I was sorting through some old Atlas Games scenerios, and found something new to me... apparently Three Days to Kill was the first OGL product to market..?

Here's a shot of my 'preview' copy: it has a release date of August 10, 2000... it has a simplified draft of the licence (half-page), and a disclaimer that when the regular printing is produced it will conform to the full WotC open game license.



If this was produced prior to the OGL, and if it was in fact the first, then I think that's pretty interesting.  Have we discussed this before?  Is it of interest to the community?  Are these 'preview edition' copies common?

Since I had the camera out, here's a shot of my collection of Atlas Games' Penumbra scenerios:



Missing two of the En Route books, and Lean & Hungry, but complete otherwise I think

Anyone know if these are available for other Atlas products as well ?

Never saw one of those. Very interesting !

Yup--released at Gencon

Nope--I have toyed w/ the idea of doing a very limited pathfinder run tho

Nope--crucible was a White Wolf SSS release. TLG did some books on CD; but not our books

There are several TLG products on CD. I don't have them all... yet. And, apparently, neither do the Trolls. However, these would be early in d20, but not "first" by any stretch.

I spoke to Michelle Nephew at GenCon several years ago inquiring about first prints of Three Days to Kill, since I had never been able to find one.  She emailed me the following info about its print history.

1st Printing Alpha (GenCon Preview) -- We printed 3000 covers all at once, but couldn't get the interiors done in time for GenCon. So we printed 500 interiors at Kinkos, numbered all of them in green ink on the title page, and put them with the loose covers in plastic comic book bags with a flap at the top that was taped closed. Something like 50 of the higher-numbered ones were sent to the Source Comics & Games in the Twin Cities right away and were on sale the week before GenCon. Then, at GenCon, we had author John Tynes sign numbers 1 through 100 of them. We sold out of this printing at GenCon.

1st Printing Beta -- These used the rest of the original covers (2500 of them were left) and a new printing of the interior. They were all shrink wrapped to keep the loose cover together with the interior, and had a 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of cardboard placed in the center of the book to keep it from bending.

2nd Printing -- This was a printing of 10,000, for which the cover was saddle stitched (stapled) to the interior. They were sold without any kind of bag or shrink wrapping.

davidc wrote:
That's very interesting - Thank you blackdougal

And as some people are reading this they are thinking, "Oh @#%^*!  More print runs to chase."