Brian wrote some brilliant stuff about how to retroclone Fighting Fantasy. He has since expanded this into a Part 2 which I need to re-read again, but I came up with some ideas already.
I wrote about Odd Light already, which has 1 'stat' called Skill. I figured for low Skill characters, you get to roll on a table and you get one more stat, based off what you are or your background. So a 4 Skill PC gets to be a Robot and has a ROBOT stat that they roll under to do robot-y things. I think you could roll 1d6 + 4 for Skill in Brian's FF hack, and have an Awesome Background stat that's 15 - Skill. So if you have a high Skill, you actually suck at your Awesome Background - you're the awesome soldier who has a 5 in Following Orders, or a swashbuckling rogue with a 5 in Con Artist.
But then I figured you would just roll 1d6 + 4 for Skill, and low skill people just can cast spells or are radiation ghosts or are 2-meter-tall floating skull heads. You know, just, they can do some neat things without a roll at all, because their Skill is terrible. For a 5 or 6 Skill character, if you can cast spells you still roll 2d6 to see if you fumble, Troika style, but otherwise you just pay your Stamina fee.
SKILL: Roll 1d6+4, consult the table below for your Background.
LUCK: Roll 1d6+6
STAMINA: Roll 2d6+12
BACKGROUND / SKILL MATRIX
10 SKILL: Soldier, Starbarian, Boarding Specialist, Escaped Convict, Space Paladin, Laser Sword Duelist, Semiferal Hypercat
9 SKILL: Ship's Gunner, Combat Medic, Pyromancer, Vat-Grown Hyperwarrior, Robotic Siege Soldier, Dog-bonded trooper
8 SKILL: Thief Entertainer Singer, Space Monk with mild Telekinesisperosis, Bounty Hunter, Conman Pilot Scoundrel, 2-fisted ex-cop
7 SKILL: Parkour Half Ghost, Electric Gnome Asteroid Miner, Spiderbot Scout Ambusher, Reflex-boosted Knife Juggler, Embodied Black Hole, Lava Person
6 SKILL: Angel Summoner, Space Wizardling, Rebuilt Warbot Botanist, Ultratrucker w/ Morphin' Fists, Telestrike cyborg mechanist
5 SKILL: Radiation Ghost, Psi Vampire Shadowform, Rewinder Sage, 2-meter flying stone head, Skeleton Astroneer Mystic, Nitrous-blooded race witch.
Now I just need to expand on all of these backgrounds such that the game can be easily played. Some low skill characters may have 1 or 2 UNCHANGING advanced skills, but most of them would just have a neat Special power or two.
