A subject related to the idea of a prequel for Thief is what thieving equipment should be available for young Garrett, and which items from TDP should be omitted for that stage of his thieving career. There are two main issues involved here:

1. What kinds of items make sense for young Garrett to have acquired and used back then?
2. What kinds of items could make gameplay challenging and fun?

First let's take a look at what thieving items were featured during TDP (since this game would take place prior to TDP):

Blackjack
Sword
Broadhead arrows
Noisemaker arrows
Rope arrows
Water arrows
Moss arrows
Fire arrows
Gas arrows
Compass
Square-tooth lockpick
Triangle-tooth lockpick
Flash bombs
Explosive mines
Gas mines
Healing potions
Speed potions
Breath potions
Holy water

That's a total of 19 items. The game should probably not feature more than that, in order to maintain the same balance of versatility and difficulty that TDP had. Now let's evaluate which of these make sense to carry over to Garrett's past, and which should probably be restricted to TDP and later games in the series:

Blackjack: I think we can all agree that this item has become so ingrained in Thief's gameplay and is such a basic and simple standby for any thief needing to stealthily knock out guards or witnesses on occasion, that Garrett would most likely have acquired this very early on in his thieving career.

Sword: Far from a priority for any thief to be lugging around. It was one of the least useful, least necessary, and most counter-intuitive items in TDP, especially for Expert players who weren't supposed to kill humans anyway. Its primary use ended up being as a cutting tool for slashing banners that concealed hidden passages, which could just as easily have been accomplished with a knife or dagger. In fact, even if the player were to attempt to kill someone for some reason, a dagger in the back would most likely do the job just as well, as we can see from TDS. A dagger is also smaller, lighter, more concealable, and far more in keeping with a thief's trade, plus it doubles as a tool for disarming traps or jimmying open latches. Young Garrett would not be planning to get into sword-fights with guards, so he should have a dagger instead of a sword.

Broadhead arrows: Pretty basic, though rather counter-intuitive if one is intending to avoid murder, as we know to be true of Garrett's character from all those Expert-level objectives saying "Don't kill anyone". But at least it's stealthier than a sword if one does need to shoot at something for some reason, so I see no reason why these shouldn't be available to young Garrett.

Noisemaker arrows: These are very specialized thieving aids and would have to be specially crafted (which means they'd be very expensive and thus unobtainable to young Garrett during his earliest missions), but at least they serve enough of an important purpose in relation to thieving that young Garrett would want to acquire them eventually. So these should be kept available for the player, but too expensive to afford until mid to late-game.

Rope arrows: There's just something about these that seems to capture a bit of Garrett's style, isn't there? I think that's why we were all so disappointed by their absence from TDS. An arrow with a highly specialized arrowhead that splits into a multi-pronged grappler on impact would probably be among the most advanced kind of thieving gear a professional thief could ever hope to obtain. It would be incredibly expensive, but definitely something young Garrett would want to have made for him when he had acquired enough money to afford it. This should be saved for the late-game, when the player has amassed a small fortune and can feasibly purchase the really fancy stuff.

Water arrows: Probably the single most Thiefish item in the series, this is definitely something young Garrett should acquire at some point. Likely earlier than the really fancy gear, but still mid-game enough that we get the sense he had to work his way up to this level of artistry. An arrow with a crystalline head filled with a solution capable of dousing a flaming torch is doubtless going to be pretty expensive, and thus unobtainable for young Garrett at first, but once the player has enough cash to afford it, it should be incorporated into the gameplay.

Moss arrows: I'm a strong believer that there are far better ways to make sneaking a challenge for the player (creaky floorboards/catwalks, dry leaves and twigs, broken glass, etc) than by giving Garrett the equivalent of tap-dancing shoes, and then giving him a means of silencing certain spots of the floor on which he treads to compensate for this ridiculous self-inflicted problem. Clearly, he's just wearing the wrong boots in the first place. No thief with any sanity would wear footwear that handicapping. A thief should wear boots with softly padded soles (i.e. leather mocassin boots or something similar). Thus, young Garrett would not have needed something as silly as moss arrows any more than older Garrett should need them. No doubt, jtr7 will argue that Garrett's tap-dancing shoes are canon, and therefore as sacrosanct to the series as Garrett himself, but I say it's a gameplay thing and its trumped up 'authenticity' is misplaced in terms of what is and is not literally part of the story.

Fire arrows: This falls under the really fancy, expensive, late-game stuff in my point of view. Fire arrows are surely not very stealthy, but I suppose it's possible young Garrett may have used them at some point or other. I won't arbitrarily rule them out, although I can't really think of why he would have wanted or needed them back then.

Gas arrows: I think this is one of those items that should be out of young Garrett's league. Really high-tech, powerful, and basically eliminates opportunities for challenging gameplay by providing a means of taking out groups of opponents with one shot, silently, from a distance, without having to sneak around them or find alternative ways of dealing with the problem they present. It's even more powerful than just letting the player kill guards, since killing is noisy and thus risky, where as gas arrows are silent and virtually risk-free. It's sort of counter-intuitive to the whole premise that the player must be stealthy, clever and patient to solve their problems rather than eliminating whatever stands in their way like in other games. So I don't think these should be available to young Garrett.

Compass: Another really basic item that I don't think calls for any debate. Young Garrett should acquire this very early on.

Square-tooth lockpick: For reasons stated earlier, young Garrett should acquire a set of lockpicks right away, but they obviously shouldn't be the same ones as those he later purchases from Farkus in TDP, nor should they be as effective or as high-quality as those are. This is also an opportunity to make lockpicking a much greater and more enjoyable challenge for the player, since we now have the perfect excuse: Garrett isn't yet as skilled at picking locks as he becomes later on in his career.

Triangle-tooth lockpick: I'm not sure whether each lockpick actually needs to be a separate item per se (I think TDS handled that aspect right). "Lockpicks" can simply be one item and the second pick can be traded for some other type of thieving tool, assuming of course that there's a lockpicking minigame employed like the one in TDS (actually I found the lockpicking in Oblivion and Skyrim quite enjoyable).

Flash bombs: These should be available to young Garrett I think, though they should likely be very expensive and thus unobtainable until later on in the game. Flash bombs are really one of the most powerful 'saves' that Garrett has in his arsenal for when things don't go according to plan. They actually might be a bit overpowered for young Garrett during the mid-game, since they are capable of blinding multiple enemies at once, allowing the player to either escape or knock out the lot of them in quick succession. A possible lower-powered precursor to flash bombs mid-game could be handfuls of blinding powder (basically just pepper, flour, powdered stone, dust soaked in onion juice, and other common types of irritants, extremely cheap and easy to come by). The limiting factor would be that blinding powder has to be thrown directly into a person's eyes to have any effect, and can obviously only be used on one opponent at a time. It also wouldn't be very stealthy, since whoever gets that stuff thrown in their eyes is likely going to wail and shout loudly at the offensive thief, alerting everyone nearby. But it would serve well enough in an emergency when flash bombs are too expensive to afford and the player just needs to escape from a single guard (or knock them out while they're blinded).

Explosive mines: These are about as contrary to the very premise of stealth and thieving as you could possibly get. I really don't think young Garrett should ever have these. Why would he ever want them anyway?

Gas mines: Like gas arrows and explosive mines combined... You've got the exceedingly high-tech aspect of gas arrows, which seems way out of young Garrett's league to me, and the ability to take out guards without even risking sneaking up behind them and blackjacking them. I don't think we need to give the player more ways of eliminating the opposition (isn't that part of the point of forbidding killing? To maintain the challenge of guards patroling around?), I think we should focus on enforcing the stealth and thieving aspects of the game, which is driven in large part by the player's inability to easily dispose of their enemies, thereby incentivizing them to rely more on discretion and avoidance, which is what the game is supposed to be all about in the first place. So I don't think young Garrett should have access to gas mines.

Healing potions: For the same reasons that I say no to gas arrows, explosive mines and gas mines, I say no to healing potions. They're essentially an "undo button", a way of reducing the consequences of being caught and attacked, which in turn reduces the pressure on the player to remain undetected and avoid combat - the point of the game. Where as flash bombs are only a temporary getaway device and are totally in keeping with the evasion-and-avoidance principle, healing potions actually negate the fear of being caught by making it permissible and acceptable. They enable the player to engage in combat with impunity, and I don't think that promotes the Thief theme, I think that works against it. Young Garrett should not have access to healing potions, he should just be careful - or run away.

Speed potions: For the same reasons as with healing potions, I say no. Young Garrett doesn't need this power and shouldn't have it.

Breath potions: Again, he doesn't need them and by not having them, the player is under more pressure to play well. And that's a good thing, that's something that should be enforced. So no to breath potions.

Holy water: This is actually one item that I do think Garrett acquired for the first time during TDP, and he most likely never had access to it prior to that. In the mission briefing to Down In The Bonehoard, he says, "Think I'll go make some inquiries about where a heretic like me can get some holy water..." That suggests very strongly that he has never gotten his hands on holy water before, since he doesn't know where he can obtain it and has to ask around just to find it. And he likely never had a reason to acquire it before that either. I fully believe that Garrett never saw a zombie with his own eyes before he entered those haunted mines. TDP probably did a lot to open his eyes to the existence of the paranormal. So the game should not include any undead, and consequently, young Garrett shouldn't ever need to acquire holy water.

Add 1 to Gas Arrows--I was sure I checked it!--though not all equipment should be carried at once all along, of course, or be available for all missions. Of course. I'm more concerned that all the elemental magicks and world-building aspects, including the crystals, could be part that world, used or not, seen at any time or not. Same with the tech available throughout TDP/Gold, especially if it's found in the sealed Old Quarter, except the explosive device/"sunburst." Also, Precursor artifacts are known about, acquired, and sold, even if the Karath Din portion of the old world was cut off, just to point out that these things exist even before Garrett was born, decades and even centuries, even if we never see them or hear about them ourselves, they are fenced and commissioned. If only I'd not submitted my votes before knowing Gas Arrows weren't checked! We don't know how Garrett learned to use the elemental crystals as weapons, so I hope writers have explored that already, or will.

Just curious, but where are you going with all of this? Are you considering making an FM that covers the time before TDP? You're probably aware, but there are several FMs that cover this topic already (not that it couldn't be done again).

Hey there .o/

I still think we should keep the sword instead of the dagger ; after all that's one weapon Garrett always had since the beginning until the end of Thief 2.

Also it can be used to bash open wooden doors —yeah, not stealthy but hey, there's got the be an alternative to lockpicks sometimes— and I don't really see that happening with a dagger - or it would take much longer.

Also we have to keep in mind, I guess, that Garrett is supposed to be less experienced than in Thief 1, so he very well might have kept a sword "just in case things go wrong".

Add 1 to Gas Arrows

I think the player should be have enough freedom to choose whether or not he bashes doors, even if that's not sneaky and even if there are other sneaky ways to get past it.

LGS did include that possibility and I think many people would have just dropped the game before the end if they had not — because not everyone masters sneaking on their first game. I believe some people who now enjoy sneaking very much, maybe even "ghosting", might not even have actually bought the game, if there had not been a sword in the demo, because it would have seem to much a challenging game at the time.

Thief's main theme is indeed sneaking but still I don't think a prequel should be exclusively designed with experienced players in mind.

Garrett may not be a assassin/murderer —or at least, most experienced players want him not to be, even though both in TDP's intro and Thief2's we do see guards getting killed— that shouldn't prevent him from trying to defend his life with any means at his disposal... And a sword is, in the Thief universe, one weapon you easily can get your hands on.

Heck, even in TDP's tutorial mission, "A Keeper's training", they introduce you to the basics of the sword, while they don't show you how to use water arrows.

I thought Keepers were supposed to remain ever unseen

why would they train to use a sword ?

And why wouldn't Garrett use one if he can and was trained to ?

Also, with a sword, you can fight against haunts and still have a chance to survive, which you probably don't with a dagger.

And, if you don't include a sword, then what's the point in allowing broadhead arrows ?

If you want to use them only to make noise and draw the AI's attention away, just give Garrett a bag of small stones and allow him to grab random noisy junk to throw.

Basically, my point is that fleeing shouldn't be the only option when you get spotted.

Most missions, original or not, allowed to "kill", at the very least, the undead and other non-human creatures. If I remember well, Brother Murus even specifically asks Garrett to dispose of the undead in some difficulty mode (though some players such as Lytha have ways to avoid dealing with him).

Let's suppose a Thief prequel would have 3 difficulty modes, just like the originals : I firmly believe that some killing should still be allowed in the lowest difficulty at least. It's alright with me if you forbid any killing in the medium difficulty and even forbid/limitate KO use in the highest difficulty mode : these are made for the experienced player. But the lowest difficulty should be "noob friendly". (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132248) Let Khad play it the way he wants ! xD