Weekly Geekly Rundown for February 23, 2024
It's Time for You to Make Your Own Fantasy Heartbreaker
This week’s Rundown is bookended with advocacy for DIY projects.
Fantasy Heartbreakers are the Life Blood of the RPG Hobby
In 2002, Ron Edwards wrote his now famous (infamous in some gaming circles) article about how some fantasy role playing games broke his heart. The article discussed how there were a number of designers in the 80s and 90s who were creating “deeply personal games” that took existing systems and added house rules to them to create something that was an example of the DIY spirit. Ron Edwards talked about how he loved these games, but how the designers didn’t understand the role playing game market. The designers were producing large offset printed tomes in print runs in the low thousands. These were expensive games doomed to failure because they were too narrow for the mainstream.
It didn’t take long for many in the indie community to completely miss his point and to use the term as a pejorative that meant “lazy D&D ripoff.” To transform what was a term of empathy into a snide and dismissive insult demonstrated the cruelty of some members of role playing game critical culture.
This critical cruelty led Edwards to write a follow up essay clarifying the issue, and where he added a couple more games to his list of fantasy heartbreakers. After this compelling and heartfelt clarification, people continued to misuse the term and Fantasy Heartbreaker is still primarily used by people as an insult implying a game is a “lazy D&D ripoff.”
To be fair, there is some small truth to the lazy D&D ripoff insult. Most of the Heartbreakers from the 80s and 90s took D&D as their launching off point. There is a difference between Runequest and Fifth Cycle, even though both are spin-offs of D&D. Runequest spun-off as a natural extension and refinement of the “Perrin Conventions.” The Perrin Conventions were a collection of house rules that can be found in Chaosium’s All the Worlds’ Monsters Vol. 2. These rules added a number of interesting twists on D&D, twists that eventually formed the basis for Steve Perrin’s design work on Runequest. Fifth Age differs from D&D in many of the same ways Runequest does, but it’s rougher and less play tested. It’s more personal and less commercial.
Like Edwards, I like a lot about the game. Part of that comes from the fact that I too have worked on a Fantasy Heartbreaker. It wasn’t my own Heartbreaker, I’m working on that publicly and more in line with the modern publishing/communication principles Edwards suggests Heartbreakers ignored, rather it was the Fantasy Heartbreaker of a friend of mine named George Strayton. That game is The Secret Fire and I love it. I’ve mentioned my work in this game in a prior post where I discuss how George got me interested in Original D&D and brought me in on the project.
I love The Secret Fire for a number of reasons. The first is that it was a deeply personal work for George. He was channeling all of his ideas for how to run a fun and engaging role playing game the connected both with older and newer gamers into a single product. I think his use of specific adjective descriptions for different attribute levels is genius. The labels are dated, the game was made in 2011, but the concept is sound. Instead of saying your character has a 13 strength with a +1 bonus, you say that your character is “Muscular.” It’s the same thing, but it’s more immersive. Similarly, the initiative system which combines individual and group initiative is fun in play. Essentially and PC can switch initiative with any other PC which encourages more teamwork without requiring narrowly defined actions like some versions of D&D.
The game is still VERY D&D influenced, but so too are the vast majority of OSR games published right now. For every Cepheus (a Traveller based OSR game) there are 20 games similar to Old School Essentials (I’m highlighting it because I LOVE it). What makes The Secret Fire, and not those other games, a Heartbreaker is that George, I, and everyone else followed a traditional publishing and marketing strategy. This strategy was doomed to fail. I think the game is fun and strong, but it would have been more successful if we’d built community first and then moved onto marketing. Marketing speak doesn’t go over well any more, but sharing and building community do.
That said, the energy and time we put into the game wasn’t wasted. It was productive and resulted in a game I think we can be (mostly) proud of making. That energy is what drives the current, and long lasting, OSR boom. The OSR movement is nothing but a vast conspiracy of Fantasy Heartbreaker designers making games, but making them with an understanding of how the market works. To say OSR doesn’t even always mean D&D, though it once did. There is the Cepheus series I mentioned, but there are also Call of Cthulhu inspired games, Chill inspired, and Marvel FASERIP inspired games. What’s great is that these games are often more than copies of those past games, they are refinements with years of playtesting behind them.
They are the lifeblood of the role playing game hobby and they will continue regardless of what Hasbro does with D&D. In fact, the worse Hasbro abuses the D&D fanbase, the bigger the Fantasy Heartbreaker movement will become. Yes, it will be a long tail movement where money is made on the margins, but when the creation is DIY overhead is low so profits come with even moderate revenue streams.
This energy is why I’m working on Heroes of Karameikos, but it’s also why I’ll work on a retroclone and improvement of Superhero 2044. It was the first superhero role playing game and it has a great core resolution system. What it lacks is a character design system and I’m up for that. Gotta finish Heroes first though.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
In this week’s Bastionland Presser game designer Chris McDowall examines one of my favorite role playing game supplements, Out of the Pit for the Advanced Fighting Fantasy role playing game. Reading Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures, was my primary way of engaging in role playing game experiences as a kid. My family moved around a decent amount, I played sports, had numerous extra-curriculars, worked, and couldn’t afford a computer for most of high school, so I played a lot of game books. Most of my gaming time came during the summer breaks.
Of the many game book series, I had a special place for Fighting Fantasy because they also published sourcebooks for a “full” role playing game based on the solo system. I never played the full game, but knowing it existed gave me the illusion that I was getting in more game time than I was and the creativity of Out of the Pit, Dungeoneer, Titan, and Allansia sparked my imagination. Chris’s examination of the book, and the reveal that it had a monster called a Blog, brought back some nice memories.
Marc Normandin reviews Godzilla: Monster of Monsters for his Retro XP Substack. He thinks it has potential, but the game he wishes it was sounds a lot like the Mail Order Monsters game I adored as a kid.
Earlier I mentioned how important Fighting Fantasy game books were to me as young gamer, but once I got a computer I discovered a whole new realm of fun that included Wizardry. Retroist at The Retroist has a podcast episode that does a deep dive into this iconic video game series.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
In preparation for the upcoming Deadpool film, Luke has written “The Only Deadpool Recap You Need Before Deadpool & Wolverine” over at SlashFilm. It starts with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was intriguing due to how much it’s film makers didn’t understand so many of its characters. It also includes a brief comment about Reynold’s performance as Green Lantern. I’m of the opinion that had the film embraced its villain (which was either the villain from Emerald Dawn, the source of fear that is the villain of the excellent animated series depending on how you interpret it)
Luke visited Aaron Neurwirth’s “The Code is Zeek” podcast to discuss Bob Marley: One Love and Madame Web. He also has a review of the latest season of The Bad Batch over at SuperHeroHype. His review highlights the challenge of making show that is targeted at a younger audience deliver stories that are a dark, mature, slow burn. The Warhammer 40,000 children’s novels erred on the side of being kid friendly, and that worked for me but not others, but The Bad Batch strives to be on the darker side.
Lastly, Luke was less impressed than most critics with the new Dune movie. In his review at SuperHeroHype, he states his disappointment with the resolution of the film. He thinks that the film lacks a climax. Of course, that was the point of the first Dune book. Paul’s life lacks climax. He is avoiding ultimate responsibility, as I talk about more discussing Scott Mendelson’s review. He’s trying to prevent galactic genocide, but will bring it about. When given the opportunity to give that genocide meaning, but needing to commit even greater genocide to do it, he walks away. These are not resolutions, so much as commentaries on those who want to spread faith by the sword. Given that Leto II eventually takes up the role and achieves a psychedelic apotheosis, depth is added to the conversation. But Dune stories never quite feel ended, because the underlying conflicts remain. It’s like a romantic comedy that ends with the romantic pair realizing that “there’s work ahead” instead of being a perfect match. They are stories in process and that can be unsatisfying as a film.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney Howard’s review of Dune (or as I lovingly call it based on the logo designed by the marketing team DUNC) is enthusiastic in its appreciation for Villeneuve’s achievement. She is all in for the ride and appreciates the hard work of the sound design team, as well as the cinematography. She’s more satisfied with an unfinished ending than our other critics and was more moved by the building love between Chani and Paul, a love that will never be as fully realized as either hopes.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
Scott Mendelson’s review title is kinder to the new Dune film than his actual review. Like many of the reviewers out there, he thinks the plot is thin and he understates the internal struggle that Paul faces. Maybe it’s just that the internal struggle isn’t captured well in Villeneuve’s films. I personally think one of the strengths of the Lynch version was his focus in internal struggle, though he left out the real struggle.
That struggle is Paul’s attempt to avoid his fate. He is doing everything he can to prevent himself from becoming the leader in a vast genocidal war. He uses his ability to see the future in an attempt to shape events away from that end but, as in Greek tragedy, it is his attempt to avoid the future that brings it about. In the book, you know he has failed in his goal when Duncan Idaho dies and from his reaction to that moment.
Herbert’s work, like Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, is a commentary on “chosen one” stories. It is a critique of them. Both demonstrate that the chosen one is the harbinger of genocide. Both regret being what they are. Dune the book delves deeply into the psyche of Paul as this happens, and an even bigger refusal happens later in the series, but that’s difficult to capture on film.
I just wish more of the discussion about Dune mentioned the “Great Game” conflicts between Russia and the United Kingdom, rather than attempting to have Dune reflect modern politics. That the politics of Dune also match current, and recent, events is an example George Santayana’s statement of history repeating itself. Then again, Santayana’s statement is a rephrasing and subverting Marx’s statement in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. When Santayana says history repeats, he thinks it’s more tragedy than farce.
Music Recommendation
Since there are so many Dune reviews this week, it got me thinking of Iron Maiden’s Dune inspired song To Tame a Land. It’s the last song on Side B of an Piece of Mind. As with many Maiden songs of the Dickinson era, the song is separated into different movements and has moments that push his vocals to the limit. It takes a while for the song to get rolling, but the middle section of the song is very dynamic and features Maiden’s trademark sound and intensity. As strong as the song is, it’s actually one of the weaker songs on the album. That’s more a testimony to how good the album is as a whole. The record goes from strength to strength starting with Where Eagles Dare and ending with To Tame a Land.
In sharp melodic contrast to Maiden’s song, but including a reference to Dune, is Weapon of Choice by Fatboy Slim. Here the influence of Dune is one of many references within the song which range from references to other musicians to quotes from Oscar Wilde. That Christopher Walken is in the video makes a nice loop back to the current Dune film.
Classic Film Recommendation
Diane Lane is a talented actress with an interesting career that ranges from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders and Rumblefish to Man of Steel, with a number of romantic films like Must Love Dogs and “Romantic” films like Under the Tuscan Sun. Throughout her filmography, she demonstrates time and time again her range as an actress. Often overlooked is that she has stared in a couple of cult classic Hollywood Musicals, Streets of Fire and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. One might quibble with classifying these films as Musicals in the Busby Berkeley sense, and I’m sympathetic to that, but what is certain is that music is central to both films and Diane Lane sings her heart out in both.
Of the two films, Streets of Fire gets more frequent discussion and if you listen to this performance of “Nowhere Fast,” you can see why.
In the clip Diane Lane comes across as a charismatic and plausible early rock star. She’s got a great stage presence and that stage presence is evident in the earlier, and less talked about Fabulous Stains. Where Lane plays an established musician named Ellen Aim who lives in a 1950s alternative universe apocalyptic Fairy Tale, in Fabulous Stains her character Corinne Burns is an avatar of youthful angst, feminism, and Gen X rage at the Baby Boom generation. Streets of Fire is a fun film, but Fabulous Stains is a much deeper film, even as it is a film arguing with itself regarding its ultimate meaning. In a way that conflicted message makes it an even more Punk film as the Punk movement (if it can be called a movement) is filled with contradictions.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains begins with a local news report c where the anchor revisits a clip of a young woman named Corinne Burns who is an exemplar of the rage of youth in the economic recession. Corinne was captured on film while working at a fast food restaurant, and the clip shows her lashing out at her boss (Brent Spiner) who promptly fires her. Since being fired, Corinne’s mother has died of lung cancer and her father is nowhere to be seen. She’s being kicked out of the house she’s renting because, even though she’s paid the rent by selling her furniture, the lease was with her mom and the landlord wants her and her sister out as soon as possible.
Corinne is in a tough spot and needs to find a job to support her and her sister, but the viral news clip and the follow up interview where she rages against society while making several nihilistic statements has made it hard for her to find a job locally. Add to this that she claimed to be the front woman for a Punk group called “The Stains,” she is not being treated with as much empathy as her dire straits would normally elicit. When she heads over to her aunt’s house to make a call trying to get a job, her aunt (Christine Lahti) mocks her for being a “celebrity” and is loud and disruptive during the call. This disruption sets up one of the themes of the film, Generation X versus the Baby Boom generation, and that’s a big conflict in the film.
There really is a ton to talk about in this film, ranging from commentary on celebrity, the role of the media, how media exploits people, how the music industry exploits people, the role of women in society, what makes a band authentic or sell out, and a lot more. It’s way too much to cover in a recommendation in a Weekly Geekly.
Suffice to say that Corinne Burns (“Third Degree Burns”) begins as a true DIY Punk who can’t play an instrument. This is followed by her gaining success when she points out the commercialism and sexual exploitation of the music industry. This success is short lived as she and her band are accused of commercialism. Eventually, her raw DIY material has inspired a new generation of young women to pick up the guitar and in the end “The Stains” star in a music video where they look like “The Bangles.” Like “The Go Gos” before them, “The Stains” have transitioned from Punk to Pop.
That last bit was an ending tacked on after the film had been held up due to creative differences. The screenwriter wanted “The Stains” to inspire a DIY women’s Punk movement in the U.K., but instead we get them selling out again. The film is interspersed with news commentary from a local station that serves as the “Chorus” for the film and as a commentary on media exploitation.
For the film’s original and intended ending to work, the final interview Corinne has with the local sexist male anchor would have to go differently and the song at the end would have to be their own song Waste of Time fully refined and played with all the rage that underlies the lyrics.
The film also includes real figures from the Punk rock scene and a cast filled with future noteworthies. Given the messages of the film, I thought the fact that the cast included members of The Sex Pistols and The Tubes to be particularly interesting. So too is the fact that while the film’s band “The Fabulous Stains” might have sold out and gone commercial in the end, the film Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains inspired some musicians to participate in the DIY Riot Grrrl movement. What the screenwriter hoped for as an ending in fiction, became the ending in reality.
It would spoil the movie more than anyone's comfortable with to argue with anything you say about DUNE -- but the specifics of what you think our issues are with it aren't quite it. Everything you've said, the movie is very clear about. But...