Character creation

This may include a representation of the character's physical, mental, psychological, and social attributes and skills in terms of the specific game's mechanics.

Some games and campaign settings offer pre-generated character options for beginners or players who prefer to start playing more quickly.

For example, in some editions of Dungeons & Dragons the player rolls 4d6 and adds the highest three numbers to generate an ability score (attribute value) from 3 to 18.

In the first editions of the Stormbringer role playing game, the character's race and class both are determined by rolling 1d100 and looking up the result in the appropriate table.

As used for example in the Traveller, Empire of the Petal Throne and Harnmaster RPGs or some cRPGs such as Mount & Blade and Darklands, this technique models a character's life prior to becoming an active adventurer.

The player chooses family origin then makes further decisions at specific life "checkpoints" such as early education, young adulthood, or "tours of duty" in various careers.

Each stage applies modifiers and gives the character the opportunity to develop skills, advantages, and possessions, or to suffer setbacks and disadvantages.

In some cases, a player may run through repeated career cycles to sacrifice character youth for additional skills, experience and material advancement.

Determining numerical values comprises several steps that are not always distinct: Example: In Castle Falkenstein, abilities are the only type of statistic.

In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, non-human races typically increase one ability score by two (on a scale of 3 to 18) while another is lowered by the same amount.

Other games use templates as a mandatory tool to provide direction and limitations to character creation and development.