Olgar Shiverstone
Legend
You can play all the other versions of D&D with 3d6-in-order you know. You might have to ignore a few prerequisite requirements, but the same fun results.
OD&D The Beauty of OD&D
- Thread starter Lord Vangarel
- Start date
Lord Vangarel
First Post
I know had such a eureka moment I might just make the players do it the next time they roll characters, regardless of edition!
GreyLord
Legend
I think it did have that as one of the generation methods. So if you wanted, you could play that way.
howandwhy99
Adventurer
Players Choose:
--everything else is rolled for or selected from a list of pre-rolled stats/characters.
Players may also spend the money they rolled, but that can be saved for in-game. You really want to know what you want to do before you go spending all your dough though.
Any specifics may come later as each player desires:
what's my background? What's my parentage? What do I more specifically look like? What's my gender? Who am I? Do I drink excessively? Maybe I have a history of blacking out and waking up in strange places. What's my name again? Who are you guys?
OD&D puts you in a palpable reality where you customizing your character is done through living (i.e. playing the game). Want to be a better fighter? Work for that Fighter XP. Want to be a more unique fighter? Do unique things as a fighter.
PS: The players roll for a whole character like ability scores are 3d6 in order (no min/maxing) so all the characters in the game are balanced against each other. None of the other character stats are min/maxed either. Each had an equal chance during character generation for any of the scores.
- Class - the focus of the game
- Race - the variety of character to use
- Name - What they want the character to be called
- Alignment - where they want to start on the alignment scale.
--everything else is rolled for or selected from a list of pre-rolled stats/characters.
Players may also spend the money they rolled, but that can be saved for in-game. You really want to know what you want to do before you go spending all your dough though.
Any specifics may come later as each player desires:
what's my background? What's my parentage? What do I more specifically look like? What's my gender? Who am I? Do I drink excessively? Maybe I have a history of blacking out and waking up in strange places. What's my name again? Who are you guys?
OD&D puts you in a palpable reality where you customizing your character is done through living (i.e. playing the game). Want to be a better fighter? Work for that Fighter XP. Want to be a more unique fighter? Do unique things as a fighter.
PS: The players roll for a whole character like ability scores are 3d6 in order (no min/maxing) so all the characters in the game are balanced against each other. None of the other character stats are min/maxed either. Each had an equal chance during character generation for any of the scores.
Mark CMG
Creative Mountain Games
One of the reasons 3d6 in order worked so well with (O)D&D was that none of us had much expectation of any particular character living past the first combat or trap. We grew to love whatever character managed to survive a few adventures no matter what flaws he had, we became invested in that character no matter the class/race or stats. 
Evenglare
Adventurer
Any D&D game I run, character creation goes like this.
Pick Race (you are born)
Roll 2 sets of stats, apply one group IN ORDER (represents 2 possible paths in life, you get what you get)
Pick class.
Ever since 3.5 this has cut out about 99% of the BS optimization, power gaming nonsense. You can still be whatever class you want, obviously if you want synergy with your stats then you will be more proficient, but if you want to be a class that you don't have a great stat in, it provides for some powerful roleplaying opportunities. Perhaps your life goal is to be a Wizard, but you simply aren't that smart but won't give up, etc etc. I find it MUCH more enjoyable than the characters wiping the board with every encounter. I'm not saying that optimized munchkin powergamers can't role play, but if you have a character who is good at everything, then you are much more likely to have a 1 dimensional character. Characters absolutely need flaws, that's like literature 101.
I accept that my way isn't good for all, but it's what our group enjoys.
Pick Race (you are born)
Roll 2 sets of stats, apply one group IN ORDER (represents 2 possible paths in life, you get what you get)
Pick class.
Ever since 3.5 this has cut out about 99% of the BS optimization, power gaming nonsense. You can still be whatever class you want, obviously if you want synergy with your stats then you will be more proficient, but if you want to be a class that you don't have a great stat in, it provides for some powerful roleplaying opportunities. Perhaps your life goal is to be a Wizard, but you simply aren't that smart but won't give up, etc etc. I find it MUCH more enjoyable than the characters wiping the board with every encounter. I'm not saying that optimized munchkin powergamers can't role play, but if you have a character who is good at everything, then you are much more likely to have a 1 dimensional character. Characters absolutely need flaws, that's like literature 101.
I accept that my way isn't good for all, but it's what our group enjoys.
ExploderWizard
Hero
The greatest thing about OD&D character generation is that it cannot be screwed up. A brand new player can sit down for the very first time, generate a character, and be playing in minutes.
Sometimes you get some high stats, sometimes you get average and once in a while, they are mostly low. The feeling of relief that washes over players when they realize how little it actually matters from a success/survival standpoint is like a wave of freedom. No constant worrying that the character you rolled up isn't good enough compared to the next one.
The realization that survival really does depend on your choices in actual play instead of some random numbers generated at the start is empowering. You are free to worry more about what is happening in the gameworld and less about if your numbers are going to give you a chance to succeed.
Sometimes you get some high stats, sometimes you get average and once in a while, they are mostly low. The feeling of relief that washes over players when they realize how little it actually matters from a success/survival standpoint is like a wave of freedom. No constant worrying that the character you rolled up isn't good enough compared to the next one.
The realization that survival really does depend on your choices in actual play instead of some random numbers generated at the start is empowering. You are free to worry more about what is happening in the gameworld and less about if your numbers are going to give you a chance to succeed.
Li Shenron
Legend
Absolutely, we've being doing that a couple of times in the 3e era, tho we were still using 4d6-drop-lowest. Really the "roll in order" replacing "arrange freely" can be treated independently from the rest.
You can use all ideas and variations that come to mind, if the players are worried about bad luck. For example, it could be already interesting to try granting one fixed score of 16 to the ability you think you need most (e.g. Int for Wizard), and roll the remaining 5; this idea could allow most players to still pick the class (or the class type at least). Another option is to allow some trade-off, i.e. some limited chance of raising one score at the cost of lowering others, or the option of swapping two scores, etc...
One of the reasons 3d6 in order worked so well with (O)D&D was that none of us had much expectation of any particular character living past the first combat or trap. We grew to love whatever character managed to survive a few adventures no matter what flaws he had, we became invested in that character no matter the class/race or stats.
Yep! For me additional benefits are that rolling in order sometimes forces you to try play some classes or character concepts you weren't thinking about, and that it potentially creates unusual PC parties, different from common setups like melee+archer+healer+controller+trickster. Honestly, I don't like it when I'm joining a game and I've been told "we must have a healer, we must have a trapfinder, why-did-you-make-another-melee-we-need-an-archer". I really prefer RPG that work without assumptions on the party, and rolling randomly quite forces the game to support any party composition.
I'm kind of surprised. That sounds a lot farther away from its war-gaming roots than I'd expect. Don't the war games all go pretty badly if the players haven't rationally chosen their army composition?
So the OD&D modules were all set up to work well for parties made up of all mages, or who had no healing or lock-picking, or any other really unbalanced combination without turning into cases where the party just had to give up or all died? If so, that sounds like some modules that should be worth checking out for some general design principles for any edition. Or was it just that because it was going to be a blood-bath anyway no one got their hopes up about survival (just had them up about having fun)?
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