To quote a Tom Lehrer song "Nikolai Evonovitch Lubichevski" (I believe):
"Plagerize!
Let no one elses work
evade your eyes!
But please to call... research"
The point I'd make is that every system is inspired by something else in some way. I know that there are many systems I've seen that I wanted to copy aspects of it, but never whole cloth. I know that the Mage:The Ascension magic system is inspiring a lot of things I want to do for my game, same with the Lifepath systems of other games. But only aspects of them are being utilized, and converted to my dice methods, scales and traits.
The above was split from Plagiarism. Good plagiarism. (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=8099.0)
Everyone should familiarize himself or herself with Forge posting etiquette, which includes being attentive to threads' dates.
Best,
Ron
Oops. My bad. The conversion to the new appearance brought some wierd stuff to the front I thought was new.