Designs & Decisions: Why Old School Score Generation Works
A subreddit I frequent has hosted a spate of memes lately about the old 3d6 down-the-line method of generating ability scores, alternatively looking fondly on a relic of a distant past and skewering both the idea and the conversations generated around it. Under these posts I tend to join the small but extant group defending the practice. My reasoning tends to focus on seeing the system not just as "something we used to do" (I didn't play D&D until it was already a pop culture phenomenon in the late 2010s) but as a valid design decision in its own right. Mechanics contribute the most to a type of game and the style of play that embraces the features implied by those mechanics. This is something often missed among faithful 5e fans, as modern D&D's mechanics do not contribute well to any specific type of game and does not foster any specific style of play. It is, however, the core argument behind the mantra that "system matters," a mantra repeated most