why paralysis is great in RBY:
in RBY games are extremely slow and teams are extremely hard to break; if you can attempt a sequence that doesn't risk anything on your end but has a 25% chance to lose for your opponent (full para), you try for it. if it works, great, if it doesn't work, back to square one, try to create that situation again until it does. all the other progress making tools really work in much the same way (critical hits, freeze fishing, hitting a lot of clamps in a row before your opponent can heal / counterattack your cloyster, etc), with explosion being the only big exception
the best pokemon in the tier also happen to have a way to induce paralysis between thunder wave and body slam, with few exceptions, which makes this approach dominant / near mandatory.
there are no other real ways to play rby; boomspam is a vague 'rival archetype', but it's the only offense option available, it's relatively inconsistent, and it probably still likes having the ability to paralyze tauros/alakazam when necessary. there's also no way to play stall in the real sense of the word (eg clearing all status and creating those situations where your defenses are unbreakable and the enemy team will slowly be chipped to death) because (1) your defenses are very breakable at all times between explosions, FP chances, freeze chances, crit chances and so on, and (2) it's very hard to chip things to death in RBY with no access to hazards, toxic being giganerfed, no sand, and having to fight against 32 PP recover as well as chansey every game. full wrap theoretically is an option that doesn't need paralysis, but it's still vastly better off with it as it needs it to bring fast mons down to a speed tier that's actually wrappable; and also it's full wrap, i hope i don't need to elaborate on its inconsistencies
why these things aren't true in other gens:
gen 2 has restalk everywhere making twave pretty irrelevant; it also doesn't do much to the omnipresent curse sweepers etc. all the dominant playstyles have very natural counters to paralysis
gen 3 and upwards things are less bulky by default (no more 252 hp 252 def 252 spdef on every pokemon), choice band exists, sand artificially reduces the bulk of lots of mons by 6%/turn etc, which makes direct attacking generally a better idea than it is in RBY. also, better paralysis absorbers exist and happen to be high presence (swampert and other grounds that you end up running to check aerodactyl/ttar anyways, natural cure starmie / blissey / celebi), while paralysis spreaders are less common, and most of them would rather run toxic anyways as it stops most setup all the same while also being a decent wallbreaking tool
gen 4 paraspam is a lot more common again; paralysis spreaders are better, paralysis abusers are better (welcome iron head jirachi and dynamic punch machamp), paralysis absorbers are much worse (flygon remains great but swampert, blissey, celebi, even milotic all tanked in viability; having a ground type isn't near mandatory anymore like it is in adv). it's not omnipresent because there are other playstyles that contend with it, but it's strong, arguably dominant
gen 5 is when the "why are you bothering with para moves when you could be oneshotting each other" effect really starts hitting hard. latios is ou and dracometeors everybody for a million, keldeo hydropumps in rain are a thing. the "defensive" mons are perfectly happy to take your twave as they'll get free hazards anyways as you do. bw is so unconductive to slow gradual status spread that even toxic is relatively uncommon. any sweeper that may care will simply run lum, and even moreso after the recent ban on gems they are free to do that
gen 6 and upwards the issue of damage creep remains present, twave eats nerf after nerf, and the game simply has better win conditions available
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