Make the characters session 1, or do it before hand?

[Terraoblivion]

Also, nobody in this group is under 40. That may make a difference.

I don't think age matters for this after some inexact point in your mid to late teens. Individual variation seems to be a bigger deal than age in general and there are factors at any given point in life encouraging you to focus on something else instead.

[Broken Twin]

Depends on the game style. If we're going for a character focused game, I prefer to build the PCs as a group during the first session. If it's just a fun romp, build them beforehand.

[Seward]

Some of the more recent story-based games pretty much insist on character creation being collaborative, part of the first game session (eg, Dresden Files RPG, an early Fate variant has you actually work out a lot of the city before even starting on the characters....describing threats, themes, locations and major NPCs, although often PC's end up filling some of those roles). The game also encourages mechanical links between the characters, some of your "aspects" (which have significant mechanical crunch) are tied to "guest stars" in other character's stories before play starts.

So the game begins usually with PC's having some connection to each other, and also to certain power structures within the city (the game assumes a city or region as primary stomping grounds, based on genre conventions, kind of similar to most superhero worlds).

d20 doesn't really do that at all. Characters are self-contained, with connections to things around them and other PCs described in the same way your hair color or cloak style is described - possibly interesting but no actual mechanical effect. So it isn't as important to build setting first, tie characters into it and to each other - d20 works fairly well as a game where everyone shows up with characters and meet in a bar, with setting knowledge provided by the shadowy dude in the corner that wants to hire them for a quest...

(yeah, I know. But...it is a stereotype because it STILL happens, 40 years after the earliest adaptations of miniatures to a rpg).

I can't imagine running a game where I didn't first get players excited about the setting. That's the pattern no matter what the game system - the GM has an idea of a world or theme, gets some friends interested and they make characters that will fit in and have some hooks there, whether or not there is a mechanical reward on the character sheet. It's just that in systems like d20, the characters often start out as strangers, where in Nobilis or Fate, (or Ars Magica, to name an older one where you worked out the Chancel before play) they have some pre-existing connections, even if they don't personally know each other they belong to the same organization or family or something.

[gom jabbarwocky]

I used to say the latter, but now I definitely tend towards the former.

[bulbaquil]

Situations where the characters definitely should be made in session 1 (or "session 0", if you don't actually play that session):

- Newly formed gaming group
- New system that at least two players (maybe even one) are unfamiliar with
- New campaign in the same system, but at least two new players (maybe even one) are joining
- Party cohesion is a must and you know or suspect that your group does not communicate outside the game
- Character creation is randomized (so you must see dice rolls) and/or the character creation mechanics themselves are multiplayer in nature
- Character creation takes very little time at all and/or players are expected to go through multiple characters in a single session

Situations where the characters probably should be made beforehand:
- New player familiar with system, entering campaign already in progress (talk with the GM directly)
- New campaign in either the same system or a different system everyone's already familiar with and no substantial change in group makeup
- Rules/crunch-heavy system and/or start-at-high-level game where the character creation process has a decent potential of taking up ~75%+ the expected length of a session, particularly if there are no newbies
- PvP is actually expected, or PCs are expected to have pertinent secrets the GM doesn't want revealed to other PCs even in the metagame
- Your group definitely does communicate outside the game