I second the motion to revive that discussion. The idea being that for each stat (str, dex, con, etc.) you decide if a race would have a uniform, normal, or random distribution and roll that set of dice for stat so a dwarf might be:
str 9d2 (uniformly strong)
dex 3d6 (normally dexterous)
con 9d2 (uniformly constitutional)
int 3d6 (normally smart)
wis 3d6 (normaly wise)
cha 1d20 (randomly charismatic)
Then you roll and what you get is what you get. You can add onto each dice set a modifier, or mins/maxes.
I believe there is a more indepth discussion about this on another game that has two vectors, one being distrubition and the other being talent. So a race can be consistenly high, low, or average in a stat. Or the distribution can be random, but taken as a whole they can be, better, worse, or on par with average. (Some other terms for these concepts are accurate and precise, accurate meaning the average is on target and precise meaning that the distribution is tight, but maybe off target).
You could also, potentially, add modifiers based on class and background or just what you want to stack.
So, maybe you have +6 that you can distribute around. I would say though that maybe it should be 6 points and the cost to get a +1 to any stat (pre-roll) costs 1 for random, 2 for normal, and 3 for uniform, since a uniform roll averages 13.5 with little deviation from the mean. So a +1 represents an high probability of a 15, a min of 10 and a max of 19; and a +2 would be a 16, 11, and 20 respectively.
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[The following is what I was going to post, but then saw that Matt had posted]
I was thinking about how you could convert the d20 system (5e, etc.) into percentile (each point = 5%), then rolling dice such that 50% becomes the baseline and adding modifiers in 5% increments.
The most obvious rolling scheme being 1d100 which yeilds an average of 50 with an equal probability of each number rolled. The other options I calculated using the basic form of xdy-x = (average of 50.5, max 100, min 1) and came up with these options:
1d100-0
3d34-2
9d12-8
11d10-10
33d4-32
99d2-98
link
https://anydice.com/program/127e8