There are actually three character creation methods: Prose, List and As You Go. Prose involves writing a paragraph of about 100 words, describing the character's most essential traits, and then underlining phrases from it that would serve as the Abilities. List simply involves writing down your 10 Abilities and 3 Flaws. And As You Go would mean starting with just the keywords and one other ability, and filling everything else in later during play.

Those methods all have their pros and cons, but I'd prefer to use the List method for the purposes of this game. Since it is supposed to be story-heavy, improvising things on the fly would not work too well, as I prefer to have some character hooks to work with from the start. Prose could be fun if any of you really want to try it, but List is probably simpler to use, especially if you lack experience with the game.

In any case, after the Abilities have been chosen, you need to assign their ratings. You could put any one of your abilities (including a keyword) at 17. All the others have to start at 13. Next you have 20 points you could distribute between all of your Ability ratings, though you may not add more than 10 to one of them. Your most dire Flaw has the same rating as your highest Ability. The second direst has the same rating as they second highest. And the last Flaw has the same rating as the lowest Ability.

All the ratings in the game go up to 20. If you raise it past that, you gain your first Mastery in that rating, meaning that 20 is followed not by 21 but by 1W. The Mastery is one of the unique game mechanics that I'll explain in more detail a bit later, but basically it means that your ability is on a completely different level. Masteries are sweet to have.... but it is worth noting that they cancel each other out.

Heroquest uses d20 dice. During Contests you make a 1d20 roll and succeed if your result is lower than or equal to the Ability's rating. In response, I would roll for the opposition (which doesn't have to be another character, but can be any significant obstacle). The outcome and the degree of success or failure is determined by the results of this comparison. However, it is possible to bump up your results by one level using a Mastery or a Hero Point, though the latter are best used at least somewhat sparingly, because they also double as your XP - used to upgrade your character's ratings in between missions.