The design is reminiscent of a medieval sketchbook with faint 'guidelines' visible and scattered, DaVinci-like drawings. Since the book is intended mainly as a reference tool for play, however, I was not bothered by the lack of bad fiction or clever tidbits scattered in sidebars. The book jumps into character creation with little introductory fanfare. Gone are the numerous rolling methods from other editions. Now you just roll 4D6 six times, drop the lowest die from each roll, and assign scores as you like.
All abilities use the same table to get their modifiers from.
Memorize the table progression and you are ready to go. Each ability is covered individually with tables of average scores for various races and creatures. There is also a section devoted to changing ability scores. Characters now get to add one point to an ability score every fourth level. There are six 'standard' races for 3 rd Edition.