[ushdugery]

idiot savant background in arcanum will seriously change your playthrough...

[Eyeman]

Whoa, these background stories make me want to actually role-play. Poor Ms.Peabody though, that gal is going to get a lot of nasty surprises... Drifters wanting to rob her, killers stalking her.
A lot of people seem to think the backgrounds all sound male, but I can definitely see female versions easily. For instance the Drifter, I've known chicks like that. Always on the run. Haunted by a dark past. Hella cool.

[roqua]

I really like your take on the importance of backgrounds in (and to) the story and game.  But, the 75% of stat and skill allocation is taken from me?  You just took away the main driver of me plugging away at a game, and the most fun aspect of the game, and replaced it with one choice.  I’d much rather have 10 less important choices than one really important choice.  Let me min-max fully.  I always pick the custom class if there is free form chargen.  These backgrounds are far too like classes than backgrounds, and with a far steeper price in that I am losing my min-maxing potential.  I’d rather min-max and see less content in the game over more content and less chargen/chardev.

But, as long as I can skip the backgrounds and min-max no biggie.