. It's the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and only WW in the 90's really ever swung with it.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:32 am

The original D&D rules were unplayable. Literally. Like, they talked about you rolling a "0-20 die" (at the time, d20s were labeled from 0 to 9 twice, and it was up to you to figure out how and when to add 10 to half of them, and the D&D rules were no help because they were counting the zero as both zero and ten). So everyone who played early D&D actually just took the original D&D concept and scraped together their own game with house rules and duct tape. For the first six years of this hobby, every person who said "we're playing Dungeons & Dragons" actually meant "we're playing a D&D inspired fantasy heartbreaker we wrote ourselves". There was nothing else it could mean.

Even when they produced full and playable rulesets, they produced multiple incompatible rulesets (AD&D and Basic), and neither one of them were really all that coherent. Very few people actually played the game without house rules. And when they finally expanded the rules? They did so with "a giant pile of house rules for various stuff you might want to use".

So historically, the first entire generation of D&D players were asked to basically write their own version of D&D in order to play. Are you surprised that there are a lot of versions of pretty much exactly D&D floating around?

-Username17

Kemper Boyd · Post by **Kemper Boyd** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:53 am

I kind of feel that Fantasy Heartbreakers are so common because of the standards of business practices and the little to no stigma attached to self-publishing in the RPG biz.

Any businessman worth his salt says "no" when someone pitches a game project that's essentially "D&D but better".

K · Post by K » Thu Mar 08, 2012 8:05 am

Schwarzkopf wrote:
Anyway, MERELY ripping off mechanics OR setting elements isn't what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the bewildering number of D&D clones that rip off BOTH. LOTS of games have dice pool systems and pretty varied settings/premises.

Well, DnD has never been as inclusive as the publishing industry. They aren't even as inclusive as a small fantasy/sci-fi magazine that publishes short stories and sells 1,000 copies.

I mean, what would you do back in the day when you could write decent DnD rules and settings, but didn't live in Lake Geneva? They used to crack down pretty hard on third-party crap, so people's only recourse was to make a DnD clone so they could get their stuff out.

Hell, what do you do NOW when you don't personally know the 4-5 people who decide what gets published for DnD?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 10:50 am

K wrote: Hell, what do you do NOW when you don't personally know the 4-5 people who decide what gets published for DnD?

type very loudly on message boards.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 1:37 pm

As for recent D&D Heartbreakers.
Was'nt that the (a) point of the SRD?

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:07 pm

Mask_De_H wrote:You got your answer in the first reply, Schwartz; popularity begets imitation. D&D isn't just popular either, it's archetypical. It's what people know, and it's what people like. It's a brand.

Not only is it a brand, it's a genre. The genre of D&D is D&D. The games you're seeing are D&D Heartbreakers, not Fantasy Heartbreakers.

Why are there so many? Because the "I don't like the current version of D&D" market is large enough to be worth targeting by itself. It's probably several times larger than the "space opera RPG" market, for instance.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:03 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:The original D&D rules were unplayable. Literally. Like, they talked about you rolling a "0-20 die" (at the time, d20s were labeled from 0 to 9 twice, and it was up to you to figure out how and when to add 10 to half of them, and the D&D rules were no help because they were counting the zero as both zero and ten). So everyone who played early D&D actually just took the original D&D concept and scraped together their own game with house rules and duct tape. For the first six years of this hobby, every person who said "we're playing Dungeons & Dragons" actually meant "we're playing a D&D inspired fantasy heartbreaker we wrote ourselves". There was nothing else it could mean.

Even when they produced full and playable rulesets, they produced multiple incompatible rulesets (AD&D and Basic), and neither one of them were really all that coherent. Very few people actually played the game without house rules. And when they finally expanded the rules? They did so with "a giant pile of house rules for various stuff you might want to use".

So historically, the first entire generation of D&D players were asked to basically write their own version of D&D in order to play. Are you surprised that there are a lot of versions of pretty much exactly D&D floating around?

-Username17

This is actually a very interesting and novel perspective on things, Frank, so thanks.

Although yes, I do somehow manage to still be surprised when I learn of YET ANOTHER D&D clone. I mean, that's just because every time I've designed my own game system, it's not resembled D&D in System or Setting, and every time I've wanted to do something D&D like...I just wrote a D&D setting/house rules. And I'm not putting myself forward as a bastion of creativity and originality either--almost everything I've made is inspired/interpreting/converting something else. I've just seen the job of riffing on D&D as being...so thoroughly done.

As ridiculous as it is, I've made or attempted to make probably 20 individual RPGs in the past ten years. None of them was meant to be D&D only better. Yet that continues to be about half of the output of the entire rest of the RPG making world. It's just so done to death.

Hell, what do you do NOW when you don't personally know the 4-5 people who decide what gets published for DnD?

Nothing. Because I think EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD has the D&D genre of RPGs pretty well covered, even discounting Paizo and Wizards of the Coast.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:23 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:I'm actually unaware of any Shadowrun clones except, well, Frank's.

Shadowrun and CP2020 are kind of clones of each other, kind of, but that's just because they're both Neuromancer clones.

I haven't seen many White Wolf clones, although IIRC Demon the Fallen BY White Wolf was a clone of this French game In Nomine (I owned both, as a kid.)

Mainly it's just D&D, kind of.

WW Demons are no way similar to In Nomine's demons, cosmology, or setting.

And Steve Jackson Games published In Nomine in English for years. I have nearly the entire run. One of my favorite settings ever, but I don't know what to *do* with the setting.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 6:37 pm

I don't know, dude, maybe it's just because I read D:TF shortly after reading In Nomine but it seemed very similar to me.

Then again I was like 13 at the time so...yeah.

K · Post by K » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:17 pm

Korwin wrote:As for recent D&D Heartbreakers.
Was'nt that the (a) point of the SRD?

Well, it allowed people to self-publish and not face legal action, but that' a far cry from being paid to write content that is official.

I mean, WotC knows that non-official content sells poorly. It was a part of their marketing research.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:24 pm

Fantasy Heartbreaker = My House Rules if i were making the game.

whatever game it is, this is who this person would have made it if THEY wre in charge.

the reason then that so many exist, is that so many differing opinions on what is wanted exists.

the OGL made it possible to say this is MY D&D game, because you can alter 3rd in any way to end up with FH Pathfinder, FH OSRIC, FH DCC, etc....

clones of TSR versions were because everyone was copying everyone and TSR reused the same mechanics pretty much for everything to begin with from AD&D to Boot Hill and so on.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 1:23 am

I'm writin' my own and it'll be super spiffy not-D&D/RealD&D! Can't wait to show y'all when its gotten to a presentable stage