I'm playing Arcanum for the first time and want to create a mage. I would like some advice on reasonable starting stats. What would be the best allocation of stats at the beginning? Are any of the backgrounds a must-have for a mage? Or should I go with no background? Elves are the obvious race choice, but are there any arguments to be offered for other races making good mages? I was kind of intrigued by the Sold you Soul background and going down the Necromancy path, but I'm wondering if the blow to your reaction from others as well as the evil alignment gets in the way of taking a lot of interesting quests.

I may not be the best person to answer this because I've yet to try a mage, but I can address some of your questions. Willpower is needed to access higher level spells. Intelligence lets you maintain a larger number of durational spells at once. Constitution gives you more fatigue points, which are used to cast spells, so that's useful too. But you can also spend points directly on more fatigue points. Then of course there are stats that are useful for everyone, like Dexterity which gives you more action points during combat rounds. So there are several stats to think about.

It's worth thinking about which spell schools you want to use, and whether you actually want to get the highest level spells in them. if you don't need the absolute highest level spells, you may not need to get your Willpower maxed out during the game and you can put points in other stats. Also you can choose to start with some spells by spending points on them.

I wouldn't worry too much about being evil, there are definitely quests that are geared for evil characters and a lot of the fun of the game is getting to try out different characters and do different things with them. Choose your alignment based on what you think would be fun to roleplay.