Was there a TSR-made 3rd Edition? Forked Thread: Why THAC0 Rocks

[Remathilis]

Forked from: Why THAC0 Rocks

Back a few years ago I herd a rumor that TSR had worked on a 3e of there own, like the editions before mostly making optional and common house rules into the book. One thing I herd was that it was Thac10 instead of Thac0.

This same rumor also said that they didn’t have the resources to finish it, and when WotC bought them out, they scraped 85-90% of the work and started almost from scratch on there 3e.

I sometime wonder what that system would have looked like. Your example here now gives me some idea.

does anyone rembere the Mthac0???

Anyone from the TSR/WotC days (Sean, Monte, Chris, Skip, Bruce, etc?) want to comment on such a project before TSR's going belly up?

 

[darjr]

I think Ryan Dancy talks a little about this in his interview with fear the boot. I could be wrong, and it wasn't a lot of info anyway, nothing about the details of the rules that I remember.

 

[Mark]

I think you can pretty much look to Player's Option: Skills & Powers to have an idea the direction TSR was taking the game.

 

[Remathilis]

I think you can pretty much look to Player's Option: Skills & Powers to have an idea the direction TSR was taking the game.

I was under the impression the Skill & Powers wasn't well received...

 

[Mark]

I was under the impression the Skill & Powers wasn't well received...

That may factor in to a lot of what happened around that time and soon afterward.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I was under the impression the Skill & Powers wasn't well received...

The player's option stuff was very well recieved with me and my friends we all found it to be a vast improvement over the standard 2e.

 

[Remathilis]

The player's option stuff was very well recieved with me and my friends we all found it to be a vast improvement over the standard 2e.

By individual groups, perhaps. But IIRC a lot of Dragon Forums and Alt.TSR.DnD web-posts back in the day seemed to dump on it, with a few vocal and active supporters (Mike Morris being one) supporting it and trying to fix the imbalances.

That said, PO: C&T and S&M have fingerprints all over our third edition from AoOs to new spells, etc. Similarly, some of the DMO: HLO stuff appears in 3e (rogue's evasion for starters).

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

As the original poster who got forked (that sounds dirty), I will day It was 2002 and 2003 at gencon that this rumor was going around, but I had herd as far back as 97 that people speculated that TSR was working on it.
To be as precise as I can in 2003 I was looking for 2e games at gencon, and mostly failing. One guy running RPGA stuff had a friendly game me and my friend got into Sunday after the Con, at that table he first told me of THAC10, and hit points working differently, although I do not remember the HP thing, we all did joke about the player option things, and no one ever had hard proof.


If anyone does know of these things, or an offical comment I would love to know more. Heck just imagin the road not taken...

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

(rogue's evasion for starters).

evasion started in DM options High level Campaigns, along with the orginal epic seeds, and a bunch of new % skills.

 

[Treebore]

I do know of a very nicely done AD&D 3E being done, but it wasn't done by WOTC or TSR, or any other company for that matter. Plus it wasn't released until a couple of years ago.