I outlined in this post that I was leaning towards to a skill points system. Im brief, I outlined the idea that you'd get a fixed number of points + Int modifier for free spend, and then your Initiative modifier for a more restricted spend. Your free spend points can go on skills, tools, vehicles, languages, weapons or spells, your restricted spend ones generally must go on weapons or spells. Your skills, tools, vehicles, weapons and spells (and I guess for completeness it should apply to languages) would have five tiers of skill, giving you a +1 to +5 bonus. Expertise for a few classes (or via feats) would let you extend that, possibly at high as +10, certainly to +7.5 (which would round to +8).
A couple of things need to be shaken down fully here. If we have the current 18 skills, and you can get 21 raises, and we say you get 3 points, + Int mod + another mod, that could be 63+30+24+120=237 points to spend on skills, but only 90 points worth. Of course a chunk will be restricted, 87 to be precise, but that still leaves 150 points, so you can easily max out all the skills if you pump your Int to 20 by level 8. Of course, that will be balanced by the push to get tools, instruments, weapons and spells up as well. There is an argument to add armour and saving throws in to the list too, but more on that below.
There is certainly an argument to re-expand some of the skills so there are more than 18. In previous editions, such as 3e, there were 35 skills. Athletics, for example, was split out into Climb, Swim and Jump as separate skills. Of course with 35x5=175 total levels, there's less need to panic about overfilling everyone with everything by 20th level as well. Overall, I am in favour of more specificity of skills like this.
We also need to consider exactly the weapon, spell and possibly armour and saving throw bonuses that will be included. My thought is to offer several options, so you could take, for example, light martial weapons, or swords, or one-handed piercing weapons. Any of those would be fine if you wanted to fight with a rapier or a short sword. Depending on which one you took, you'd get some other options along with it for other weapons. Fighters would probably get be able to get expertise, but only with a specific weapon, like rapier, or greatsword or whatever. As I said, to be worked out, but broadly something like that. Spells would let you train attack to hit with rays, cones etc. that have an attack roll, or +DC on saves for the same, and similar bonuses on spells by schools. For the attacks and spells you would only count one or the other, so if you had +3 to ball saves and +4 to evocation saves, you'd pick the +4 for when you cast Fireball, not add them together. (You could make it simpler and only have one category of course. While training in Armour seems alien - what would it do? - from a 5e perspective, there are two obvious options. Remember this is a tightly bounded system, so one option is to give you a limited bonus to your AC, so half your skill bonus giving you a max +2 to AC. Also, as mentioned in this post my vision of 6e is going to have bonus HP from your armour. Tying extra bonus HP to your armour skill would seem to make sense. I don't think both is OP, but it would need play testing, and I'd be willing to lose the small bonus to AC. If the AC bonus remains, I think we'd want to look at upcasting Mage Armour which I don't mind either.
How does this lead into level 0? In 5e we have backgrounds that give you your 2 skills and 2 other things, plus your ideals, bonds, flaws etc and, for most people, some random stuff to add to their starting equipment. In 3e, it gave you 3x your starting level skill points. I don't think either of those is quite right. What I'm proposing for 6e is you get a normal level of training, BUT it doesn't have to be in your current class. There will be three, non-specific, level 0 options, for martial, skills or magical "apprenticeships". They definitely need better names than that! You'd get your 3+Int mod+initiative skill mod, with the normal restrictions, and something like 4, 3, 2 HP from your "background". This would let a paladin pick between any of them, so they could be more or a caster-type or a fighter-type. A wizard wanting to go blade-dancer could pick a martial level 0 and have more combat bias and a few more HP and so on.
Edit: The caster level 0 option would also get some MP of course. The skills level option gets free picks, so gets that benefit.
In terms of random stuff, I think you should get tools and equipment to reflect your training here, and if you double up on that in your level 1 training you get better stuff. Say, for example, you're a fighter (or a fighter-type paladin) and you take heavy armour training at level 0 and 1. You get 2 "chits" for heavy armour, so you start in chain, or splint. If you're a paladin, or you're a fighter going the eldritch knight route, and you take caster at level 0, fighter/paladin at 1. You only have 1 "chit" for heavy armour training, so you get ring mail, possibly chain. Obviously the exact balance of this has to be fully worked out, maybe it's as simple as chain and splint, or chain and plate, but something like that will work.
For role-playing aids, I am really not a fan for the ideals, bonds and flaws. I like the idea, but not the implementation. So what I'm going to do instead is suggest something that I've shameless stolen from a game that I am ashamed to say I can't remember.
For every skill, tool etc. you learn, write a paragraph about something that happened when you were learning it. Ideally make it an accident or a silly, embarrassing story. The sort of thing your mates tease you about years later. Your best man, best woman, father-of-the-bride or similar tells an embarrassing story about your wedding, that kind of thing. It can be more tragic, a friend who died, maybe because of something you did, or trying to rescue, but it doesn't have to be. It can, with their permission, involve other party members, centrally or peripherally.
What this does is give you roughly 7-10 short stories about yourself that you can share when you meeting up with the party and give you some opportunities to create a vibrant backstory that is more than "I'm an orphan" that is oh-so-common. And because you're tying it to learning about casting ray spells or picking locks or whatever, your imagination is guided somewhat, so you get something shorter and generally easier to write. Most of us have experienced learning, and making mistakes, so we can transfer that to an alien learning experience. I never learned how to pick locks, but I learned some other practical skills, I can take one of those events and apply it to a lock-picking class easily enough.
Forget to, flaws, bonds and ideals. Write a short descriptive sentence about yourself. Put in a couple of adjectives and an action that sums you up. This idea I've stolen, kind of, from Numenera. In Numenera it's how you define your character. I'm an Agile Jack who Walks Between Worlds, each of those words has a special rules-defined meaning (actually they might not, I made that sentence up, but that form is right). In 6e, they won't have the same impact, and you won't be quite as limited, but the difference between I'm an angry, barbarian who worships totem spirits and I'm a thoughtful barbarian who devotes his life to the ancestors says a lot about you still. You don't have to be limited, as I have been there, to describing your class and subclass. I'm a haughty noble elf, touring the world to show these peasants my mighty magic is just as good, and doesn't make clear if you're a wizard, sorcerer, warlock, or even a cleric of a subset of deities, or perhaps a Conquest Paladin.
And while we're on the subject of haughty noble elves, one thing DMs and players alike should do is try to make their non-humans well, non-human. That doesn't mean make them little cookie-cutter clones. Not every dwarf is greedy, every elf is bored, every half-orc or orc is angry. But try to come up with maybe a dozen adjectives for each race, and a dozen banned ones. Elves might get whimsical, creative, musical, bored, languid, haughty and some others, and have engaged, practical, jealous, lustful and a few others on the banned list. Want to make your Elves interesting... suggest (or for NPCs roll) randomly for 3 of the typical features, duplicates make you extra strong in this feature. You should also roll 1 of the "banned" features and have that as something you feel but you're ashamed of. This can obviously be repeated for the other species. For humans, they can either make up their 3+1 or take from every list and roll. This gives you another sentence. Something like As a dwarf, I am steadfast, honest and practical, I am ashamed that I am greedy and hoard food.
For every character, I would have mementoes. This would be not quite like trinkets in 5e, more like a cross between those and some of the silly items from existing backgrounds. Given you get useful tools etc. for things you've trained in, these are all going to be low value (1sp or less) knickknacks and you can have as many as you like, to a maximum of 10. The downside? You need to have a paragraph or more about why you've got it... Think here of the person that bores you with their holiday selfies, or whose instagram channel is full of "I just had this amazing cheesecake" type of thing (when they're not a food critic or food blogger). Why are you still carrying around that holey stone? That rabbit's foot? That broken dagger blade?
Finally for role-play aids, optionally, inter-party bonds. I don't always think these are necessary, but they can be fun. Hence making them optional. In the main game I run they wouldn't have worked, and I just set up a system that did without them. However, for many games they help. Basically, every player rolls randomly to select another player, and randomly on a table to select a bond type. You can have things like "We served together and I rescued you" or "I think of you as my little brother/sister" or "I loaned you some money" or whatever. In a larger group, you might roll for links to two or more players. Everyone will have some outgoing bonds, and it's pretty likely everyone will have some incoming bonds. The players sit down and discuss their bonds, they write a paragraph each, about the bond from their point of view, the major events should match up "A rescued B from drowning during swimming lessons" say, but other details might not - A is cool about it, B hero worships A and does her little favours but always in secret.
Finally... although in my experience it's rarely used, 5e theoretically uses the flaws, ideals and bonds system to give you inspiration points. I'm going to chuck that out, and steal, again without shame, this tine from Pathfinder, the hero point system. You start each session with one. You can be awarded more, for really brilliant role-play and the like, but you always start a session with one and exactly one. Any time you like, you can replace ANY roll by spending a HP. Natural one? Hero point it away. Minimum damage against the big bad? Hero point it away. I'm often not all that keen on hero point type interventions, but one or occasionally two in a session from each player, I don't mind. They let you take a bad turn, and have a chance of still performing well, or saving your life when you really need to. I think you're going to see people hoarding them for those "oh shit, I've just died, I'd like to reroll that" moments, rather than "well I missed all my attacks this round, I'll reroll one please" moments, and that's fine. I know there are DMs who kill characters routinely. I prefer not to, and this lets you up the ante, make the game a bit more brutal, knowing there's always an escape...
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