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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8823027" data-attributes="member: 6670763">Sometimes I see GMs saying that they think it's great to have the players find ways to make a character out of a randomly rolled set of ability scores and think, "yeah, that does really sound fun."I like how it mechanically communicates the idea that all PCs are just some random people trying to make this adventuring thing work (and maybe succeeding or not), and that as a player you are taking control of some character in an adventure, instead of creating your perfect protagonist for your personal dream story. There are many ways in which characters with really skewed or pretty low stats could be great and memorable PCs, but nobody really would bother attempting if custom tailoring is an option.But at the same time, I can totally understand there being many players who are "I just want to play a dude with a big sword" and making that work with 6 Strength and 4 Constitution just won't be very fun for anyone involved.While thinking about possible methods that result into some kind of middle ground that will be acceptable to a wide range of players, it did get me thinking on what good reasons there are for the GM to make this decision for all the players in the first place? As GM, I am not going to play the PCs that are being created with whatever method I decide to pick for the campaign. The people who will be having fun (or not) playing those characters will be the players. Not me.Of course, at the start of a campaign, you can always ask the initial group of players to agree on a method that they want to use. But in such a situation, what are the odds that they woud decide in anything but the option that allows the highest degree of customization with the highest amount of total numbers? Playing an RPG is about dealing with challenges encountered by the PCs. The game is all about the obstacles and things that are not the way the players would prefer them to be. It is the job of the GM to present the players with problems and limitation that will be fun to deal with. The fun of the game comes from things being not ideal and inconvenient.So my current personal opinion is that yes, the GM should make the choice of how ability scores are generated. But the big question is, which considerations should go into making this decision, and what things would speak for some methods and against other methods for different campaign concepts? And of course, I am sure there are plenty of people who absolutely don't think the GM should make this choice for the players. I am really interested for the reasonings of that stance as well.Which systems of generating ability scores do you think are reasonable and conductive to having great campaigns and why do you think they are the best way to go for certain contexts.</blockquote>

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