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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7989922" data-attributes="member: 42582">I gave three examples already: Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant. Whether the world is unfair, or not (a question for another time), random rolls for ability scores have no conceivable place in PC-gen for these games. In BW, ability scores are built from pools that are in turn built from LPs that in turn are chosen under various constaints negotiated by the group as part of setting up a campaign.In AW, each playbook has four ability-score spreds (&quot;arrays&quot;) to choose from which reflect a particular approach to that sort of PC, and will feed into other choices of moves for one's character. You could, if you wanted to, through a d4 to choose one's array, but that would be like throwing a die-whatever to choose from the possible points-buy options. It wouldn't be a version of throwing 3d6 (or whatever) for each score.In Prince Valiant, there are two abilities, Brawn and Presence, and 7 points to allocate to them. The number of points in a score represents coins tossed in action resolution (heads are succdesses). In our game we have two Brawn 4, Presence 3 (both knights) and two Brawn 3, Presence 4 (one started as a squire but is now a knight; the other is a travelling performer). There is no scope in this system for making a random roll for stats. You could toss a coin to decide whether you want to play a more physical or more mental character, but that would be like a 5e player tossing a coin to choose between fighter and wizard. That's not random stat generation.Besides D&amp;D, systems I know of that invite random stat generation are Tunnels &amp; Trolls (mandatory I would have thought), Classic Traveller (for the reasons I explained upthread) and at least traditionally RQ (and its offshoots) and Rolemaster, which in this respect show their conceptual connections to classic D&amp;D.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7989922, member: 42582"] I gave three examples already: Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel and Prince Valiant. Whether the world is unfair, or not (a question for another time), random rolls for ability scores have no conceivable place in PC-gen for these games. In BW, ability scores are built from pools that are in turn built from LPs that in turn are chosen under various constaints negotiated by the group as part of setting up a campaign. In AW, each playbook has four ability-score spreds ("arrays") to choose from which reflect a particular approach to that sort of PC, and will feed into other choices of moves for one's character. You [I]could[/I], if you wanted to, through a d4 to choose one's array, but that would be like throwing a die-whatever to choose from the possible points-buy options. It wouldn't be a version of throwing 3d6 (or whatever) for each score. In Prince Valiant, there are two abilities, Brawn and Presence, and 7 points to allocate to them. The number of points in a score represents coins tossed in action resolution (heads are succdesses). In our game we have two Brawn 4, Presence 3 (both knights) and two Brawn 3, Presence 4 (one started as a squire but is now a knight; the other is a travelling performer). There is no scope in this system for making a random roll for stats. You could toss a coin to decide whether you want to play a more physical or more mental character, but that would be like a 5e player tossing a coin to choose between fighter and wizard. That's not random stat generation. Besides D&D, systems I know of that invite random stat generation are Tunnels & Trolls (mandatory I would have thought), Classic Traveller (for the reasons I explained upthread) and at least traditionally RQ (and its offshoots) and Rolemaster, which in this respect show their conceptual connections to classic D&D. [/QUOTE]

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