TOR is such a great system that I want more. But while Francesco develops more cool stuff for supplements, I wondered about designing new backgrounds. As anyone who has read the rules can tell you, it should be very simple.

Here is a basic guide:

1) Attributes: distribute 14 points, with no score landing higher than 7 or lower than 2.
2) Favored Skill: select one skill
3) Distinctive Features: select 8 traits, from which the player chooses two.

If you want to go even further and develop a new culture, here's what to do:

1) Standard of living: select one from Poor, Frugal, Martial, Prosperous.

2) Typical Adventurers: select two Callings as being most common, and one the is most rare for the culture.

2) Develop a Cultural Blessing: this generally allows the culture to 'break' a rule, such as ignoring the effects of being Weary or Miserable during combat, rolling the Feat die twice when making a Fear test, and so on.

3) Common Skills: using the skill costs (below), spend 29 points with no skill achieving a final value higher than 3. Underline one skill as being 'favored'. Favored skills must have a value of either 2 or 3.
Skill costs: to begin with a starting value of 1, spend one point. To begin with a starting value of 2, spend 3 points. To begin with a starting value of 3, spend 6 points.

4) Weapons: develop 2 choices for the culture. The first choice follows this format: (Weapon Group) 2, specific weapon 1, specific weapon 1. The second choice follows this format: Specific Weapon (favored) 2, specific weapon 1, specific weapon 1.

4) Specialties: devise a list of six Traits, from which the player will select two.

5) Languages: list one primary language and one secondary language (if appropriate; some races do not have a secondary language).

6) Adventuring Age: list a range (in years) that characters of this culture most often turn to adventuring.

OPTIONS:
Extracting the maths from Francesco's model is easy. You could thus do the following:

- Rather than giving each race 29 Spending Points to create their starting common skills with, and then having the player spend 10 more points, you could reverse it: devise a culture that spends only 10 points on starting skills and allow the player to spend 29 points as he sees fit.
- You could expand it even more to include weapon skills. The value of weapon skills in TOR as written is 10 Spending Points. Add this into your 'free spending' pool to spend a total of 39 points. No final weapon value may begin play higher than 3. Your highest weapon skill is either a weapon group or a favored weapon. In this way, you have far greater latitude to create a character who eschews skills for combat, or who does the complete opposite. Level 1 in a weapon skill costs 2 points, level 2 costs 6 points, and level 3 costs 12 points.

Anyways, just some thoughts! I'm thinking of doing this for a Harn-based campaign, as I think TOR is a nice fit for Harn (with some changes).

I would also look at the Backgrounds for each Culture and use the existing Attribute range as min and max for any customised Background, rather than 2 to 7.

For example, Dwarves and Hobbits show that there is a lot of flavour in the Attribute spread:

Dwarves
Body - 5 to 7
Heart - 2 to 4
Wits - 4 to 6

Hobbits
Body - 2 to 4
Heart - 5 to 7
Wits - 4 to 6

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see each Culture had a priority:

Primary Attribute - 5 to 7
Secondary Attribute - 4 to 6
Tertiary Attribute - 2 to 4

Good points!