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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6628614" data-attributes="member: 42582">Except some of them keep telling me I'm jealous, am suffering from sour grapes, am an immature whinger, or don't know what is or isn't fair in my campaign!I don't care about others' games, which I don't get to enjoy, nor have to suffer through. I only get to enjoy, and suffer through, my own game. The point of my posts is mostly to explain why, in my game, rolled stats would be a detriment and introduce needless unfairness into it.Array is not "everyone starts with the same stats". It's the same stat spread, but players can choose where to allocate them.Furthermore, as I have already stated, my 4e campaign uses point buy, and I posted the spread of stats upthread. The players don't have the same stat baseline. They can trade off breadth against depth. Only one started with a primary 20. Another started with a primary 16 (also wanted CON, DEX and WIS as well as primary STR).The issue isn't disparity. It's mechanical advantage. Points buy forces a trade-off between breadth and depth. Rolliing permits a lucky player to have both.I don't think it's immature to be irritated by a game set-up being biased in favour of one player rather than another.Which, for the approach to play that I prefer, is a potential consequence of rolling stats.I think this is an illustration of differences in goals of play, of the sort I have mentioned above.If the goal of play is success, but not competitive as between players, then the fact that some players have a mechanical advantage, and hence get more successes, may not be an issue. Particularly when the fun consists to a significant extent in trying to succeed, then provided you don't lose to often the fact that you're not the most successful may not matter.In my case, an important goal of play is for the players to shape the shared fiction via the mechanics of action resolution. To some extent this is a zero-sum game (if A shapes the fiction, then B hasn't), whereas in a non-competitive environment success is not zero-sum. Also, unlike success as a goal, shaping the fiction is something where the fun is more strongly located in the realisation of the goal, rather than in the trying.The question seems to be rhetorical, but I'll answer it nevertheless.In my case, because D&D is a game. A leisure activity. In which the players converge to participate, collectively, in an activity that involves them adopting vehicles (player characters) for shaping a shared fiction in which those characters will be protagonists confronted by crises and driven by dramatic need.It undermines this project for the players to have vehicles that are not of (roughly) equal adequacy for the task.This is absolutely contrary to my experience. The degree to which a PC is interesting depends on play, not stats, and play is about engaging the fiction via the mechanical action resolution systems. Low stats don't facilitate this any more than high stats.Interesting things happen when players declare actions with lower chances of success (because failure is more likely). But interesting things happen when players delcare actions with high chances of success, too (because, until the campaign comes to an end, success in respect of one conflict will lead the PCs to a new confict).You seem to assume that wanting to impact the fiction via the mechanics is a flaw in a player. I regard it as a virtue.(I think there is also some tension in your views (as I understand them) that  (1) there is something good about playing a mechanically strong character, but (2) it is a personality flaw to want to do so.)This can be done with points buy also.</blockquote>

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