The first thing you need to do before adventuring into the dangerous worlds of ITD&TD is create an adventurer or two of your own, often called a Character. Sometimes we refer to player created characters as simply "Player Characters" or "PCs".
A character is a combination of in game statistics and calculations, and your imagination. You might be a stalwart hero, ready to slay foes with a sword, or an aged hero who still has some tricks to learn or some fight left in him. Although you must abide by the game rules, your imagination has no limits.
<aside> <img src="/icons/die6_gray.svg" alt="/icons/die6_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Default vs Variant
The default rule of ITD&TD is to generate a random adventurer, akin to the gaming systems of eld. However, not every table likes this process, and as such, the variant rules are presented here in the play test document. At the end of this document is a list of variant rules to use if you wish.
If your table uses the default, or the variant rule for character creation, it should be discussed during a Session 0, or prior to the campaign.
I encourage everyone to try the default rule before discarding it as a relic in the past. It encourages role play, and really thinking about how a character got into adventuring, much more so than the ability to make sure your character is optimized.
As a reminder, this system is to encourage play from systems of old, thus instead of grand sweeping, pre-made stories, the GM is encouraged to create scenarios for these characters to run through, with players driving the narrative much more so than the GM.
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As the campaign is meant to simulate the lives of an adventurer, most players will play more than one character across a campaign. You will likely not play more than one at a time, but you will likely have a pool of characters, deciding which one will go along for the adventure. It could be based on other characters coming on that adventure, it could be based on needing an expert trap finder, and you happen to have one, you could just feel like playing a different character, or your other character could be recovering from injury.
Some players will like creating their characters ahead of time, others will wait until specific times to create additional characters, there is no wrong answer. However, your GM may have rules at the table for multiple characters, and as such, they should be hashed out ahead of time, preferably during a Session 0.
The life of an adventurer is extremely dangerous, and even the most seasoned ones may finally meet their match. Be prepared for characters to die. Although with good choices, good planning, and some luck, your character can make it to higher levels.
There are smart decisions to be made all over the place that will help even the odds. Careful adventures live longer. Characters that work well with others do too.
Occasionally, either due to player count, or other outside factors, you may end up playing more than one of your characters at a time. A GM must approve this, but if you find yourself in this situation, try not to overshadow other players at your table. For example, if there were 3 players, and you are 2 characters to round out the party to 4, you should still only have about 1/3 of the play time dedicated to you, despite playing half the party.
It's about everyone having fun at the table.
Character creation can be handled by doing 6 steps. These steps are listed in order of which you should do them. They are: