Conaill said:
Never said that. But I do think game designers should not keep themselves ignorant of existing material *on purpose*. I can understand that someone may want to start from a creatively "clean" slate, so as not to bias the flow of ideas. But I would think it's only natural that at a later stage, a designer would check how his ideas mesh with what's already been published.
Quite frankly you are forgetting the most important part about writing RPGs. Most of us do it because we see other people's work and say, "That's not how I would have done it." And then we go and do it our way. I buy very few RPG suppliments these days (mostly because of income issues) but I find I don't miss them. If I need a set of rules for my game, I'll write them. If I have an idea for a book, I jump feet first into writing it without regard for anyone else's prior work on the idea.
I'm sorry to say, but I write my stuff for me first and for my customers second. If it didn't satisfy me it wouldn't exist. And because I have a writer's arrogance (hubris?), I know the system I write will be better than anyone else's system. So why should I go look at it? Granted, there are some authors who stuff I respect and if I know they did something similar, I might mine their book for an idea or two. But I would not do that until after all of my (supposedly unique) ideas were on paper already (well on hard drive really).
Look at it this way, should I read every spell supplement that comes out to make sure my "unique" spell ideas are really unique? Or should I just create spells without regard to what has been done by others? Who is going to give me the money to buy all of those spell supplements? Who is going to pay me for my time reading all of those spells? You see it is easier and fasterfor me just to write the 150 words that is an average spell rather than even contemplating research. And by not having all those supplements, I can more easily defend myself against parallel development.
And with regard to BESM and M&M, neither of them borrow from EN Pub's Four Color to Fantasy which I believe predates both of them. So don't hold either of them in high regard because they should have based their work on 4ctF.
In any case, the "That's not how I would have done it" syndrome is an instance of the Not Invented Here paradigm. You find NIH in most industries. In RPGs, it's most prevalent in the writers.
It's quite clear from his post that he's using the generic you, not referring specifically to you, Driddle. In other words he says "You want x..." to mean "One wants x..." It is, after all, a standard convention of the English language to use you in that context.
