Dream Quest of the Unknown RPG

[aramis erak]

Teenagers from Outer Space had player-designed traits in 1987. I can't remember the dice mechanics, but character creation could be done as per the OP.

TFOS is a 1d6 variant of Interlock (CP, Mekton); Star Riders is the collegiate age sequel to TFOS, using the same variant. There may be another Interlock game or two I don't remember, and a few of the Fuzion titles hewed pretty close to Interlock (tho' most were back door licenses to HSR 4, and aimed at bypassing the negative image of Hero System).

 

[aramis erak]

So basically, I dreamed up a game similar to a bunch of other games I've never actually read, much less played.

It's quite likely you encountered some discussion of one or more of them.
Less likely, but still plausible, is that you came up with the core concept the same way that Mike Pondsmith did... by thinking outside the box. I don't know if Robin Laws was familiar with CF.

Steffan O'Sullivan also had a similar option for FUDGE back before it was published commercially by Grey Ghost. I don't recall if it hits GGP's edition. (and am too lazy to check the storage for my dead tree). He's mentioned the open paragraph mode on RPGG a couple times.
Oh, and fudge uses 6-sided dice... with one of several rolling methods
4df (+, +, =, =, - -), essentially read numerically as (+1, +1, +0, +0, -1, -1) (-4 to +4, bell-curved.)
2d6-7 (-5 to +5 bilinear) or 1d6-1d6 (same -5 to +5 bilinear)
2 good and 2 bad dice, keeping the lowest, 6's read as 0, and matches of good to bad die are discarded. (convoluted, bell curved, strongly zero centric)

Note also: Fate uses fudge as a baseline, but adds aspects from IIRC Polaris. Fudge was online in the early 90's, including posted as a .ps file on alt.rec.frp.misc ... this was before PDF had caught on at all, and it was a proprietary format, so page-layout docs circulated in TeX and in .ps formats for windows and mac.

 

[Autumnal]

Yes, Robin was well aware of Castle Falkenstein.

 

[Faolyn]

It's quite likely you encountered some discussion of one or more of them.
Less likely, but still plausible, is that you came up with the core concept the same way that Mike Pondsmith did... by thinking outside the box. I don't know if Robin Laws was familiar with CF.

Steffan O'Sullivan also had a similar option for FUDGE back before it was published commercially by Grey Ghost. I don't recall if it hits GGP's edition. (and am too lazy to check the storage for my dead tree). He's mentioned the open paragraph mode on RPGG a couple times.
Oh, and fudge uses 6-sided dice... with one of several rolling methods
4df (+, +, =, =, - -), essentially read numerically as (+1, +1, +0, +0, -1, -1) (-4 to +4, bell-curved.)
2d6-7 (-5 to +5 bilinear) or 1d6-1d6 (same -5 to +5 bilinear)
2 good and 2 bad dice, keeping the lowest, 6's read as 0, and matches of good to bad die are discarded. (convoluted, bell curved, strongly zero centric)

Note also: Fate uses fudge as a baseline, but adds aspects from IIRC Polaris. Fudge was online in the early 90's, including posted as a .ps file on alt.rec.frp.misc ... this was before PDF had caught on at all, and it was a proprietary format, so page-layout docs circulated in TeX and in .ps formats for windows and mac.

One of my friends did say it was similar to FUDGE. I quite like Fate but it's been forever since I read the original FUDGE. It could be that my brain called a memory of it up.