Joseph has identified an interesting facet of the game, and one where apparently he gets a number of comments during playtest sessions. On another thread there was a list of "retro" games and how they handle stat rolling, and not many of them encouraged 3d6 in order.goodmangames wrote:We've had an entire generation of gamers raised on "roll 4d6, drop the lowest score, and then assign your stats as you see fit." There are some funny comments on Grognardia right now about people surprised at how many "negative modifiers" their characters have in DCC RPG.
Stats in DCC RPG feature a perfect bell curve -- straight 3d6 -- so there should be just as many negatives as positives. It's just that we haven't been used to looking at many negatives for something like 20 years now...
"3d6 in order" is one of those things that limits players in ways they often dislike, because it tends to force them to play random characters instead of the one they want. (The random background roll has a similar effect, since only a small percentage of characters get to be non-human.)
I know in my own OD&D campaigns we started with 3d6 in order, but moved on after a while because players wanted more control. We played "3d6, arrange to taste" for years.
I'm curious as to whether folks here plan to do attribute rolls by the book or if this is one of those rules in the book that gets "house ruled" away once the game is published.