I am currently reading William White's Tabletop RPG Design in Theory and Practice at the Forge: 2001-2012 after having met the author at MeaningfulPlay. This excerpt from Chapter 3 made me shout with delight at having a name for a phenomenon.
A fantasy heartbreaker was [Ron Edwards'] term for an independent game that contained interesting innovations, usually without realizing that they were in fact innovative, but whose designers had failed to fully examine their underlying design assumptions—thus producing games that were highly derivative of D&D, whether or not that was actually a design goal of the game—and who were either naïve or overambitious in their expectations for success in the marketplace. (p.93)
Ron Edwards' original post on the topic is cited, but I haven't made the time to read the source yet. White's summary was enough to excite me and want to share it here.
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