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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7305186" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7305186, member: 42582"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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