Despite someone explaining it to me once on a forum, I have never understood what a 'fantasy heartbreaker' is. The definition seemed to be a fantasy RPG that wasn't D&D?
Broadly, yes.
TV tropes describes it thus: A very common form of failed roleplaying game is known as the "fantasy heartbreaker." In its most basic form, the fantasy heartbreaker is a game that is Dungeons and Dragons, But Not. While forgivable in games in the formative years of tabletop gaming, even now there are always new fantasy games coming out that are slavishly loyal to
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons' idea of adventuring. Usually, however, they will also pick one system that needed "fixing" —
Character Alignment,
Hit Points and
weapon balance are common culprits — and replace it with
something even more complicated. Imagine a Doom clone being made nowadays — as in 'literally' trying to clone Doom, ignoring everything that came after, including full 3D, mouselook, and enemies smarter than suicidal fireball-flinging lemmings, simply because that's all the author has played and assumed nothing else has changed much since then. Except they also decide that
Hit Points are unrealistic, so they bolt on
a complicated first-aid system. That's what a fantasy heartbreaker looks like.
I also asked ChatGPT:
A
fantasy heartbreaker is a lovingly made, amateur-published fantasy RPG that mostly imitates Dungeons & Dragons but claims to be a big improvement. It usually has minor tweaks, new classes or races, and passionate design—but doesn’t realize it’s not very original. It’s called a “heartbreaker” because it’s sad to see all that effort stuck in old D&D assumptions, even though there are often some good ideas buried in it.
