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

[Henry]

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

I'm not official by any means, but if I recall some comments shortly after 2000, most of the stuff being worked on was in the form of loose notes, not any actual finished documents. By 1996, I believe it was said the emphasis was on pushing the many campaign settings, the Dragon Dice game, basically ANYTHING it was thought would sell -- and according to Ryan Dancey's Open Letter in 2000, TSR management was more about casting out a dozen fishing lines and seeing what would bite, rather than really checking the facts and seeing what the customer base wanted -- which apparently was a new version of D&D. So it sounds like management was greenlighting everything BUT a 3rd edition.

 

[ki11erDM]

Alternity. To me, that was clearly the beginning of 3e. Not sure if WotC used it as a base but there were lots of rules elements that were experimented with in that. I only have my Darkmatter books (so no core rules books) so can't pull it out and check but that is how I remember it.

 

[ki11erDM]

Well in fact I did have my Alternity books still. In that your roll a d20 + some situational die and you are trying to not go over your skill. If you don’t go over you succeed and the lower the roll the better the result can be.

So… you roll a d20 and add a modifier to it and compare it to a DC.
And a great deal of the verbiage looks to be reused in 3e as well.


edit: and the player's handbook was writen by Bill Slavicsek and Rich Baker...

 

[Pramas]

I didn't work for TSR so take this with a grain of salt. As I understand it though, some work on 3E was done at TSR before the buyout. I don't think it went very far and I don't think much of it ended up in 3E.

As for Alternity, I'd call it a minor influence at best. Rich Baker may have been a conduit early on, but he left the design team and the game was ultimately the work of Monte, Jonathan, and Skip. I'd say Runequest and Ars Magica were more of an influence.

 

[Dice4Hire]

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.

Ditto me and my group. I liked having rogue A different from rouge B, other than racial choice and luck in rolling the dex score.

 

[Primal]

If I remember correctly, Monte Cook has said that he worked on the Players' Option book under the impression that it was going to be 3E? And that it was Lorraine Williams who decided not to publish it as 3E, but rather as an optional AD&D supplement, because she didn't want to risk alienating the AD&D customer base?

I may remember it wrong, though.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Back in the early 3.0 days I heard these rumors too.

One of the longest running rumors I got was from Con Con 2001 then again what ever year 3,5 came out the same at gen con...

A bunch of spiral bound 5 subject note books had 3e written in them, diffrent accounts had diffrent levels of completnees rangeing from early notes to basic 1st draft. It had an overhall of the weapon prof system, higher levels of specilixation (Master, high master, grandmastery) built in, and the theif backstab got a huge overhall.​

Now at some point I heard of Thac10 as well. I know that Monte Cook's name was thrown around as having done spit ball work on it.


Inless someone 'comes forward' at this point I guess it will remain the stuff of legends

 

[D'karr]

Back in the early 3.0 days I heard these rumors too.

One of the longest running rumors I got was from Con Con 2001 then again what ever year 3,5 came out the same at gen con...

A bunch of spiral bound 5 subject note books had 3e written in them, diffrent accounts had diffrent levels of completnees rangeing from early notes to basic 1st draft. It had an overhall of the weapon prof system, higher levels of specilixation (Master, high master, grandmastery) built in, and the theif backstab got a huge overhall.​

Now at some point I heard of Thac10 as well. I know that Monte Cook's name was thrown around as having done spit ball work on it.


Inless someone 'comes forward' at this point I guess it will remain the stuff of legends

3e is seven feet tall.

Yes I've heard. 3e kills editions by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume any THAC0 with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.

 

[Monte At Home]

I didn't work for TSR so take this with a grain of salt. As I understand it though, some work on 3E was done at TSR before the buyout. I don't think it went very far and I don't think much of it ended up in 3E.

As for Alternity, I'd call it a minor influence at best. Rich Baker may have been a conduit early on, but he left the design team and the game was ultimately the work of Monte, Jonathan, and Skip. I'd say Runequest and Ars Magica were more of an influence.

This is exactly correct. At TSR, we tossed around 3E ideas, but that was about it.

A bunch of spiral bound 5 subject note books had 3e written in them, diffrent accounts had diffrent levels of completnees rangeing from early notes to basic 1st draft. It had an overhall of the weapon prof system, higher levels of specilixation (Master, high master, grandmastery) built in, and the theif backstab got a huge overhall.

I'm sorry, but none of that sounds familiar.

If I remember correctly, Monte Cook has said that he worked on the Players' Option book under the impression that it was going to be 3E?

I never worked on the Player's Option stuff, although some of that material (created by Rich and Skip) was influential on 3E to be sure.

 

[ProfessorPain]

I remember Alternity coming close. In that it was designed around a central die-roll mechanic. Or that is at least what I remember the designers saying about Alternity when it came out.