# 3d6 in Order

In online commentary on various forums, and even in my own group's
games, I've noticed that we've gotten away from the "take what you
get" emergent character creation that supposed to be part of
old-school D&D. I've made little concessions myself, like allowing
the 7th roll for starting gold to be swapped out with one of the six
stat rolls. Or even (horrors) allowing "roll 3d6 six times and
arrange to suit".

The stat inflation in B/X, where at the low end the penalties are
relatively large, is partly responsible. Then there is wanting to
cater to the player's wish to build the PC they envision, rather
than working with what they rolled. If the players come from newer
editions, they might even expect a pre-rolled stat block that has no
below average stats.

But I think we're doing a disservice to the new, old-school players
in particular when we do allow stat-fudging, and missing out on a
fun way to play in general - having what is considered a hopeless
character survive and level up can be very satisfying. And if they
don't survive, well you can be sure there is a good story
there...roll up another one and try again!

In original D&D, the stats don't have much affect on game play (and
in fact, the referee was supposed to roll stats). Charisma had the
most variation, with the loyalty base of -2 to +4, but this didn't
affect you much while on an adventure. Otherwise, it was just +1 or
-1.

Greyhawk changed this at the high end (especially with with
percentile strength, if you used it), but not at the low end. B/X of
course, has the unified -3 to +3 for most stats. Still, even there,
the rules tell you to just roll 3d6 for each stat, and write down
the result. You could adjust stats afterwards, according to the
specific swapping rules for whichever class the player chose, but
this never allowed much variation, given the average 3d6 roll (in
OD&D, there is some disagreement as to whether the point swaps were
meant to be real or virtual, my own take is the latter).

The later OD&D supplements and AD&D 1e took this all to a new level,
making classes that required minimum ability scores, then of course
there were the various ways to inflate stat rolls given in the 1e
DMG. I like the way Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised handles this,
by removing the minimums, but also tying class-based special
abilities to the scores themselves. So if you really want to play
that Monk, you don't need to fudge your ability rolls, but you might
miss out on some of the Monk's special abilities as you level
up. But who knows - you could find magic items during adventures
that raise ability scores, resulting in a fun in-game solution to
low stats (of course, some magic items lower scores as well...).

Anyway, all of this is to say that it's fun to try and play with
whatever PC you've rolled. I'm not trying to mandate a particular
way of playing, just to suggest you give strict 3d6 in order a try,
and see what you think.