This is a mod I've been wanting to kind of incorporate for a while now. The goal here is to bring a little more customization to your character right out of the gate. The idea from this comes from the fallout series, where you can select a number of traits during creation that will give you a small boost to a skill, and will also have some sort of drawback associated with it. I'm gonna post the list of traits I've come up with so far, while I'm working on the scripting for this to happen during chargen. If you have any ideas of what to add to this, feel free to post them. If I like them, they can easily be included into this. I will also likely be adding more as I go, this is just what I've come up with so far.

Bruiser:

You're larger and more durable than others, but because of this you're also slower and less agile.

+10 points to endurance

+10 points to strength

-10 points to agility

-10 points to speed

Intellectual:

You spend a lot of time wrapped up in arcane tomes. You're quite adept in the magical arts, but your combat skills have suffered because of it.

+10 points to intelligence

+5 to all magic skills

-10 points to strength

-5 to all combat skills

Sneaky:

You're much stealthier than others, at the sacrifice of strength and combat training.

+10 points to agility

+5 to all stealth skills

-10 strength

-5 to all combat skills

Oafish:

You're strong as an ox, and dumb as one too. You're stronger and more durable than most, but also a little bit slow at learning new things.

+10 points to endurance

+10 points to strength

-10 points to intelligence

-10 points to willpower

Ponderous:

You spend a lot of time in your head pondering new techniques. You're very adept in the magical arts because of this, but it also causes you to be more clumsy.

+10 points to intelligence

+5 to all magic skills

-10 points to agility

-5 points to stealth skills

Small Framed:

You're small frame makes you quicker and more agile than most, however you're also not as strong, or durable as others.

+10 points to agility

+10 points to speed

-10 points to endurance

-10 points to strength

The Strong, Silent Type:

You're exactly that. You're very adept in the combat skills, but talking and sneaking isn't your thing.

+10 points to Strength

+5 to all combat skills

-10 points to personality

-5 to all stealth skills

Interesting idea.

Some change suggestions though:

-Oafish: Why willpower reduction? Such annoying, dumb people tend to be stubborn too...

-The Strong, Silent Type: Silent. So why penalty to stealth? To Mercantile and Speechcraft for sure. The "strong" in it is more metaphoric than concrete. IMO.

-Intellectual: Intellectuals might be good traders and/or speakers too. Also, while unarmored is a magic skill, it is there mostly for convenience's sake, not because it is truly magical skill...

Also other trait ideas, you might explore other things than just attribute/skill modifiers. Arguably Birthsigns are TES equivalent of traits though they're not optional unlike Fallout traits.. so there is a place for them too.

-Unlucky: Luck penalty, skills/attribute bonus

-Hotblooded: Fire resist, weakness to something?

-Skilled (directly from Fallout): Attribute penalties, skill bonuses

-Gifted (as per above): Skill penalties, attribute bonuses (this and the above one do affect max level of the character, this one much more since jail can be used to get around skill's limiting max level)

I think traits should be interesting, not just simple trade-offs, but interesting trade-offs. Something that change how one plays due to the penalties (where as Birthsigns add mostly flavor and extra abilities/bonuses). I admit my suggestions above are not particularly interesting... but are more in line what you're thinking.

A couple of a bit different trade-off traits:

-Weapon savant: Can use one weapon type well but is hopeless with others (are negative skills (ie catching up takes more time) possible?). Net penalty

-Magic school savant: Same as above but for magic. Net penalty

Yes, as I'm looking at things more, I think the easiest way to do this, and also the way that makes the most sense is to have different categories. You can select one from each category, that way it avoids having conflicting traits.

What do you mean, category? I didn't specify skills as i didn't bother thinking about the exact amounts and skills, didn't mean to imply people would just choose freely.

If you mean "choose one negative, one positive", then it will be merely abused in order to get boost somewhere, and it won't be very fun or interesting, i think.

Limits are fun, forcing one to work around them.

Just my thoughts about this, your mod of course.

Also, conflicting traits? Do you plan to allow people to pick, one or two or more? It would be simplest to allow people to choose only one trait, or if two (at most, any more and conflicts will ensue very likely) while avoiding traits that are opposite to each other (which is why the Skilled/Gifted traits i suggested are not very good as they're. Now that i think of this, IIRC Fallout Skilled wasn't opposite of Gifted, and Gifted was game-breakingly good).

Neat idea.
I was going to do something very similar to this when I learned the scripting for the Definitive Birthsign patch. (but I never even started the mod)

Is this going to be done through dialog with Socucius? Or something new in the Office?
Since we can't create new windows from scratch....