A note to Allen Varney

[RPGPundit]

First of all, Mr. Varney, thank you very much for Paranoia.  It has been a source of great fun for me for years, and Paranoia XP is a new version of the old game I loved, that has restored it to its rightful place in the pantheon of RPGs.  Note that I do not feel the game is without weak points.  If you want to see my thorough opinion about what's great about XP and where you guys missed out on a real chance to catch the zeitgeist of the age, check out my July 14 rant:
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=RPGpundit&tab=weblogs&uid=304863681
 
Now, as to your comment on the gaming report site: You say that you haven't taken anything from D20, because you have never actually even read the D20 SRD or the D&D 3.x rules.  On the face of it that would appear to be a pretty clear cut case.
 
In fact, it means nothing. You still borrowed from D20, without even knowing it.   I am sure that if you say you never read a single D20 game, then you haven't, but that doesn't mean you haven't learned from it.
 
Let us use an analogy from the music industry. Let's say you have a wildly influential musician from the 1960s, he puts out some albums, has some big hits. Bob Dylan, lets say.   A few decades later, you have the Strokes. Now let's say that no one in the Strokes has ever listened to a single Dylan album. Its pretty easy for a music fan to point out that nevertheless they were influenced by Dylan's music, because Dylan's music influenced everything, it was pervasive in the culture.
 
Now let's say that Bob Dylan puts out a new album in 2005. Its entirely possible, if he's been living in isolation, doesn't care for what the "kids these days" are up to, and has generally chosen to become a slowly-decaying vegetable of irony-filled hippie conservatism, that his new album will contain NO influences from what the Strokes have done.
 
On the other hand, let's say that he comes out with a new album and it does appear to have some of the hallmark features of the Strokes' music.  And yet Dylan claims that he has never heard of the Strokes.  What does this mean?
Is it that Dylan is just so fucking brilliant that he's managed to somehow spontaneously channel the musical innovation of the modern age without even trying?
 
Well, no.
The more likely answer is that he HAS heard the Strokes, just without knowing it. He's listened on the radio sometime in the car. He's heard the countless other bands that are putting out music influenced by the Strokes. He's at least peripherally witnessed the "hipness" of that music, heard commercial jingles, watched TV shows that played songs of that style as background music.
 
The only thing it would prove, if he puts out an album that is Strokes-influenced while claiming not to have heard the Strokes, is that the Strokes have had so much influence that they've become pervasive too. Just like a band could be influenced by Dylan without knowing it, he could be influenced by the Strokes without knowing it.
 
That's the situation you find yourself in, Mr. Varney.  Your use of streamlined mechanics, single unified rolling conventions, the skills set up, all of these demonstrate the (apparently unwitting) influence of D20.  Which is by no means a bad thing. D20 is the dominant paradigm of the age in gaming, the industry leader. The fact that you unconsciously "plugged in" and sensed what is good and right and true in this moment is a thing to be admired and approved of. You have heard the buzz; whether or not you know from where the buzz was coming is pretty much irrelevant.
 
It means that D20's influence has gotten to where its driving concepts have become givens as "hallmarks" of good game design. D20 has become an all-pervading force in the industry, and no game can be considered well-designed in this day and age if it does not take the design-standards of D20 into account, be it consciously or unconsciously.
 
Good luck, Mr. Varney, on your continued projects.  Have you guys figured out what you're going to call Paranoia now, after the whole "XP/microsoft" fiasco?  Feel free to let us know, because The Uruguayan Gamer is also part of the buzz. And you want to be part of the buzz. The buzz is what's happening.

RPGPundit August 29 2005

[Mcrow]

First off I don't know anything about Paranoia.

I say d20 was a result of all of the influences of all previous RPGs. There is not one thing (IIRC) in d20 that was truely new when it was released. Some other RPG had done it, in part, before.  D20 just put it all in one package.

So I could just as well say that paranoia is was influence by Hero or AD&D if I were to stretch my use of the term "influenced" as far as you.

[Imperator]

You still borrowed from D20, without even knowing it.   I am sure that if you say you never read a single D20 game, then you haven't, but that doesn't mean you haven't learned from it.

:jaw-dropping:
 D20 transmits itself by... magic. Telepathy. Radio waves.

Your use of streamlined mechanics, single unified rolling conventions, the skills set up, all of these demonstrate the (apparently unwitting) influence of D20.

:ponder:You mean, all those things that have existed well before D20 was born? You are referring to all those things to were quite common before 2000?
:tears::killingme:

D20 has become an all-pervading force in the industry, and no game can be considered well-designed in this day and age if it does not take the design-standards of D20 into account, be it consciously or unconsciously.

Take this :toiletpaper: and rewrite this discourse about D20 as a psychic flu virus there. And after that take this: :chillpill:
 

Man, people being influenced by a source they haven't had contact with.

:boohoo:


NB: Dude, I had to use some fucking smileys. I can't believe how many of them are.

[RPGPundit]

People are influenced second- and third-hand by things they know nothing about all the time.

Some of the principles that D20 uses may have existed before D20, but they came to be considered the "industry standard" BECAUSE of D20.

RPGPundit

[Imperator]

People are influenced second- and third-hand by things they know nothing about all the time.

Some of the principles that D20 uses may have existed before D20, but they came to be considered the "industry standard" BECAUSE of D20.

Though I thorughly agree with the idea of things that influence people with no one the wiser, I dispute that the spread of any meme in the RPG hobby can be compared to the spread of a meme in mass popular culture. You really can avoid be influenced by any system, because you can avoid reading it and playing it.

And I also dispute that D20 is the reason for that characteristics becoming the industry standard: mainly because I'm not so sure about the very existence of that standard. And I find :confused: to read that it seems (in your crazy viewpoint) that people went on gaming for 30 years, and one day D&D 3E hit the shelves and everyone was like 'Holy shit! What a big innovation is this game composed in its whole of things that have been in the hobby for, like, 30 years! Buth somehow, we haven't realized that!'

I don't buy that.

[mattormeg]

Shit, man, I thought that this thread was about Jim Varney for a minute.