I love that article for random background generation! Another one that is fun, but not as in depth (good for quick character building) is "Where do I come from?" in Dragon 383, p. 79.
The article I was talking about though, was Unearthed Arcana: Personality Traits in Dragon 427, p.31. They went with the flaws and merits route from 3.5, but instead of making it part of the feat system, it is an additional element to your character generation and once per session, if you express something or do something that reflects who your character is through these flaws and merits, you can get an action point.
With working with the DM, you can certainly do a hybrid of these and use the random background generation to establish your flaws and merits (figuring out your bonds will establish themselves through the background generation) to do something like what they did in 5E, assuming the DM likes to play with action points and hand them out more. That is something I do with my players, but I also work with the expanded combat rules from Unearthed Arcana: Combat Options in Dragon 425, p. 36 so they have more things to do with action points then just get an extra standard action.
