Can We Retire 'Fantasy Heartbreaker' Now?

A friend of mine recently called a game of his a "Fantasy Heartbreaker." Having lived through the stupid rpg internet arguments of the '90, my first thought was to gripe and groan. But, I held my tongue and imagined for a moment, that after 15+ years, maybe this term had taken on a new meaning. Perhaps, like Randal in Clerks 2, we were "taking it back."

As it turns out (much like Randal in Clerks 2) we're not taking it back. It is still sprinkled with condescension, a touch of derision and just a dash of wrongheaded agenda. It is still out there in posts and discussions. Indeed, the top article in a Google search is the Wikia definition:

A fantasy heartbreaker is, essentially, a Dungeons & Dragons knock-off. Ron Edwards coined the term to describe a species of games published in the RPG boom of the 1990s, long after their purported innovations could be considered original. The term usefully describes games which are mired in preconceptions arising from the D&D paradigm. A criticism of the term is that it implies dismissal of the idea you can make "D&D, but better," which might be a desirable goal for some designers.

After 15+ years, do I care anymore? Eh... obviously enough to spend 15 minutes internet ranting about it, so yeah, a little.

My issue with the term Fantasy Heartbreaker is the same issue I had the old days -- it denies one of the main joys of the hobby, which is that strong element of homebrew, do it yourself tweaking. So, it bothers me when I see someone post, "I had this game idea, but decided to scrap it because the world does not need another fantasy heartbreaker."

The only correct answer to that is "Hell yeah we need it!" Look... it's 2015. The top selling rpg of the past year was a D&D knock-off. The entire OSR movement is full of fantasy heartbreakers. Tell me exactly whose heart is being broken... by all of these games people are writing, playing, and enjoying? What used to be a crappy term has become a meaningless one. Maybe it's time to retire it?

Repost: Remind Me Why I Rolled on Freedom? (Or One PUG's Story)

This is a repost of a blog post I made in 2008... Pathetic to repost, most certainly, but dammit, I miss CoX!!!!!! So, here is one great memory of that great game.

...

Generally, I run with a group of what I call "post-modern" CoX players (I'll talk about them some in a future post). They are good friends and great players, forming uber farming teams and rolling through pretty much everything they come across. It's great XP ... but sometimes boring. See, these guys have been playing pretty much straight through since beta. I've been offline about half that time and so every time I reopen my account, there is something I've missed. Of course, these guys have mostly seen it all, or don't care to see it all and so while I can farm to 50 with these guys all day... I might never see most of the game.

To experience the rest of the game, I created a new character on the heavily populated Freedom server and decided that I would level to 50 in pick-up groups with only the occassional interlude of soloing. Thus a new Plant/Storm controller, Song of Land and Sky, was born. Yes, I know, the name is fruity... but I sort of like it... and do you have any idea how hard it is to get a reasonable name on Freedom???

So, after a few solo runs and a few more pick up groups (have I ever told you how much I truly love the Hollows?), I have leveled Song to 16. Late last night, I am tooling around, trying to figure out what to do, or if in fact, I should just head to bed, when I get that fateful tell:

"Can you heal? We need another healer."

I sadly replied that I did not in fact, heal, but instead brought confusion and holds to the table. I figured this would kill the conversation, but surprisingly I got another tell:

"That might work. We are fighting CoT." And along came the invite.

Now, I should have been wary. I generally feel that most teams in CoX don't need any healers and this guy indicated that they needed another healer. Not one...another. With that single word, I created an entire scenario in my mind; a scenario of scrappers charging into a horde of purples, of wanton fire blasters firing Rain of Aggro... I mean Fire, of team wipes.

Sign me up!!!! I accepted, greeted the team and headed straight to the mission door.

Once in, we were faced with a gaggle of level 19 purple CoT. The first few battles went... ok. Slow, but steady and we didn't get into too much trouble. However, the first room we came to, the tank charged in and three Ruin Mages (and sundry minions) started pounding him... He dropped like a stone. I missed my Seeds of Confusion... which would not have handled the bosses anyway... and managed to buy my team an entire 0.3 seconds to flee as they eviscerated me and chuckled over my corpse. Within seconds, everyone was at the hospital heading back to the mission.

You know it is going to be a long night when you find yourself thinking how convenient it is that the hospital is less than 300 yards from the door.

Now, the tank is talking about finding another healer and though I usually try to stay off the soapbox, I felt the need to point out that healing wouldn't have helped much in that room. No healer of our level would have kept up with that onslaught.

We decided to pull.

Pulling goes OK for a few minutes and then people start getting antsy. Inevitably, "corner" pulling degrades into "hallway" pulling, degrades into "at the door of the room" pulling, degrades into "I will go with you pulling". So, our dark defender was essentially following the tank into the room, forgetting he had his targetted heal on auto...

At least this hospital serves Jello!!!

We head back and surprisingly, we've learned our lesson. The non-pullers stay back somewhat and we have a couple good pulls and start slogging through the room pull by pull. Hey, debt's gone... time to make more!

This one is totally my fault. We have mostly cleared the first room. There is maybe a group left and we have charged it. I am spamming confuse and holds and the occassional attack (I have serious energy issues at this stage). It is tough, but we are doing well. Suddenly, I see a flash of red in the corner of my screen. It seems we have an add or perhaps a runner. I WILL TAKE CARE OF HIM!!!!

So I dash after him... and am instantly gutted by the dozen or so of his buddies sitting just around the corner. I pull the adds, die, and then the baddies roll up the rest of the team.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get bloodstains out of Lycra?

Ok, lesson learned... no need to be the hero... or at least use some stealth when dashing willy-nilly around corners.

A few more battles and we have our collective stuff together. We cap a couple more groups and head into the next hallway. I am following the tank closely when we walk through a doorway and back out again, pursued by a convention of angry CoT. Strangely enough, this doesn't cause another team wipe. We pull the CoT through the door and the controllers manage to get the fight under control. As the enemy comes through, they are held, confused, debuffed and subsequently slaughtered. The doorway is clear... we are still standing...

And that's when the dozen or so Unbound Nictus start pouring through...

Not a Kheldian in sight, but somehow, we spawn a Crystal. And while we were valiantly fighting the CoT, what we didn't see is that there were two crystals spawning their little black clouds of death the entire time. There are at least a dozen of them and they make quick work of our unprepared team.

Back to the hospital... again... and again... and

See, those crystals had built up quite a head of steam and had filled the antechamber with nictus. We had to zip through that mess to get to the crystals and engage them. All the while, more nictus are spawning. It made quite the gauntlet to run. Finally, we bust through, attack the crystals and...

BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh right, forgot about the blowy uppy thing when you kill one of the crystals... and presumably our blaster has never seen it because she is dead and spouting a whole load of WTF!!! on the team chat.

But now the final door is in sight. Victory is ours with just one more room. Click the door and there are no less than 3 bosses sitting right there, all in a tight clump, staring at us and daring us to cross the threshold.

It is at this time that my own boss... my wife gently reminded me that it was 1:00 am in the morning and the baby was awake and perhaps I should tend to him. And so I had to leave my team in the lurch... I wonder if they ever got that other healer?

Now, it might sound like I had a miserable time. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I had a great time. The mission was hard. The players were fun and did a nice job given the circumstances. I was laughing the whole time. This is why I still play CoX and why I rolled on Freedom!!

I Hate My Gaming Group

A buddy of mine sent this to me... it is a repost of a blog entry I wrote a few years ago. Still makes me chuckle:

I am fortunate in that I have a regular stable of people with which I play online games. It isn't really a large enough crowd to be a guild or clan, but anywhere between 3-6 guys/women get on Teamspeak several nights a week and we get together and share our latest game... which is great. The only problem is that in the past several months, I have come to realize that I hate my gaming group.

See, recently things have not been so smooth for my gaming crowd. There have been moves, new jobs, family engagements -- the normal comings and goings of 30-40 somethings that interfere with gaming. No big deal there... we are all pretty busy, everyone has a reasonably demanding job, two of the guys are family men and those that aren't have active social schedules. I get it: real life >> gaming life.

What bugs me is this: Every so often the stars align and everyone puts the kids to bed/ditches the wife/takes the evening off or otherwise clears their schedule, grabs a drink, dons the headphones and fires up their computer. This might happen once a week or so and when it does...

We don't play together.

Have you ever "gone to lunch" with a group of friends only to find that it is 1:30pm and the only conclusion you have reached is that there are 13 restaurants within driving distance and someone in the car can find a reason to dislike every single one of them? Our Teamspeak sessions are THAT car.

L: "Let's play CoH. We all still have CoH accounts and I have another Fire/Kin I am dying to level."

C: "Umm... I let my CoH account expire."

L: "Aw.. why'd you do that?"

C: "Well, we have played CoH for years now. It's boring. And anyways, you guys have essentially
beaten the game right. I don't really want to tag along while you four-box your team of plant/storm controllers. It's not fun anymore."

L: "I only three-box."

C: "Nonetheless... let's do something else. What about WoW? I would love to dust off my WoW account and actually level my warlock."

L: "I could do that."

J: "Ugh... I HATE WoW!! The graphics suck!! Literally, they make me nauseous."

C: "Dude, who cares about the graphics? The gameplay is what counts."

J: "The art style is so cartoony... I can't stand it."

C: "That art style is deliberately designed to look like a Warcraft game. Haven't you ever played Warcraft?"

J: "And those hideous Popeye forearms... ugh... I just threw up a little in my mouth."

C: "Ok, ok... no WoW. What then?"

S: "LORTO just came out with a new expansion... I could show you guys around."

B: "How can you like that game? It feels nothing like Middle Earth."

S: "Yeah, but it's a good PvE game. Don't think of it as Middle Earth. Think of it as an MMO without shoes."

J: "I suppose the graphics are ok on that one."

B: "If you'd have read the copy of the Silmarillion I lent you..."

C: "Ok... no LORTO!!!"

S: "Huh, why not?"

C: "I have a rule: once someone mentions the Silmarillion, the argument is over... It's a lot like Hitler that way."

D: "How about EQ2? I used to have an account there."

C: "Oh I don't know. I played EQ2 at launch and frankly it was a little dull. The crafting was a pain and you had to grind 10 levels before you could even play an interesting class."

D: "Yeah, but I've played more recently than that. A lot of that crap has changed. They have really improved the game these past years."

L: "Please,  'Come back and play... the devs have really improooved the game with patch 80398-B'... If I had a quarter for every time I'd heard that..."

C: "You still wouldn't have enough to pay the monthly fee for all of your CoX accounts."

L: "Good point."

S: "Isn't EQ2 a Sony game?"

D: "How about Vanguard then?"

S: "Sony game."

B: "Are you still on about Sony and SWG?"

S: "I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM FOR WHAT THEY DID TO MY BEAST TAMER!!!"

(uncomfortable silence)

C: "Well... how about we try some free to plays? No risk there... just download and play."

L: "Yuck... You have fun with your Korean grind-fests. I am going to run through some player-created content on CoX."

C: "Would that be RitkiFarm#341 or CouncilSlaughter#418?"

L: "No way, my new farm is called StatesmanIsMyBitchNow. The XP flows like..."

C: "Lube?"

L: "I was going to say 'butter', but whatever."

D: "I don't even think Statesman is with CoX anymore. Isn't that guy off making Champions Online?"
(All in unision.. and with awe): "Oooooh, Champions Online."

S: "I'm really excited for Champions Online."

C: "Me too."

D: "Comes out soon, I think."

J: "I am looking at the website now. Look at those awesome graphics -- just like it was straight out of a cartoon!"

C: "Umm... what is the difference between 'cartoony' and 'straight out of a cartoon?'"

J: "Huh?"

C: "Forget it."

B: "I hope it comes out on XBox."

C: "What? Why?"

B: "My computer won't run Champs Online... no way. So they better release this thing on XBox or else Statesman will have nerfed me again."

C: "Dude..."

B: "What?"

C: "I don't think they are guaranteeing cross-platform gaming. So, even if Champs Online is the only game we can all agree on, and we all go buy it together... you STILL might not be able to play with us. You should go out and buy a new computer."

B: "No way I am buying a machine just to run a stupid game!"

C: "You just bought an XBox."

J: (obviously changing the subject) "Why don't we all try the trial for DDO?"

(laughter ensues and we all log off for the night)

Are You Having Fun Yet? Part 2 -- Hook Your Character

Last post I claimed that the best RPGs came about when the players were taking responsibility for their fun. By that I mean players need to take responsibility for the quality of the game in general, thus ensuring that they and their fellow players have fun.

You can start taking responsibility right at character creation by making sure that you hook your character to the game world. This means that you take some time to understand the campaign setting and then you build your character so that he has some ties to that setting -- some purpose to his adventuring; something that he cares about; a reason to be. Understand what the GM is going for and make sure that your new character can be a part of that. When the GM is setting his game in a fantasy Age of Sail, complete with galleons, cannons, pirate queens, swashbucklers and pistoleers, maybe the dark, foreign, loner mage who uses magic no one has ever heard of and is deathly afraid of water of isn't a good fit.

In addition to making sure your character fits in the game setting, make sure you also hook your character to the rest of the group. Talk to your fellow players and make sure you fit into the party. Does that group already have a rogue? Then please don't make another rogue with all your skills one better. Is everyone else playing a member of an extremely strict temple? Your dual-classed hedonist-thief might not be the best fit. You want to play the dark, mysterious loner in a group of 8 PCs? Errr... maybe you should talk to the group and see what they think...

Oh, and the character who took the limitation pathological liar? Never OK. No matter how many build points you got. Never. O. K.

Ask the rest of the players about their characters and use that to help you get ideas for your character. Maybe you can even take it a step further and see if another player would like to hook your two characters together in some way -- perhaps you are siblings, classmates, or rivals.

The main point is to make it easy for the GM to give you cool stuff to do. You might think being a grumpy loner with no reason to live is awesome, but to everyone else at the table, that is a dull character. You have no ties to the world, so the GM has nothing with which to motivate you -- no Auntie May to kidnap, no liege lords to send you on a quest, no religions to fight for. Hell, you don't even like kittens!! At this point, don't be surprised when you find yourself complaining that the GM isn't making the game compelling enough for you. You have made a character who refuses to be compelled.

My regular game setting is a fairly small, religious, human-centric land and I have one player who plays a non-human, pagan, foreigner from a clan-based society. So he is an outsider in the normal campaign world. However, in his homeland he... well, he took the limitation "Clanless" which makes him something of a persona non grata in his home territory as well. He is an outsider everywhere and that means I have to work extra hard to get him screen time. Without some character modifications, or some serious suspension of disbelief, he is where plotlines go to die.

This isn't to say you shouldn't play what you want, or that campaigns shouldn't include offbeat characters, or that GMs shouldn't work at integrating all types of PCs into their games. But, it is a reminder that the player bears some portion of the responsibility for how his character fits into a given game. If you are wondering why your character isn't getting any interesting plots, ask yourself if you have given the GM any hooks. If none of the other players seem interested in your character, ask yourself if your character is interesting.

Take responsibility for tying yourself to the campaign world and your group, and you should find yourself having more fun.

Are You Having Fun Yet?

I do most of my gaming at my local game store and while there are several good games down there, there are also a bunch of failing games, filled with misery, griping and drama. These games start, play out and fizzle all in the span of a couple months. The entire time the players are griping about how crappy the GM is. The GM is moaning about how the players don't get his intricate plots. The players are sniping at the other players -- about how such-and-such is a spotlight whore, or a power gamer.

There are any number of reasons why these games fail... a downright dizzying amount. There are so many ways a game can go wrong that sometimes I am amazed that so many games actually work since statistically, it would seem that the odds are stacked against sitting down to a good, fun game.

I have played in and run both good and bad games and though there are many tips and tricks that I could talk about to push a game into the "good" zone, I would like to focus on one specific idea that I often see overlooked in gaming advice articles. Namely, the fact that in every good game in which I have ever taken part, all of the players were there to have fun.


Ok, I can hear it now, "Well of course we're there to have fun! We are gaming after all. That doesn't change the fact that the GM is a boring blowhard trying to railroad us into following his uninspired J.R.R. Salvatore Martin rip-off plot."

You may have a point, the GM has a big part to play in making a game fun or not, but I do think that the role of the players is overlooked. Too often, we talk about how it is the GM's responsibility to make sure everyone is having fun. But, looking back on the best games, I would say the players have as much, if not more, impact than the GM on whether a game is fun or not. Which brings me to the point of the post:

The best games are ones in which the players take responsibility for their own fun.


What does it mean for a player to "take responsibility for his own fun?" It means actively participating at the table, working with the GM and getting into his story, being funny when it is appropriate, being quiet when it is appropriate, letting everyone participate in decisions, understanding the pacing of the game and moving things along when they slow down...

It means a heck of a lot of things... Let's get into more detail in the coming posts.