No, I don’t see that pattern. Sage has history and arcana. Urchin has stealth and slight of hand. Folk hero has animal handling and survival. The ones that come with athletics couldn’t have skills in the same stat, since that’s the only strength skill.
Alrighty. Carry on, then.
Since I’ve got this spreadsheet I’ve been working on, I can generate a quick answer:
They’re based on the same abilities 21.42% of the time. Since with the 5 stats that are used for skills, which is very close to the 20% of the time we would expect if the stats were being chosen randomly. So it looks like it’s not an actual rule that they be based on different stats.
The general gist is that I want to play a dwarf who never saw the sky until he was an adolescent (I’m not sure what age is appropriate for dwarves), but immediately fell in love with nature. He’d always had a discomfort underground, and in crowded places, but it wasn’t until he finally took a trip to the surface that he realized that it was where he belonged. He experienced a violent storm a few hours after his first trip on the surface and was completely spellbound. The storm had awakened something in him - some sort of connection that he’d never felt before. He had to return to his home underground but grew more and more anxious and unsatisfied. He pleaded with his parents for more frequent trips, but their work and affluence very rarely allowed it.
He begged and pleaded and eventually was allowed to serve as a spotter and eventually guard for the caravan guards who delivered finished goods from his home to the nearest city. While the city, open to the sky, was more welcoming to him than his home, he was never as comfortable as he was in the woodlands and plains he’d travel through briefly during the caravan voyages. Once while in the city, he visited a temple of [a storm/weather diety] and the head priest quickly realized his interest and aptitude and connection to nature.
He decided then that he’d found his new home. Not in the city, but with the temple, and their worship of the weather and the essential forces of nature. He knew he was too young for his parents to approve of his leaving, but he was tough enough to survive on his own. The priest had told him about a small temple located well outside the outskirts of town where he’d be able to be trained. There he learned the duties of a young priest, the tenets and ways of his temple, and also trained in how to live off the land, in harmony with nature. And he learned how to defend himself, both against wild animals and monsters, and those who might prey on others far from civilization.
He began to wander - leaving the temple for days or even weeks at a time. He sought out storms and other chaotic weather, developing a keen sense for it. He relished being among the harshest weather he could find, nature at its most intense, and roamed in search of it. He mostly travelled alone, rarely visiting any cities. He’d visit new temples he’d come across in the outskirts of towns in his travels, often bringing them meat or pelts, and learning from the priests there.
When he reached the coast for the first time, he was both in awe and terrified of the ocean. He’d always had a natural unease around water - he could walk across a small river, and had even taken ferries across small lakes with unease, but the vast, unending nature of the ocean captivated him. He would spend entire days walking the shore, although he never entered the water or sailed on it. He thought that perhaps one day he might, if he could muster up the courage.
So that’s more character background than trying to match the format of stock backgrounds, but the skills I’d propose would be perception and survival. Tool proficiency in herbalism kit.
The feature would be that he’s known and welcomed among the temples of his god which lay outside of cities, as he’s visited a great many of them. He’s still recognized as a cleric of that diety amongst the bigger temples in cities, but does not gain as much favor in them due to the lack of personal connection. And that he would have a great weather sense, being able to predict storms and other weather phenomena as accurately as a person could and evaluate current weather for a long distance around him.
He starts with a holy symbol (a glyph depicting a raging storm) on his shield, a prayer book, a set of rugged leather clothes, a waterproof and hardy bedroll, and a necklace with one tooth from every sort of beast or monster he’s killed, and a belt pouch containing 10g. The rest of the equipment I’d take from the cleric equipment list.
That seems in line with the rest of them.
Just as a note: since your character involves cities and land-based caravans, that would most likely mean that you come from the main continent in the middle of the world rather than any of the outlying islands.
If everybody is feeling good about their characters, I’ll post the opening tomorrow.
I’ll post a PDF of my character sheet like Johnny Angel. Do you want me to choose the alignment and general outlook of my deity, or do you want to build the religious order?
Edit: And yeah, that’s fine if I start on the continent. I don’t know how dwarves work in your setting - if they have strong clan ties or a certain hierarchy, or if any of that is important. I assume there would be some sort of underground dwarf city for me to grow up in, but other than that I left the origin a little vague. If you want to tell me more about the specifics of your settings, I can go with that, or I can invent it.
Thoradin’s character sheet. I left the alignment blank until we have more information about the deity. Does everything else look alright?
I know perception is a really valuable skill. Is having such a high perception (+6 currently) a problem for the DM? As in, it’s hard to surprise the players or make them ask the right questions to uncover something. Clerics generally don’t have a way to get proficiency in perception. So while it makes sense for my character, I think, I don’t want to be looked at as power gaming or disrupting the mechanics of the game or GM freedom. Is that a concern? If so, I could consider reworking things.
Other than that, I just need to flesh out stuff related to dieties and alignments. Everything else should be good. I’m pretty happy with the character.
I didn’t put my prepared spells on my character sheet (except my always prepared spells) since they may change from rest to rest. I’ll begin with bless, command, cure wounds, sanctuary, detect magic.
I’ve really got to get a hold of a .pdf copy of the rules so that I can reference the book from work.
You’re right that it’s powerful, but I imagine there’s at least one other background that offers the proficiency, yeah? You could have taken one of those and ended up at the same place. If it turns out that perception isn’t a skill normally offered at all via background, then maybe we can look at you paying for the proficiency at the cost of some of your undergroundish dwarven racial abilities, since that would fit your character.
At the end of the day, and this is something to bear in mind in a general sense, I’m not going to let a high perception stop me from surprising you guys if I want to surprise you guys. It’s good to be Crom. 
On another note: one of my projects today is going to be to get a wiki page set up as a central hub for the game, where everyone can put their character sheets and keep track of gold, items, health, etc. It means a little bit of bookkeeping for each of the players, but in the long run should go a long way towards helping things run smoothly.
I’ve set up the bare bones of the wiki.
Just to keep formatting consistent (but also to help me familiarize myself with your PCs), I will do the initial population of your character pages, and then you all can add whatever you like.
edit: A link would be helpful, right?
Google Docs is helpful for keeping track of various things about the game, like what we’ve picked up, where we got it and where it’s currently located, so the players can all access the information. That part would be trickier to handle through a Wiki, but the Wiki is a particularly good place for campaign notes and Story So Far entries. Beats the hell out of a spiral-bound notebook for checking if we’ve met what’s-his-name before, or if there had been a previous mention of a ‘Dagger of Soul Train’ or what have you.
This wiki doesn’t require any kind of login to edit pages, so it’ll be open to editing and access for all players. It should serve as a good hub.
They have the rules on their site here.
It comes with the sailor background. Obviously that doesn’t fit my character’s backstory, but it’s a skill you can acquire. Druids and rangers get a crack at it, and since my background of that same general type, it makes sense.
I don’t have a problem giving up the stonecutter history trait. You could take away weapon and armor training, but I’d get them right back with the cleric class anyway. Not sure it makes sense to take away darkvision, since it’s an inherent property, and I’d be using it at night all the time anyway. Elves have it without living underground.
Incidentally, I forgot to give myself a second tool/language proficiency when I created the background, which is fine with me, but if there ends up being some sort of language associated with my religion, like if the temple operates on something other than common, it would make sense for me to know that.
Have you ever used roll20.net? It’s mostly meant for live interactive roleplaying, but it still allows you to use interactive character sheets (for instance, if you raise your dex, it’ll automatically boost your initiative bonus, dex skills, attack roll with finesse weapons, etc), upload maps and other campaign materials and everyone to be able to draw on them to show other people what their plan is, figurines you can use to show relative positions of friend and foe, etc. And it’s free, with some limitation of the amount of material you can have. It can also be used for rolling of course.
The basic rules are abridged, so not useful when I want to do things like compare your custom background to all the other existing ones. 
But if there are other backgrounds that give perception, then I’m fine with your custom background having it and there’s no reason to give anything. Go ahead and give yourself a tool proficiency that makes sense for your background, there’s no specialized priestly language.
I’ve seen roll20.net before, and I remember thinking that it’s a bit more involved than I want to really deal with, though it is a pretty slick site.
I have a friend who does the GM thing on roll20, he’d be willing to post to this thread I’m sure if you want any help setting that up. It’d be helpful to get us all using character sheets that use the same format, whiteboards to draw on, etc. But it’s up to you however you want to run the game, just offering the suggestion.
The game is up.
Did you want to just jump in and make up a story about my diety and religious order? I was hoping to hear back about how you wanted to do that, since it would affect my opening story in the game thread. Otherwise it’d be good if some of the other people who are more solid about their character and motivation got the ball rolling.
Yeah, like I said upthread: go with the broad guidelines I gave you and roll with it.
I expect that a lot of folks won’t have to post over the weekend, so I’m not in any rush for the time being.
Looks like they got hit with a Cease & Desist. Not surprising, since it contained full text of the spells.
I plan on posting tomorrow to give Hamster King a chance to post and to let you guys continue to chat. After that, I will hopefully be able to start and maintain a S/T/R posting schedule.