# Player
For the Valkyrie class title of Hero(ine), see Valkyrie.
NetHack is a single-player game. You are the player or adventurer. The bones levels can provide a limited interaction with other (former) players.
Your character or hero is represented by the @ symbol. There are also other characters represented by an @, such as your quest leader and the oracle.  If the showrace option is turned on, your symbol will instead be that of your race.
The player has hit points, power (to cast spells), six basic attributes, an alignment, and experience. The player also has a purse (to hold gold) and a pack (to hold the other items in the inventory).
The player usually starts a game with a pet which is intended to help them, especially in the early stages of the game.

Contents

1 Role, race and alignment
2 Special names
3 Character or Hero vs. You or Player
4 Encyclopedia entry
5 References

Role, race and alignment
The player character can be any one of the following roles: archeologist, barbarian, cave[wo]man, healer, knight, monk, priest[ess], ranger, rogue, samurai, tourist, valkyrie, or wizard. They each have varying difficulties, strengths, weaknesses, quests and starting items.  
The player can also choose from the five races: human, elf, dwarf, gnome, or orc, and the three alignments: lawful, neutral or chaotic. The available races and alignments are dependent on the role one picks. 
One should bear in mind that the choice of role (and to a lesser extent, race and alignment) has a dramatic effect on the style of play. Although in the late game, the characters can be played almost the same way (with a few exceptions), during the early game it is crucial that one utilizes the varying abilities of each of the roles and/or races. For example, running up and bashing a monster as a wizard would likely result in YASD, and reading unidentified spellbooks as a valkyrie or samurai could lead to paralysis and death by a newt.
The following table lists all possible combinations:

Arc

Bar

Cav

Hea

Kni

Mon

Pri

Ran

Rog

Sam

Tou

Val

Wiz

Human

L      N      &nbsp;

&nbsp; N      C

L      N      &nbsp;

&nbsp; N      &nbsp;

L      &nbsp; &nbsp;

L      N      C

L      N      C

&nbsp; N      C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

L      &nbsp; &nbsp;

&nbsp; N      &nbsp;

L      N      &nbsp;

&nbsp; N      C

Human

Elf

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

Elf

Dwarf

L &nbsp; &nbsp;

L &nbsp; &nbsp;

L &nbsp; &nbsp;

Dwarf

Gnome

&nbsp; N &nbsp;

&nbsp; N &nbsp;

&nbsp; N &nbsp;

&nbsp; N &nbsp;

&nbsp; N &nbsp;

Gnome

Orc

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

&nbsp; &nbsp; C

Orc

Arc

Bar

Cav

Hea

Kni

Mon

Pri

Ran

Rog

Sam

Tou

Val

Wiz

There are 38 unique combinations of race/role/alignment, and 28 unique combinations of race/role.  Human is the most versatile race with 23 possible combinations of race/role alignment, while other races are much more limited: only three for Elf and Dwarf, four for Orc, and five for Gnome.  Note that non-humans have fixed alignments: lawful for Dwarves, neutral for Gnome, and chaotic for Elves and Orcs.
While there is no role that is open to all races, Ranger and Wizard are the most accessible, as every race but Dwarf can play them.  Four classes (Knight, Monk, Samurai, and Tourist) are limited to humans only.  There are slightly more neutral combinations (15) than chaotic (13) or lawful (10).
Some players set one one factor, such as race, in their Options file as a constant and then let the game randomly select a role.  For example, playing as a random Dwarf allows you to focus on a small subset of roles (archaeologist, caveman, and valkyrie), with a common alignment and some environmental factors (such as expected reception in the mines) constant.  The same can be done for Elf, Gnome, or Orc.

Special names
Your name is up to you, but some special names have a few minor effects on the game:

Name

Effect

Croesus
Kroisos
Creosote

You can truthfully claim your name is one of these to a vault guard (lying carries a -1 alignment penalty if lawful). On the other hand, if you have already killed Croesus, you must lie to avoid angering a vault guard.

Maud

A scroll of amnesia will give a slightly different message

wizard

If the debug mode flag (-D) is set, this name may put the player in wizard mode, depending on the system. Whenever a game is started in wizard mode, the player name will be set to "wizard" regardless of any other factors.

Shopkeepers in bones files remember the name of the character that angered them. If you have the same name, they'll be angry at you, too.
"Elbereth" on headstones is ignored precisely to deal with the case of a player naming themselves such.[1]

Character or Hero vs. You or Player
In most contexts, the terms adventurer, character, hero, player and you may be used interchangeably. There are subtle differences however; when a distinction is required, character and hero refer to the in-game alter-ego, while player and you refer to the real-world person playing the game. Thus a new player is a real world person who has not played NetHack much yet, while all active players start new characters at regular intervals. The term adventurer is more neutral in this regard, and should be avoided where a distinction is to be made.

Encyclopedia entry

Be bold,
be bold,
but not too bold.
Or else your life's blood,
shall run cold.

[ The White Road, by Neil Gaiman ]
People think I'm crazy to worry all the time;
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too.
You better pay attention, or this world we love so much
Might just kill you.

[ It's a Jungle Out There, by Randy Newman ]
 

References

↑ sengr_at in engrave.c: Function used to check for Elbereths

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