I created a group of characters and I press # or 3 to go to the Inn of Algary, but the game tells me I don't have available characters. That's not true.

In a new game, your characters start in Sorpigal. The way the game saves is by having you visit an inn, so when you start a new game, you can see which characters you have at which inns. At the start, everyone's in Sorpigal (you'll see the default characters that the game comes with, as well as your newly created ones). Later on, when you visit other towns and say at their inns, you will leave your characters there.

While most people will create a 6-person party and use it for the whole game, it's actually possible to make more characters and pick and choose your party from those available. So you could eventually have all sorts of characters strewn over the five towns, but at the start they're all in Sorpigal.

One other thing to note: the characters you made start with very little equipment. But, the premade characters have more equipment (and food, and gold). It can help in the beginning to start with a mix of the premade characters and your characters, and transfer all the items, food, and money form the premade guys to your guys. That can give you a little bit of a boost at the start; otherwise the start is a bit slow. Also, remember to equip stuff! Your characters will not start with their items equipped.

Yeah, the # means a number from 1-5, your party starts in sorpigal, or town 1, so press 1 to go there and choose your party.

Oh, yeah I forgot about that. I was confused by the "#" command at first too. Hit 1 for Soprigal and you'll be all set.

Oh, thank you. That was quite simple of me.

And yet another question. Is there an easier way to allocate attribute points in character creation besides doing a random die roll for the entire set of numbers? Such as in World of Xeen, one was able to swap the random number between to attributes.

No, unfortunately you have to reroll until you get the desired attributes.

Yeah, you have to reroll, but don't worry too much about fully maximizing stats. It can help a little in the beginning but it's definitely possible to finish the game with rolls that are merely "good" rather than "outstanding".

Also remember that you can create lots of characters, which can allow you to "save" rolls that you're not sure you want to play with yet, by creating a character off them but then continuing to roll new characters.

This is a good point, the random stats you get when levelling are far more annoying than the random stats you roll at the start.

In Might and Magic 2, you get better stats on leveling if you train at the more expensive trainers in the other towns. Is this true in Might and Magic 1 as well? Could be good to know. Of course, I finished Might and Magic 1 having only ever used the cheapest training in Sorpigal, so it's certainly not essential.

Also, one stat that is good to roll high at the start is endurance as it determines how many hit points you get each time you level up.