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Paranoia XP Tabletop RPG 'Goes Gold'
Costik writes "Paranoia XP, the new version of the cult tabletop RPG which first debuted in 1984, and in which a 'well-meaning but deranged Computer desperately protects the citizens of Alpha Complex, a vast underground city, from all sorts of real and imagined enemies', is done, and will appear at Gencon Indy later this month. The interesting aspect is that it was designed 'in public,' using a weblog, an online forum, and a Wiki, with enthusiastic support from the community. Fans of the game wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's paper-and-pencil rules. Allen, the game's designer, says 'We borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for a paper game, and it worked brilliantly.'"
Apologies if this sounds like pimping...
Obviously we're smaller and don't have the fan following of Paranoia, but a bunch of us are making a Free (capital F) tabletop RPG called Sacred Steel. The first public milestone release is being playtested now. Approx 40,000 words over 100 pages, nicely layed out, with artwork.
It seems to me the logical extension of this would be to build an actual open source engine based on a pencil+paper system, like perhaps GERPS. Creating the actual game could be left completely to fans, and the engine could be modified at will. A commercial model could be developed based on selling the engine along with popular fan-made extensions. If one could generate enough buzz for such a project, an entire game engine could conceivably be built for no cost and the contributers could split any profits that were incidentally made.