My First Stab at Character Generation (Part 1)

So I'm going to be honest, this is just going to be me spit balling some ideas about how character generation should work in our game, partially based on the games I've played and what I know works, and also partially based on what we discussed at the Elbow Room and at other times.  Any and all help with this would be greatly appreciated because this is the stuff that will determine almost every other mechanic in game, including combat, enemy creation, NPC creation, so on and so forth, so we need this to be rock solid before we continue forward.

Also, we need to have it be able to be accomplished in 10-20 minutes.
(And for my next trick, world peace.)

Anyway, the first thing we discussed that needed changing was the idea that racial differences shouldn't have a huge impact on the character.  Fair enough, but I do think that race needs to work in there somehow, because in our world, certain races have physical characteristics that are quite varied from other people.  While upbringing has a lot to do with how someone is brought up, race, blood type, etc. determines their physical characteristics.  My compromise is this: race should affect the ability scores of the character, but nothing else.  Upbringing will determine the rest of it.

Deal?

So it will work somewhat like this (note, all these races are just me tossing out ideas only, we can have more or less, we can change their attributes, whatever, don't care.).  You choose your race from different races such as this:

Dwarf - -1 to WIS or CHA, +1 to CON or STR (Using D&D stats right now because it's something we can all understand.)
Elf - -1 to CON or STR, +1 to DEX or INT
Orc - -1 CHA or DEX, +1 STR or CON
Gnome - +1 INT or WIS, -1 STR or CON
Halfling - +1 DEX or WIS, -1 STR or CON
Construct (Golem, Ragamuffin, etc.) - +1 STR or CON, -1 to WIS, INT, or CHA
Half-breeds (Huge list here, we'll deal with it later, or maybe not)

As you  can see, I want each race to have choices as to which attributes get bonuses or negatives, I like this, because not all elves are automatically more dexterous, especially if they decide to go a more intellectual route.  Plus it adds more choices to the players, and it's a relatively simple choice.

Next the player chooses an upbringing, this will determine things such as skills known, cantrips known, weapon proficiency, knowledge, etc.  Essentially everything that the "rest of the text" gives the player in all other fantasy games.  Generally when you choose a race, you get the physical modifiers and then a slew of other bonuses, such as dwarves immunity to poisons, elves martial proficiency, gnome cantrips, darkvision, etc.  All these are based on upbringing, a dwarf raised above ground won't ever need darkvision, a gnome raised on a farm might not learn cantrips, etc.  This gives more choice to the player and it also allows for more diverse characters, and characters to branch into roles that their race normally wouldn't be very applicable for, such as a dwarf wizard or a gnome warrior, a halfling cleric, etc.

Here's some examples of what I have in mind for upbringing:

- Raised in convent - divine cantrips, knowledge (religion), diety weapon proficiency, etc.
- Farm raised - animal empathy, knowledge (nature), knowledge (engineering), improvised weapons, etc.
- Raised in the wilderness - animal empathy, druid cantrips, knowledge (nature), illiterate, etc.
- Raised in general city - gather information, knowledge (local), hide in plain sight, etc.
- Nomad/Gypsy - knowledge (geography), 1 exotic weapon proficiency, etc.
- Elven City Raised - elven weapon proficiency, arcane cantrips, elven language, etc.
- Forest Elf raised - elven weapon proficiency, camouflage, elven language, etc.
- Dwarven City raised - dwarf weapon proficiency, high alcohol tolerance, darkvision, etc.
- Noblilty - knowledge (nobility), more starting money, etc.
- Slavery - less money, survival skill, knowledge (law), escape artist skill, etc.

That's the basic idea, each one will have several unique abilities and knowledges that would be picked up by someone living there.  That way we can have very diverse characters that don't rely on some of the stereotypes seen by a lot of fantasy RPG stuff.  Anyway, tell me what you think about this stuff, and I'm going to start working on part 2, abilities and ability generation.