Stories takes Icesus from the old reincarnation system to a new reincarnation system.

Reincarnation process has been modified to provide more-customizable characters. Numerous other evolutionary improvements have also been incorporated:

Before, there were size differences between races alone. Now, there are also size differences within races. For example, all dwarves are no longer leveled to 125cm, but can vary in height.
This means that the re-sizing of weapons and armor will be more important.
Also, if a dwarf had to use an ax with two hands, a dwarf tall enough might be able to use it with one hand only, and vice versa.

With the new reincarnation mechanism in place, character creation now takes place according to the phasing which is described below.

Steps of character creation

Gender and race are selected first. The hometown is no longer selected with the race, but later.
Your character stats (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, charisma) are determined in this phase. What a point costs depends on your race. For example, strength comes cheap to an antaeun, whereas intelligence is expensive.
Next you pick your upbringing: where your character grew up. You choose a story from a list grouped under twelve homelands: the six kingdoms, the city-state of Cenedoiss and five peoples of the valley. A homeland that needs more experience than you have shows locked; Valkor is open to every first character. Your upbringing gives you its homeland's items, money and title, and training in attributes, skills, spells and resistances. Its points come already spent on a suggested build: impair frees a point, improve places it elsewhere and continue keeps them.
Then you pick your calling: the trade your character took up. You choose a second, different story from the same list. Your calling is where most of your starting skills and spells come from, it gives you a second title, and some callings point you toward a guild. It also gives your character a past to play from: what they wanted, what they feared, how they ended up adventuring. You are encouraged to use it for role-playing too.
Once your upbringing and calling are chosen, it's time to choose your hometown. Aside from reputation, this choice is purely cosmetic. Your options depend on the homeland your upbringing gave you. New players can't choose their hometown and all start from Vaerlon.
Your character creation is now complete. The command kinfo, which replaced the old bginfo, is open to you from the upbringing pick on, so you can look up a homeland or a story at any time.

Stories info compares what every story offers, who can take it and which guild its calling leads to. The character builder lets you try both picks before you play.

You get one roll

"You get one roll, because that's how Gygax would do it." - Dave Winters

Note that pretty much every step of reincarnation is now irreversible, and if you want to take any step again, you have to do the entire reincarnation again. You may not know right at the beginning of reincarnation how it will go and which doors will open along the way, and which will close.

This takes character generation towards a "Gary Gygax" approach: You roll the dice and you are stuck with your roll. It's not always what the player wants, but it is what the dice wants - meaning you could potentially have a character with some qualities that you just have to live with. Good, bad or ugly, your attributes are what they are, and they can an impact on how effective your character will be in the game.

If you don't qualify for the homeland or story? You don't play it. Built into the system is this ethos we recognize, play according to this ethos and it changes everything about your experience, because suddenly, things are at stake. The finality is purposeful. We blanch and grit our teeth, because of course players always want what's best for players and in this case it is high stats/skills/spells/resistances. Of course everyone wants a good character.

Our new reincarnation system follows this Gygax edict. It means there are consequences - you were born a certain way and you cope with it. Winters was clear about this - he maintained Gygax's implicit position in that have to enforce the rules for players so that the game, and the stakes of playing, feel real.

Appendix

This chapter is a shortened modification from David Goldfarb's awesome article "The dice can kill you" which you can find in full from here:

https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/14/5898063/the-dice-can-kill-you-why-first-edition-ad-d-is-king