History WhatCouldHaveBeen / TabletopGames

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragonsFourthEdition'':
** When designing 4E, the designers decided they wanted to do a ShoutOut to Narnia and the intelligent animal fantasy concept. So originally, the Dragonborn race from 4th Edition ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' was originally supposed to be a race of [[IntellectualAnimal non-anthropomorphic talking]] ''[[IntellectualAnimal lions]]'' based on Aslan from ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. The idea was dropped because of questions of [[FeatherFingers how they would handle equipment]] and they were at first altered into dragons (since they believed ''Dungeons & Dragons'' should actually have dragons as a playable race) and then later into humanoid dragons called ''Dragonborn''. (Of course, they weren't called the ''Dragonborn'' in the original concept.)
** Creator/{{Wizards|OfTheCoast}} [[https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021209x of the Coast's]] [[http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?55220-Fantasy-Setting-Search-Semi-Finalists-being-published Fantasy Setting Search]] was a contest that eventually went with ''TabletopGame/{{Eberron}}'', but quite a few settings were submitted; like ''Dawnforge, The Sunset Kingdoms,'' and ''Morningstar''. One of the two runner-ups was developed by [[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick Rich Burlew]] - imagine what might have happened if he had won instead.
* Before sales declined and their license to print TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}} 3E products reverted to Wizards Of The Coast, Arthaus had planned a thirteen-sourcebook run for their Gazetteer series. The narrator S would have traveled to Clusters and Islands, some of them from on board a hired ship crewed by supporting characters. Each book would've included a different half-fiend scion of the Gentleman Caller. Eventually, Azalin's intentions for them and for S would have been revealed, as would [[spoiler: the Caller's plot to father a new and unstoppable Dukkar on a youthified Madame Eva]]. There was actually going to be a 4th Edition version of TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}} released in 2011, but it was cancelled because they couldn't get it quite right.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}:''
** During big events such as [=GamesDay=], Games Workshop often showcases Greens (prototype models) of possible new miniatures. While the majority of these do make it into production and later become available for purchase, some are left behind and never finished. The most notable of these is a 5th edition Eldar Guardian Jetbike, which took nearly a decade before seeing a release (with massive changes).
** The 8th edition Genestealer Cults Codex, released in early 2019, mentions in the "army building suggestion" page the existence of a Start Collecting box for the army containing an Acolyte Iconward, a squad of Acolyte Hybrids, a Squad of Neophyte Hybrids and a Goliath Rockgrinder. The box was finally released only one year after the Codex, and featured an Achilles Ridgerunner instead of the more expensive Goliath.
* The first book released for ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'' had some differences to later game releases: some factions were called with different names than the one they're called in later books (Fyreslayers were Red Slayers, Bonesplitterz were Bonesplittaz, Flesh-Eater Courts were Flesh-Eaters and Beastclaw Raiders were Beastclaw Ogors). Also, the Bonesplitterz shaman hero was called Juju Dok rather than Wardokk and the Ironblaster is shown as a Beastclaw unit rather than a Gutbusters one.
* While reception for the ''Franchise/StarshipTroopers'' miniatures game wasn't perfect, it was a pretty solid game and had some great miniatures. However, before it was discontinued, Mongoose Publishing had made some pretty big plans such as the introduction of two new races that were also going to appear in the second edition of the RPG, which was also intended to include more rules for playing Skinnies (The original edition only had one short section and a single Skinny class, with the promise of more later on). Since they lost the license, none of this is likely to happen.
* Gareth Hanrahan, the creator of ''TabletopGame/{{Infernum}}'', actually said on his twitter that there were formerly plans for a second edition using the D&D 4th edition system, but now says it isn't going to happen.
* When ''TabletopGame/GeistTheSinEaters'' was still in development at Creator/WhiteWolf, there was still debate about what the next game line for the TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness was going to be. One idea in the running was to make a game about angels, with the angels in question merging with the souls of human hosts. They decided to go ahead with a ghost-oriented line, but kept the idea of gestalt entities. Five years later, [[RefittedForSequel they revisited the idea with a]] [[TabletopGame/DemonTheDescent somewhat different interpretation of angels...]]

* In 2015, Onyx Path announced a "4th edition" of ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'', which would have followed on from where the original line left off at cancellation, treating the 20th anniversary edition as a side-step "nostalgia edition" that commemorated the game's previous history. It was dropped when Creator/ParadoxInteractive bought White Wolf and announced their own plans for [[TabletopGame/VampireTheMasqueradeFifthEdition a new edition]].
* The first draft of ''TabletopGame/DemonTheFallen'' was very different to what it eventually became, with [=PCs=] being possessed mortals who didn't know what the demons possessing them were up to, and the game being about the struggle to retain your soul despite being in the grip of Evil(tm). WordOfGod is that the two versions were so different it's hard to even compare them - nothing, not the theme, the scope, or the overall feel, was the same.
* The TabletopGame/TrinityUniverseWhiteWolf saw a ''lot'' of these:

* Before Guardians of Order folded, there were plans to expand many of the franchise-based entries to the ''TabletopGame/BigEyesSmallMouth'' series. For instance, there were plans to supplement the ''Anime/TenchiMuyo'' series by including entries for ''Anime/TenchiUniverse'', ''Anime/TenchiInTokyo'' and ''Anime/PrettySammy'' (the first entry only had the OVA and only the first 13 episodes to it).
* There is a Japanese RPG called ''Gundam Senki'' which is ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'''s One Year War setting using the ''TabletopGame/{{Mekton}}'' rules. An English-language release was planned, but fell through.
* The first edition of [=AEG's=] swashbuckling RPG ''TabletopGame/SeventhSea'' ended on a story arc where a ship had managed to sail beyond the mystical barrier that kept Theah (a continent roughly analogous to Europe, China, and the Middle East) and the chains of islands around them (representative of the United Kingdom, Nordic countries, and Polynesia) separate from the rest of the world. There were also plans to reveal the true nature of [[{{Precursors}} the Syrneth]], and why their artifacts seem to fall into four general camps. The second edition, now under John Wick Presents, is a reboot, and doesn't have a barrier in place.
* TabletopGame/{{Exalted}} was originally going to have the strange mechanical world of Autochthonia in its core, but was cut for space. We did eventually get to the world of Brass and Shadow, but it's been an optional addition for the entire run of the game.
** In the game's very earliest planning stages, there was only one type of Exalted, the Dragon-Blooded, with powers based on the kinds of magic they used. Said magic [[MarkOfTheSupernatural changed the Exalted physically]] in different ways depending on the type used.
** At one point in development, TheFairFolk were supposed to be Lunars gone wrong, driven insane by prolonged exposure to [[PrimordialChaos the Wyld]]; the Fair Folk went on to become their own thing, while the chimera filled the slot of Lunars gone wrong. Third Edition eventually dropped the idea of Lunars gone wrong altogether, with chimera simply being Lunars with hybrid spirit shapes.
** When it came time to do the Fair Folk as a playable group, they were supposed to use European faerie tropes laid over a new and unique portrayal, rather than played straight, but the original drafts simply played the tropes straight, so as damage control they were quickly rewritten to draw on Myth/HinduMythology instead.
** For Third Edition, one proposed new Exalt type was the Devianics, demon-created Exalted with a level of power comparable to the Dragon-Blooded. They didn't make the cut due to the difficulty of making them something different from "the Infernal Exalted, but weaker".
** Another proposed Exalt type for 3E was the Chosen of the Depths, who were intended to be a conceptual take on the undersea. When the writers started discussing the Chosen, they found they were pretty much Exalted pelagothropes (human {{mutant}}s adapted to saltwater life), so they provisionally decided to go with that, moving the Chosen from being a new Exalt type to being a collective term for the Exalted pelagothropes who'd fought as part of the undersea Niobraran League against the other Exalted in the distant past.
** 3e also had three Exalted types conceived as foils for the Lunars and Sidereals, bringing some of their themes into relief; the [[NonIndicativeName Hearteaters]] and Umbral Exalted were to be Lunar foils, while the Dream-Souled were to be Sidereal foils alongside the Getimians. However, introducing new Exalted types incurs a certain trade-off, both in that time and effort needs to go into writing their books rather than the previously established Exalted, and in their needing to have a place in the setting and potentially complicating things through interactions with the established Exalted. When a new dev team took over, they came to the conclusion that Lunars didn't need foils given their dynamics with most of the established Exalted (one-time seconds of the Solars unwilling to return to that position, with the Lunar bond with the Solars also carrying over to the Abyssals and Infernals as corrupted Solars, and long-standing adversaries of the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals), and Sidereals didn't need another one on top of the opportunities raised by the introduction of the Getimians and Exigents. So they decided to have them be [[LooseCanon optional canon]], included in an appendix to the Exigents book (it doubling as the make-your-own-{{splat}} book), laying out their themes, concepts and backstories, and describing their Charmsets in sufficient detail to homebrew them, with an option of getting upgraded to their own splatbook depending on reception. For the curious, all three are featured on pages 54-55 of the 3e core; the woman with the aurora is a Hearteater, the man tormented by a shadow-monster is an Umbral Exalt, and the man in a toga is a Dream-Souled.
** Further to that, little to nothing is known about what the original concepts for the Exalts that became the Umbrals and Dream-Souled were, apart from them being tied to a line in an Infernal Exalted preview PDF from the 3e core Kickstarter about the Yozis Isidoros and Oramus creating their own Exalted, and the Yozis being disquieted by the results, with the Dream-Souled being Isidoros's Exalted and the Umbrals being Oramus's. When the new dev team took over, they basically had to reinvent them from scratch because they knew next to nothing about them. As for the Hearteaters, all they had of ''them'' was their name.
** Getimians were originally conceived as being Chosen of Sacheverell alone, but the writing team had a conversation where someone misremembered their patron as being Oramus, and the combination of the two made sense for the Getimians - among other things, being the Primordials who represent what Is and what Is Not - [[ThrowItIn so they decided to go with it]].
** The theme for the Getimian Caste marks also changed in development; initially, they were trigrams, in keeping with their Taoist themes, then the alchemical symbols for the seasons, before their final and official theme, the astrological symbols for the asteroids Ceres, Juno, Pallas and Vesta.
* The final release of ''Franchise/PowerRangers'''': Heroes of the Grid'' has a few differences from what was originally shown in the Kickstarter pictures and demos made at conventions:
** Most of the Ranger and Zord skills were completely different in the demo build (for example, the Mastodon istantly destroyed two random foot soldiers at the end of each turn and the Megazord increased the damage output of all the rangers in the same area he's currently placed, while in the final game the Mastodon destroys only one foot soldier and the Megazord deals 1 damage to all the enemies in his area)
** Most of the actual pieces had different shapes and/or designs: the board was made of a square tile and 4 rectangular tiles instead of a circular tile and 4 curved tiles, Energy Tokens had a lightning bolt instead of a crystal and Panic Tokens were square-shaped instead of triangle-shaped.
** The Panic limits for the areas were more abundant: Angel Grove High and Ernie's Juice Bar had 6, the Industrial District 7 and Angel Grove Park 8. In the final game, Angel Grove High and Ernie's Juice Bar have a Panic limit of 5 and the Industrial District and Angel Grove Park have 6.
** The level up originally required to defeat either a Monster or 7 foot soldiers. In the final game the foot soldiers amount has been reduced to 6.
** In the demo game Deployment phase had 4 Deployment cards revealed. This was changed to 5 Deployment cards in the final game.
** Guard enemy cards were originally called Taunt enemy cards.
** Monsters and Masters originally had 3 battle cards per turn. The final game gives them 4. Also, in the demo Monsters/Masters and foot soldiers had their battle cards placed together in a single line, while the final game haves them with separate card lines.
* In 2013, there was a small announcement made by Catalyst Game Labs about the potential of jumping ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'''s timeline up to the year 3250 (it was currently at 3150) and performing a soft reboot of the setting to make things more streamlined. A small but highly vocal number of players raised such an outcry over this that Herb Beas, the line developer for Battletech at the time, stepped down and the idea was quietly scrapped aside from a few throw-away lines at the beginning of a couple of sourcebooks (all Battletech sourcebooks are written from an in-universe perspective).
* In the [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/310174564/flying-circus-a-roleplaying-game-of-high-flying-ad/posts/2145161 original Kickstarter]] for ''TabletopGame/FlyingCircus'', one of the playbooks was called "The Sheltered," fallout-shelter inhabitants descended from nobility. This had morphed into the Scion playbook, with the shelter aspect of their backstory being dropped, by the game's first public release.
* According to designer Matt Leacock, the environmentalist game ''TabletopGame/{{Daybreak}}'' [[https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/xk8qws/matt_leacock_and_matteo_menapace_codesigners_of/ipcqxqz/ was going to have the players drawing tokens out of a cloth bag to resolve planetary effects and tipping points]]. They had to scrap this mechanic because of the emissions generated by the cloth bag, and replaced it with dice rolls. Leacock did end up preferring the new iteration because it was simpler and "made for a good metaphor for the uncertainty involved with those effects".

* According to designer Matt Leacock, an earlier prototype of the environmentalist game ''TabletopGame/{{Daybreak}}'' [[https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/xk8qws/matt_leacock_and_matteo_menapace_codesigners_of/ipcqxqz/ had the players drawing tokens out of a cloth bag to resolve planetary effects and tipping points]]. They had to scrap this mechanic because of the emissions generated by the cloth bag, and replaced it with dice rolls. Leacock did end up preferring the new iteration because it was simpler and "made for a good metaphor for the uncertainty involved with those effects".

* According to designer Matt Leacock, the environmentalist game ''TabletopGame/{{Daybreak}}'' [[https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/xk8qws/matt_leacock_and_matteo_menapace_codesigners_of/ipcqxqz/ used to have the players drawing tokens out of a cloth bag to resolve planetary effects and tipping points]]. They had to scrap this mechanic because of the emissions generated by the cloth bag, and replaced it with dice rolls. Leacock did end up preferring the new iteration because it was simpler and "made for a good metaphor for the uncertainty involved with those effects".

* In the [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/310174564/flying-circus-a-roleplaying-game-of-high-flying-ad/posts/2145161 original Kickstarter]] for ''TabletopGame/FlyingCircus'', one of the playbooks was called "The Sheltered," fallout-shelter inhabitants descended from nobility. This had morphed into the Scion playbook, with the shelter aspect of their backstory being dropped, by the game's first public release.

* The TabletopGame/TrinityUniverse saw a ''lot'' of these:

* TabletopGame/{{Warhammer40000}}:

* [[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer40000}} Games Workshop]] once found itself having to get rid of one of two unpopular armies: The [[OurDwarvesAreDifferent Squats]] or the [[HordeOfAlienLocusts Tyranids]]. By the time Third Edition rolled around, the Tyranids were redesigned and the Squats were eaten by the Tyranids. One can only wonder what the grim darkness of the far future would be like today with a civilization of dwarves in the mix...
** Somewhat of a CommonKnowledge example rather than a true example of the trope. Several races, not just Squats and Tyranids, were selling around the same level. The Squats were dropped because no one wanted to fix the awful fluff just to create yet another army that was functionally almost identical to the Space Marines. Of course, given the UnpleasableFanbase, this has blossomed into all sorts of theories even though multiple designers active at the time have all confirmed the exact same thing. Squats were not removed by random chance or due to sales figures, so there was no possibility of them continuing.

** Olivia's version of ''TabletopGame/ChangelingTheLost'' 2e (given the FanNickname the "Underhill" version) would have leaned into having fae things linked to the TheoryOfNarrativeCausality. Seemings would have been a result of how a changeling escaped Arcadia, and would have had different Blessings and Curses; the Grimm Seeming in ''Dark Eras'', who escaped by figuring out the story they were caught in and how to get out of it, was planned to tie into this version, as was an unnamed eighth Seeming in a planned Hedge supplement, who escaped by embracing randomness, chance and luck. The game got overhauled when Olivia left Onyx Path and was replaced as developer, with fae magic instead centered on reciprocity, the principle of exchange, of give and take.

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragonsFifthEdition''