long time rpg fan - just found PTA... wondering where the heck it came from....

howdy,

so i'm a longtime rpg fan and have done a lot of reading (less playing) of d&d and shadowrun and d6 and starwarsd6 and d20 etc... stats heavy kinda rpg stuff.

anyhoo, i was reading PIQ magazine (the one with wall-e) where i read about indie rpgs and japanese rpgs and all these things that i wasn't even aware of. and a lot of these games seem much more newb friendly and seem more amenable to introducing to friends that aren't super gamers.

in fact, a lot of my friends are into movies and screenwriting and stuff and a lot of the concepts in pta sound right up their alley. especially with the simplified, statslite game mechanics and emphasis on storytelling (by EVERYONE no less) and this really super neat idea of fan mail.

so i'm wondering - where do these mechanics come from? and i will totally accept "ex-nihilo" as an answer! : ) ... but if there's a lineage or an evolutionary line that i can follow (ala x-files > kolchak the nightstalker > hplovecraft), i'd really be interested in finding out more about this!

from what i can make out so far (google is neat), it seems to stem from FUDGE < FATE < ......... < PTA but i do seem to be missing some transitional forms in the middle there.

ALSO

is it complete coincidence that TENRA BANSHO ZERO (also introduced to me in the piq article) http://www.tenra-rpg.com/ seems to share a lot of the same kind of mechanics?!?! and actually, this is the coincidental little detail that makes me wonder where these mechanics stem from and whether pta and tenra both are branches from another trunk or whether one cross pollinated the other.

anyway, this game sounds really awesome and i think i will obey the dog-eared design web page title and spend some money!

thanks much.

jin