I'm not sure I understood everything you said, but I agree with you completely, especially the bit about emphasizing role-playing.

I've been thinking a bit about how to make characters more interesting, and before even diving into the core skill/abilities part of the framework, I'm going to throw out an idea for helping to develop non-essential, but interesting attributes of characters. The idea is that we'll have a really big list of attributes, some good, some bad, lots neutral. Attributes could range from physical things to personality quirks to the kind of trivial skills that aren't worth building up a whole system of levels and difficulty, but can make the game more interesting.

Some examples might be:

1. Good liar
   
2. Bad liar
   
3. Stunning eyes/hair/etc (you choose)
   
4. Crooked or wierd nose/teeth/chin/etc (you choose)
   
5. From another country people here generally like (may have a cute accent)
   
6. From another country people generally don't like
   
7. Light sleeper
   
8. Loud snorer
   
9. Snappy dresser
   
10. Poor fashion sense
    
11. Good singer/dancer/whistler (you choose)
    
12. You think you can sing/dance (you choose) well, but you can't
    
13. Lucky (totally random things tend to go your way; up to the GM when)
    
14. Unlucky (at games of chance, etc)
    
15. Good cook
    
16. Awful cook
    
17. You look just like someone famous
    
18. Nearsighted (try again if campaign set before glasses were invented!)
    
19. Farsighted (ditto)
    
20. Short
    
21. Tall
    
22. etc...
    

In terms of assigning these, I'm thinking of a pick-one/roll-one rule: You get to pick one to three from the list, then get the same number at random.