Random Character Generation

Roll the Dice
It's a popular phrase to say "There are two kinds of people in the world, those who..." I suppose one could group people in our hobby according to their preference for character generation (chargen) method - point buy or random roll. It's no secret that I have an immense fondness for the original game which came as three little brown books in a white box. On page 10 of vol. I Men & Magic the authors instruct:

Prior to the character selection by players it is necessary for the referee to roll
three six-sided dice in order to rate each as to various abilities, and thus aid them in
selecting a role.

The abilities are the classic six, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma. The ability scores range from 3-18 distributed along a bell curve with 9-12 being the most common scores. Scores in these six abilities are supposed to give the player a sense of who the character is. Are they strong, smart, nimble and quick? Are they charismatic? The referee rolls the scores randomly (and may throw out any they see as unplayable) and hands the character sheet over to the player, who then is left to make something from this set of scores - a personality, a role to play.
The player looks at the scores (average, above average, below average) and decides which class and race to make the character. The player may presumably reduce scores in some abilities in order to increase the prime requisite for the purpose of gaining additional experience. Otherwise the scores are what they are. The list of benefits and penalties that high and low ability scores give is relatively brief compared to later editions and the chief benefit seems to be the experience bonus for a high prime requisite score.
The player then selects what stance a character will take, in other words select an alignment, either Law, Chaos or Neutrality. According to the chart given, men may be of any alignment, but there are no dwarves or elves of Chaos and hobbits/halflings are aligned with the forces of Law. To complete the PC three d6s are rolled and the total is multiplied times ten for starting gold and a single d6 is rolled (with class adjustments) for hit points, some equipment is purchased and possibly a magic spell chosen for an elf or magic user and the character is finished. Gender, hair and eye color, height, weight, etc. can be just stated by the player (or if one prefers, can be determined randomly). There is no need for skill selection because PCs are all adventurers who have the basic adventuring skills. It doesn't specifically say so in the rules, but rolling against an appropriate ability score (or throw a d6) seems a logical way to handle skills. This type of chargen is a fairly quick process with a lot of randomization produced by the dice, but the real work of fleshing out the PC is still to be done by the player.
What one makes of all these numbers the dice produce is the real player skill in the random chargen system. It takes some thinking and imagination to bring life to a set of ability scores, a class (maybe a non-human race), and some hit points. Even a low or high roll on starting money can be used to extrapolate from. Maybe the PC is from a wealthy family, maybe down on his or her luck? A low ability score may be from an injury or illness. The numbers on the character sheet together with what happens at the table during play should suggest a number of personality traits to a player eager to get to know their PC.
If you like meeting new people and getting to know them. If you like surprises and challenges. If you like unravelling a puzzle. If you just like rolling dice or if you would rather spend time playing rather than in chargen, maybe random is the way to go. There is a time-honored tradition of letting the dice decide. I find it fun.