Just curious what the membership prefers.

4D6, retain top 3 dice, 6 times arrange to taste.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 08, 2021, 11:57:17 PM
4D6, retain top 3 dice, 6 times arrange to taste.

That's plum generous, within the OSR community.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 09, 2021, 12:58:56 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 08, 2021, 11:57:17 PM
4D6, retain top 3 dice, 6 times arrange to taste.

That's plum generous, within the OSR community.

Dunno if it's old school. That's how we did stats when I played in the 80's, after much gnashing of teeth over stat rolling.
Nowadays, I prefer a stat array.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 08, 2021, 11:57:17 PM
4D6, retain top 3 dice, 6 times arrange to taste.

That's been my method for D&D for ages.  The player generally gets to play the class and race they want and the stats usually don't suck, but it preserves some randomness.

For 5e D&D I do roll in order (normally best 3 of 4d6) then optionally replace one stat with a 15.

I've come to really dislike roll-then-arrange, it seems to combine the disadvantages of rolling & point buy. Rolling in order tends to minimise inequalities as eg high STR + INT is a lot less useful than STR + CON, and the 15 ensures all PCs meet the 5e assumed norm. The big advantage of rolling in order is the organic feel to the characters it creates, eg in my Primeval Thule game we had an INT 16 Barbarian, which made for some cool RP.

"When you Roll your Stats..."

Sorry, that statement just doesn't compute.

1) Array.
2) Point Buy.
3) Skill-based (no base attributes).

For AD&D1e, 3d6 down the line.

Roll 3d6 in order. Swap any 2 score at the player's discretion.  Provide means for scores to increase when the character picks the race and class and at a few levels*.

I very much prefer learning to use what you got to having a preset idea of a character--within reason.  Same organic reason that S'mon stated.  However, I can live with "elven rogue has a relatively high Dex" because he focused on that as a preference as a child (swapped high score into Dex, whatever that meant), picked Elf (and maybe bumped Dex as an option), pick rogue (ditto), and then kept after it as he survived and learned even more.  Whatever else he got in scores, he has to enjoy or live with as it falls out.  Or he can arrange to bump some of those at the expense of bumping Dex.

Or put another way, I like someone playing a character with a score in the 3-6 range sometimes, but I don't want the player stuck there forever if the characters lives and grows on them.

* Note that the bumps are from 1 to 4 points, skewing heavily towards the lower end of the scale as the stats go up. 

I suppose this question is aimed at AD&D in particular, given the options in the OP, but I'll answer more generically: My favorite stat generation methods are those that generate a random distribution of equal magnitude for each character.

I also prefer systems where stats matter, which I think is relevant to which generation method is most enjoyable. Randomness is fun, so if stats are largely vestigial in the game rules, the generation method might as well be as wild as you can get away with.

As a player, I do whatever my DM tells me to do.

As a DM, randomized point-buy.

Also, 3d6 in order and rerolling 1s is a better solution than 4d6 pick 3. As it dramatically reduces the chance of very low scores without increasing the odds of very high scores by a significant percentage.

Some form of randomized point-buy for me too.

I came up with an yin-yang method (AFAICT) but people tell me it's too complicated.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-school-d-and-yin-yang-method-of.html

So I wrote this; roll 3d20 and you have your character.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2019/04/generating-six-abilities-with-three.html

Nowadays, I let my players arrange to taste. HOWEVER, I'd prefer to limit this (swap no more than half your stats, for example). It encourages players to try new things.

Quote from: Jam The MF on December 09, 2021, 12:58:56 AM

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 08, 2021, 11:57:17 PM
4D6, retain top 3 dice, 6 times arrange to taste.

That's plum generous, within the OSR community.

  I believe it's Method I in the 1E DMG, and more or less the default (even if listed as "Method V") for the later days of 2nd Edition. So if you're playing in the AD&D strand of the OSR, it's probably more standard than in the Original/Basic branch, where "3d6 in order" remained the default.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 09, 2021, 10:46:57 AMI came up with an yin-yang method (AFAICT) but people tell me it's too complicated.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2016/07/old-school-d-and-yin-yang-method-of.html

I don't see it as being complicated. However, it does look like all characters with a specific strength will all have the exact same intelligence. i.e. every character with a strength of 14 will have an int of 7 (or 10 depending on which number you use 21 or 24).

Both my groups play RC D&D, we do 3d6 in order in both groups.