"Player skill" should mean dropping INT and WIS

My home rules have no intellectual stats. It's really about player choices and player ingenuity. You don't get to roll to be smart. There are traits for character features like education and professional abilities--if you don't have them, you don't write them down--but there is neither intelligence nor wisdom. Also, every trait does something in the game. I like it that way.

Ever since I read Finch's "Quick Primer for Old School Roleplaying" for the first time, about December last year, I have wondered why early "old-school" players bothered with Intelligence and Wisdom scores at all.

The answer was probably that it's the pure, original D&D, so don't mess with it.

But these stats have little place in a game run by the ethos of "rulings not rules" and "player skill, not character abilities."

If players are supposed to figure everything out on their own, I'm fine with that. That's how I do it. Let the players describe what they think to do, where they look, how they search, all that. But let's not pretend that the INT or WIS scores mean anything worth keeping in old editions of D&D or the retyped new editions with house rules plugged in.

Take Moldvay's Basic as a popular point of reference.

What does a high INT do for you in old B/X D&D? It lets you speak one to three more languages, which makes no sense. It also gives Magic-Users and Elves more experience points. In effect, you get a roll before the game begins which determines whether or not you get an edge over other players. Your GP count for more XP if you are "smart." Experience points for free, without work, because you rolled a high score on a single pre-game roll.

Otherwise the Intelligence score is not good for anything.

Wisdom counts for something slightly more substantial in B/X D&D. A high score lets you resist magic better. The wisest possible character, one in 216, gets a +3 bonus to resist magic on a d20 saving throw, or... +15%. Huh. That's really not much for being the "wisest" person around.

I guess they might have called it "Magic Resistance" instead of Wisdom. But no, magic resistance is Cleric-themed. Clerics (the most D&D-ish of character classes) get free experience points if they get lucky on that single pre-game roll.

Anybody who actually takes the idea of "player skill, not character abilities" seriously might as well dispense with these nearly meaningless scores that clutter up an otherwise slightly cleaner character sheet. Really, the D&D ability scores are nearly meaningless in old editions of that game.

Now, Moldvay did write, basically, "hey, DMs, you could even have players roll against ability scores on d20 to test a score!" (page B60). This was not shades of 5e years in advance. It was Moldvay noticing how practically every other game at the time employed characters stats that actually mattered and that did stuff in play. Moldvay could scarcely have predicted how this concession to function would infuriate "old-school" gamer dogmatists well after he had died. Apparently, Moldvay was not truly "old-school."

The ability scores in old D&D rules are so useless that I think they are not needed at all. Just drop them. All of them. Characters have class and level abilities and equipment. That's all they need, if you take the "players skill" and "DM just decides anyway"--I mean "rules not ruling"!--principles seriously. But you probably don't take those principles too seriously. I know you guys love your ability scores. You get high off knowing that your Magic-User has an Intelligence of 18, even if it matters scarcely at all in the game. Feeling potent or powerful is one of the appeals of role-playing, and just writing a high score on your sheet may accomplish that, even if it never involves a roll of dice.

D&D dogmatists of the new-fangled "old-school" variety uphold principles that are out of sync with a game that has stats for Intelligence and Wisdom. Luckily for the game, when you get down to playing, abstract principles matter a lot less than having fun together. You can keep feeling good about that high INT score while still saying that player skill matters most. I won't tease you about it.