Firstly, creating a character:
So
Str 14 int 16 luck 14 Con 16 dex 14 cha 15 speed 14
(Took quite a bit of rolling to get even that good)
For there we go to the Peters-McAllister Chart for Creating Man-Like Creatures:
Elf int, dex, cha x2. con x 2/3
Dwarf str and con x 2. cha x 2/3
troll str and con x3. But some people don't like trolls.
As there's no point in the book that I can remember where you run into troll-haters, I'd tend to suggest the troll.
From there we choose if the character should be a warrior or a wizard. A warrior gets double the effect from armour, and wizards are limited in what weapons they can use.
The book recommends a warrior for the first try, and I'd agree, as it's a lot simpler and the level one spells tend to be a bit rubbish.
The enemy does the same, and the one with the lowest takes the difference in damage (either to Con or MR) minus their armour (or twice armour for warriors).
Some monsters just have a monster rating (MR) instead of adventurer type stats, they roll their MR/10 (round up) + half their MR. So a MR of 16 is 2d6 +8. If the attacker got 21 and the monster got 13, the monster would go down to 8, and be 1d6+4 next round.
I personally like the idea of monsters getting weaker as they take damage, and once you worked out how your first attack goes, it'll be the same until your stats or weapon changes no matter what you fight, which is nice and simple.
I'd also note that since you can fight with a weapon in both hands, using spare hand for a shield that stops 4 points of damage isn't any better than using it for a weapon that does 4 points of damage, at least in combat
However, what race and type of character is chosen affects what weapons can be used, so I'll list them once that's been chosen. Basically, wizards can't use any weapon with more than 2 dice (so a 3d+1 spear is out, but not a 2d+5 dagger), and some weapons have a str and/or dex requirement that our character might not have, depending on race.