Creating a Character VS Discovering a Character

Maxperson · Dec 21, 2017

pemerton said:
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] - I'm not saying anything about how Gygax ran his game. I'm reporting what the AD&D rulebooks say.

No, but you are making a judgment call about what Gygax meant with what he said in the AD&D rulebook. His post here is a doorway into his mind on this subject. The post even references WHY he created so many different ways to roll up stats. The post I quoted makes it incredibly likely that your judgment call is incorrect and what he meant in the AD&D PHB is for DMs to allow players to re-roll until they get two or more 15's or higher.

pemerton · Dec 21, 2017

Maxperson said:
The post I quoted makes it incredibly likely that your judgment call is incorrect and what he meant in the AD&D PHB is for DMs to allow players to re-roll until they get two or more 15's or higher.

Well, he could have come out and said that, but didn't.

Gygax had a habit of writing rules that imposed all sorts of strictures and prohibitions that he didn't adhere to in his own GMing practice. This isn't uncommon in RPG design, where an author assumes that (unlike him/her) the readers/users of the rule will go nuts unless the rules keep them strictly in line. You can see similar things in Gygax's injunctions against the placement of treasure, where he's clearly worried about Monty Haul GMing, and so says stuff that doesn't adhere to his own actual (rather generous) practices around treasure placement.

If Gygax wanted to write a re-roll rule, he could have. But he didn't. Instead he suggested generation methods that were apt to meet the desiderata for PCs with reasonable stats, and left the quetsion of what to do if those methods failed to deliver as something to be determined outside the rules.

To put the point in practical terms: if a player or GM is worried about a set of PC attributes not being strong enough (eg no stats of 15 or above), should the player re-roll? Or adjust a couple of stats upwards? Those are different operations, and the rules don't suggest either of them, let alone choose between them.

A contrast could be drawn here with Moldvay Basic, which suggests (p B6) that a GM allow a reroll of a 1st level hit point roll that comes up 1 or 2. That is a suggestion rather than a rule, but the content of the suggestion is quite clear.

Maxperson · Dec 21, 2017

pemerton said:
Well, he could have come out and said that, but didn't.

It was a conversation in which he was asked how he did it way back when.

Gygax had a habit of writing rules that imposed all sorts of strictures and prohibitions that he didn't adhere to in his own GMing practice.

Except that he outright references method 1, and gives another example that is strikingly close to method 2. It's pretty clear that the way he did things heavily influenced the methods in the DMG and why he wrote what he did in the PHB. I have a quote from him that strongly indicates that what is written in the PHB is a strong implication to the DM to allow players to re-roll until they get 2 15's or higher. What you have is, "Well, if I completely ignore this quote over here and only go by what is in the PHB, I can assume that he meant something different.".

In fact, several posts later he says this, further backing up that what he did in his own game was what prompted that statement in the PHB.

"The variations on rolling dice for characters came from me, mainly because i was weary of watching players roll dozens of times in order to come up with a set of stats they wanted.

It seemed a logical thing to do, as with allowing the scores to be ordered as the player desired so as to arrive at stats for a PC they wanted to play."

If Gygax wanted to write a re-roll rule, he could have. But he didn't. Instead he suggested generation methods that were apt to meet the desiderata for PCs with reasonable stats, and left the quetsion of what to do if those methods failed to deliver as something to be determined outside the rules.

But strongly implied to the DM with his PHB writing that the DM allow players to re-roll until they get 2 15's or higher. "Usually essential" is pretty clear language that if you don't have those, you fail. Setting players up for failure is a poor way to DM a game.

To put the point in practical terms: if a player or GM is worried about a set of PC attributes not being strong enough (eg no stats of 15 or above), should the player re-roll? Or adjust a couple of stats upwards? Those are different operations, and the rules don't suggest either of them, let alone choose between them.

They strongly imply that the DM do something to get those stats to the proper levels. What is to be done is up to the DM.

pemerton · Dec 21, 2017

Maxperson said:
The post I quoted makes it incredibly likely that your judgment call is incorrect and what he meant in the AD&D PHB is for DMs to allow players to re-roll until they get two or more 15's or higher.

Maxperson said:
They strongly imply that the DM do something to get those stats to the proper levels. What is to be done is up to the DM.

Which?

That's my point: the rulebooks don't establish that the GM is meant to allow players to re-roll. They leave it open (I wouldn't say that they strongly imply) that the GM might do something if there aren't do stats of at least 15.

They also hint that a player should be allowed to play the class/race s/he wants to (p 11):

it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. . . . marginal characters tend to have 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 really can't or won't identify with.

But I don't think anyone would say that there is a rule in AD&D that a player can keep re-rolling until s/he gets stats for the race/class that s/he wants.

aramis erak · Dec 22, 2017

shidaku said:
Don't we honestly "discover" our character during play no matter which way we come to the table?

Sure, we may have ideas about them being good or evil or kind or cold or whatever, but the scores don't stop us from bring any of those things. Even low-int people can be witty. But, backstory and chosen scores or not, assuming we're not closed off to the idea of character growth we often find the character we end up with to be a lot different than the character we started off with.

The problem is that there are a good number of players for whom what they discover is the character is incomepetent compared to their preconception of the character. Far less of a problem when characters are random-rolled.

Sunseeker · Dec 22, 2017

aramis erak said:
The problem is that there are a good number of players for whom what they discover is the character is incomepetent compared to their preconception of the character. Far less of a problem when characters are random-rolled.

I question the assertion that characters that are random rolled are truly random rolled. Sure, you randomly roll your stats, okay, but from that point out you pick out the class, subclass, background, etc...that fit your stats. Now, if you're randomly rolling stats, race, even class (which may not match your stats),background and everything else you're just as likely to make a successful combination as not.

But to be fair, a lot of character concepts are simply non-viable. It's a sad truth but a very real element of the way D&D is designed.

Beyond all of the actual building of a character and in-game performance of a character, the personality, the humanoid being we decide to play at the table is often discovered through play.

Maxperson · Dec 22, 2017

pemerton said:
Which?

Either one.

That's my point: the rulebooks don't establish that the GM is meant to allow players to re-roll. They leave it open (I wouldn't say that they strongly imply) that the GM might do something if there aren't do stats of at least 15.

And my point is that it's extremely poor DMing to set your players up for failure, and the other option is to allow them to re-roll, set stats to 15+ or whatever other method you to use to allow them "usually essential" two 15's or higher that the game says you need. The DM would have to create a highly unusual campaign that didn't require stats for the "usually" not to apply.

They also hint that a player should be allowed to play the class/race s/he wants to (p 11):

it is important to allow participants to generate a viable character of the race and profession which he or she desires. . . . marginal characters tend to have 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 really can't or won't identify with.

But I don't think anyone would say that there is a rule in AD&D that a player can keep re-rolling until s/he gets stats for the race/class that s/he wants.

Do you think it's good DMing to set the players up for failure?

Wednesday Boy · Dec 22, 2017

I prefer to come to the game with a character concept (after having a session zero/group template discussion with the group) rather than roll randomly. I find I'm more invested in the character if it's a concept I'm enthusiastic about.

The one exception is playing Call of Cthulhu. It's like the Whose Line is it Anyway? of roleplaying games. You wish everything you see's made up and the stat points don't matter.