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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arial Black" data-source="post: 7260690" data-attributes="member: 6799649">In the infancy of the hobby that Gygax created (with help from some friends) the game evolved at a rapid pace. When he finally got round to publishing a pamphlet, the game was at the stage where there really was no consistent approach to building coherent worlds. The 'world' was a series of dungeons that may as well have been in their own demi-planes, and the only creatues in the world were 'adventurers' and 'monsters', and no effort was made or needed to model anything else.The game continued to evolve in his mind, and when he finally got round to publishing AD&D (1E) Gygax had put considerable thought into world building. Conceptually, by this stage every adventurer was from a community of 'normal' people of their race; the people that the average adventure was 'better than'.So as pointed out, 3d6 in order became how 'normal' people were generated, and the other methods were simply shortcuts to getting ability scores that were 'better than' normal on average.Yes, we can model characteristics of populations, and they conform to a bell curve. Yes, real world populations have bell curves which are flatter than that generated by 3d6. To this end, Gygax introduced the 'average' die (where 1=3 and 6=4, to get six results on a d6 of 2,3,3,4,4,5) in order to get a more flattened bell curve if the 3d6 bell curve (and its greater proportion of extremes) bothered you.Living in the UK, I didn't even get to hear about the game until 1979. Finding a shop that actually sold it was as rare as hen's teeth. For me, AD&D 1E was the 'original' game. For Gygax, it was when the game was finally complete; earlier versions were best forgotten early draughts of his magnum opus.It should be noted, as it was noted earlier in this thread, that the authors of the early modules also used 3d6 for NPC ability scores. Some even outright stated that you rolled 3d6 in order if you needed to generate an NPC. The City State of the Invincible Overlord had every single inhabitant with stats rolled on 3d6, not '3d-average', and their scores did indeed range from 3 to 18.In the editions since then, there has been no refutation of the 'truth' of 3d6 in order for the general population. Every single piece of evidence in every edition remained and remains consistent with that, from the 'commoner' stats to the tables of ability scores which state that 10 or 10-11 was 'average. Even in 5E it states that scores are between 3 and 18.So, we can take all the evidence and weigh it, and determine if it better supports the assertion that 'the general population is generated by 3d6 in order' or if it better supports a different method.Remember, there are TWO kinds of people in the world:-1.) Those who can extrapolate from incomplete information</blockquote>

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