My first two games were Holmes's D&D and then AD&D. However, I have played numerous rpgs. After being introduced to those two games, I regularly played Gamma World, Boot Hill, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Marvel Super Heroes, Toon. and Champions. All of the games except Gamma World (of which I might be mistaken after all of these years, are roll under. After that I have played more rpgs than I count and owned even more. Furthermore, for the longest time, Hero and GURPS were two of my favorite systems (both are roll under). So I have a lot of experience with roll under. It is just somewhere along the way, I found myself not enjoying the resolution mechanics of roll under systems (Toon may be the exception as I have not tried going back to it).Funny I was just making a reference to that in my previous post above. I have no idea why so many people have problems with "roll under" resolution systems... Is it because they grew up playing D&D and have a "beat the score" reflex ingrained? For me it's weird, it would be like refusing to play card games or board games that have a system where you need the least number of points to win, which is fairly common...
To me card games and rpgs are like Apples and Oranges. Unlike rpgs, I don't go out of my way to play card games, and would not want to play card games on a regular basis. However, I have had fun playing different card games on occasion. Several of those card games were lowest score wins. So, for me the issue regarding high score and low score is not a cultural one....although I was just researching this a bit and made some interesting discovery: Rummy, for instance, is commonly scored in France (where it's called "Rami") by adding up the points of all the cards you have remaining at the end, and so this is very much a "lowest score wins" game. I looked up the American version and it looks like the scoring is completely different (at least according to the Wikipedia page), and instead you score the cards that you put down and subtract the cards you have left in your hands... making it a "highest score wins" game! Is there some weird cultural bias at play here, and some countries just don't have a tradition of more varied scoring and resolution systems? How is Rummy played in the UK for instance?