Two Metaphors for Indie RPGs / d20

Man, this was the thread I was BORN for, being a snobbish hipster wannabe and all. So...

Actually, I'm afraid that the analogy isn't perfect. (What, an imperfect metaphor? Impossible!) You mention DJing being a major aspect of recontextualizing a given material, and I can see that in the more innovative D20 works (Spycraft, ffrex), but I really feel like there's a lot less collaboration in the D20 world than in the DJ world. IMHO, indie rpgs aren't just indie rock, but everything else - indie rock, screamo, hardcore noise, albums filled with static, contemporary classical, and more - as was said before, I feel DJ'd music and D20/D&D play are both diverse, but for different reasons (the former from many degrees of novel recontexualization; the latter from fundamental open-endedness of RPG play, and the diversity of playgroups).

However, your metaphors are cool, in that (a) music is cool, and RPGs should look cool too, but more importantly (b) business model? Although I'm not sure *HOW* to put out something like our own "Sub Pop", we have some diverse community resources coming together, such as the meandering Forge Booth(s), the upcoming NPA anthology, the theoretical Iron Game Chef anthology, P.O.D. markets (Lulu, et al.), and some outsourcing of editing/layout work (as seen at Politically Incorrect Games, although they took down that info page for now).

As for the "RPG mix tape" (or more likely, a sort of "RPG mix-zine"), that sounds like a fundamentally good idea, and not necessarily just for D20/OGL stuff. If we had a reliable stream of those Finite RPGs we were talking about elsewhere, we could have a regular publication of those... (I'll post more about that thouht on request and/or in the near future.)