Ability scores

In one of my recent posts, I made an offhand comment about the "3d6 in order" affectation of many OSRians. I decided to look up exactly how many "old school" games did ability score generation that way, just out of curiousity.

• OD&D (LBB): 3d6 in order. Yep, as I'd suspected, although I had no direct memory of that. I scanned through the first three supplements, and I didn't see any other alternatives offered, although maybe there are in some of the additional supplements that I didn't look at.
• BD&D (Holmes): 3d6 in order.
• B/X (Moldvay/Cook): 3d6 in order. I had thought for sure that by now, it would have changed, but it had not yet.
• BECMI (Mentzer): Still 3d6 in order, but there's explicitly listed a caveat that extremely poor characters can be discarded, at the DM's discretion. In reality, I suspect most players kept on rolling until they got the character that they wanted to play anyway, and discarded many dozens before they found one that was "suitable." I know that my group did it that way.
• AD&D (Gygax): Mister EGG himself wrote the following quite interesting quotes in the AD&D PHB and DMG respectively.

"The premise of the game is that each player character is above average—at least in some respects—and has superior potential. Furthermore, it is usually essential to the characters' survival to be exceptional (with a rating of 15 or above) in no fewer than two ability characteristics."

So... I don't know if you've done any of the math, or even just tried to roll 3d6 in order and get 15+ on at least two scores, but you'll find that you get very few. I know, I know... technically AD&D and D&D were two different games. But that was always more about legal propaganda than anything else, so royalties for D&D owed to Arneson wouldn't have to be paid on AD&D sales. The reality is that everyone I knew at the time played some kind of hybrid where you mixed and matched rules freely between them, because the basic system was exactly the same either way. Anyway, the DMG gives four methods for generating ability scores. One of them is obviously very familiar, but the other methods seem to have fallen by the wayside over the years. You'll note that 3d6 in order is not one of them.

"As AD&D is an ongoing game of fantasy adventuring, it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. (ed. keep in mind that many races and classes had ability score minimums in those days, and the 3d6 in order would disallow many races and classes from being played by that character.) While it is possible to generate some fairly playable characters by rolling 3d6, there is often an extended period of attempts at finding a suitable one due to quirks of the dice. Furthermore, these marginal characters tend to have a short life expectancy—which tends to discourage new players, as does having to make do with some character of a race and/or class which he or she can't or won't identify with. Character generation, then, is a serious matter, and it is recommended that the following systems be used. Four alternatives are offered for player characters:

Method I: All scores are recorded and arranged in the order the player desires. 4d6 are rolled and the lowest die (or one of the lower) is discarded.

Method II: All scores are recorded and arranged as in Method I. 3d6 are rolled 12 times and the highest 6 scores are retained.

Method III: Scores rolled are according to each ability category, in order, STRENGTH, INTELLIGENCE, WISDOM, DEXTERITY, CONSTITUION, CHARISMA. 3d6 are rolled six times for each ability, and the highest score in each category is retained for that category.

Method IV: 3d6 are rolled sufficient times to generate the 6 ability scores, in order, for 12 characters. The player then selects the single set of scores which he or she finds most desirable and these scores are noted on the character sheet." 

Wow, what a change of pace from the early D&D rules! I wonder sometimes if EGG did this somewhat under duress without actually favoring this, because he recognized that it was the opposite of a surprise and delight feature for his customers; it was something that they generally found frustrating and obnoxious. Tim Kask, the literal first employee of TSR, has also said, and I quote:

"Gary had very distinct ideas on how he thought his game should be played. One quirk? He found it intellectually incomprehensible why anyone would wish to play anything but a human Player Character (PC). He found the idea of “half-breeds” to be repugnant, and not just half-orcs, either. He simply could not wrap his head around it at first. However, he knew there were some battles he could win and some not worth fighting, especially if they drove sales. [...] Another of Gary’s quirks was that he really did not like wizards and that human fighters should be the heroes of the campaign."

So he clearly allowed for features in the game that he didn't favor himself.

Anyway, old timey players probably know all this stuff already. I'm an old timey player, but I didn't own any of the old timey books for many years, so I couldn't remember the details, and we played with a hybridized house-ruled version of the game anyway. I especially find interesting some of the alternative methods to generate abilities that people don't use anymore. I mean, I understand why not I suppose; they're more tedious and time-consuming, certainly. But they seem kind of interesting in the sense that I've never actually used those methods before.

But what is most interesting is how Gary throws some serious shade on his own past method, clearly knowing what really happened is that people spent a lot of time rolling up characters until they got an ability score spread that they felt that they could use to play the character that they wanted to play. The old wargamey idea of just playing the hand that you're dealt—guy will probably die in the first half hour of play anyway on some kind of weird trap—was just obviously not doing it for the audience, even way back in the 70s. Although I'm also surprised, because I didn't remember this, and I'm confident that my gang never played this way, at least not after AD&D came out, that the old 3d6 in order method was current in D&D (as opposed to AD&D) all the way up through Mentzer at least (I didn't check the Rules Compendium.) I don't remember what method we used, but probably Method I whether playing "D&D" or "AD&D."

As an aside, the first character I remember creating was Elrohir, the half-elven fighter/magic-user. Yes, 12-year old me had been extremely piqued by the off-hand reference to Elrond's twin sons in Fellowship, where I imagined them as these beautiful yet cold and deadly bad-ass orc hunters. I had to roll a lot of ability score spreads before I got ones that I could use for that combo, and I may well have even fudged a score or two when I got frustrated with the process. Nowadays, I'm more sympathetic to Gygax's quirks; I prefer non-magical rangers, fighters, swashbucklers and rogues to magic-users of any stripe, and while I don't find demihumans "repugnant" at least ¾ of my characters are simply human fighters or rangers or barbarians or rogues or some other similar class. Often house-ruled; I've had non-spell-casting ranger variants going on since early 2001 at least, if not earlier. I also greatly prefer that the setting itself be much more humano-centric than most D&D settings today tend to be. I think he was on to something, and not just because he's aping the stylings of Leiber and Howard and how sword & sorcery worked in general. Keep in mind that Gygax was at least as much a fan of Moorcock and de Camp, the anti-sword & sorcery guys who preferred toxic, entitled, beta-male wizards as protagonists.