Character Creation

To create your character, you must create a new thread in the “Character Profiles” Board. After you fill out your profile, an admin will approve or reject your character. If your character gets rejected, the admin will go over the problems they had with your profile and let you know how you can fix them. Most of the time, all you have to do is fix those few problems and it will be approved. However, in the rare case that your character is just completely terrible, the admin will suggest that you scrap it and start again on a new character. Don’t take too much offense to this. We do this because we care.

When creating a character, you must fill in the following information, preferably in easy-to-read designated sections. This information includes:

Full name and alias
Nationality
Age
Sex
Weight (natural and prosthetic)
Height
Skin (race)
Hair color (if dyed, please specify and include the natural hair color as well)
Eye color (must be naturally occurring. No gold, red, pupil-less, etc.)
Blood type (A+/-, B+/-, AB+/-, O+/-. Keep in mind the advantages to all)
Faction (if not one of the pre-established factions, choose “independent”)
Occupation
Residence (where your character lives. Rent = $100xAuthority)
Belongings (not every damn trinket in their house; just what you will mostly be using)
Weapons and Armor (will be deducted from money; not required; if owned, include ammunition)
Prosthetic implants (will be deducted from money and payments must be sustained)
Money (starting amount after deductions)
Languages (rules explained in description. Clearly designate your main language)
Appearance (remember: attractiveness is determined by charisma; please factor in age)
Personality (remember: charisma has a lot to do with this)
History (admins will be especially critical about these parts; think hard before writing)
Skills (see the Skills section)
Picture (optional)

History, personality, and appearance will be especially important and thus we ask that you describe these in great detail; the more specific, the better. Do not feel the need to write a damn book, though. If they drag on for too long, we enjoy reading them less, will probably become more critical, and if it’s really long, chances are we will absolutely hate your character for it.

It’s usually when you’re creating your character that you look for inspiration from other media. Look, that’s always encouraged. If there’s a good idea to be had, it’s probably already out there. But there is such a thing as copyright infringement and lack of creativity. I can not stress enough how important it is to create a unique and interesting character. The more you borrow from other characters from movies, shows, books, video games, etc. the less interesting your character becomes.

For some reason, everybody loves making clones of anime characters. Let me tell you something about us admins. We like anime as much as everybody else, but we hate it when people design their characters to be right out of some anime and all of its anime tropes. We do not want you making your characters with white or silver hair, red eyes, trench coat, and goggles or whatever. If you do, I can almost guarantee you that your character will not be approved. Please try to avoid a lot of tropes, especially anime tropes. It’s not going to fly.

Another thing: We are well aware that this setting takes place very close to Japan. It’s in Korea for crying out loud. We can foresee a lot of possible Asian characters. For the love of God, PLEASE look up authentic Asian names. If you aren’t using western names for your characters and decide to go the eastern route, a name that *sounds* Japanese doesn’t suffice. Yakuzamagi is not a fucking name. For extra brownie points, make sure you get the surnames and given names right. And if it is too hard for the rest of us to tell, please specify which one goes first. Edge is an American colony. Asians may or may not choose to order their name with their given name first.

Each member (you are only allowed one account and we can check IP addresses) can have a maximum of 2 characters at a time. Each character can operate independently of each other. They can be of different factions, be complete strangers, have a long history with one another, be related, hate each other’s guts, be mortal enemies, it doesn’t matter. Each character starts with 200 skill points and their own money; they are not shared amongst the characters. Please create your second character in the same thread as your first character.

This carries a certain responsibility with it. It’s perfectly okay if they interact with each other. It helps tell each of their stories and can actually contribute to the overall experience and plot. However, this is an RP forum. It is made so that all the members can interact with one another. It is not a bulletin board for your own personal stories. Do not use your characters to go off and deal with your own bullshit and not include or interact with the rest of the of the forum or ignore the main, immediate plot.

If we find you ignoring other members and their actions that involve you so that you can focus on your two guys dealing with each other and their secrets, the admins are free to suspend one of your characters for a little while. Use some tact and play with everyone. Not yourself. It’s creepy.

Oh, and no Mary-sues.

Languages

Languages depend on your character’s academic knowledge rating. At Horrendous, you can speak, but not read/write, a single language. At Poor, you are fluent (speak, read, and write) in a single language. At Incompetent, you are fluent in one language and can speak a second. At Competent, you are fluent in 2 languages. You are fluent in an additional language for every rating after Competent. (When role-playing, you don’t actually have to speak the language, just designate which one your character is speaking at the time, if it is something other than your main language.) You may choose any of your languages, even the ones you start with. For interactivity’s sake, we encourage at least either English or Korean.

Faction Qualifications

Factions will require you to have a minimum of certain ratings in specific skills. For example, Axis Systems requires a Competent rating in economic knowledge, obviously, because they are a corporation. Blue Gear is going to require a Competent rating in combat knowledge and a Skilled rating in weapons familiarity. These are just examples. For more details, see the faction profiles. Independent factions do not have requirements, but admins will want to see a coordination between your occupation and the skills it would require.

Some factions may also have restrictions on appearance and age. Think about it. Would a federal bureau like Section 12 hire someone with extreme body piercings and brightly dyed hair? No. Would Blue Gear hire someone who was 18 or 19? No. They want someone with legitimate combat experience.

For some reason, the internet believes that life between the ages of 25 and 80 is a myth. Adulthood is rarely ever touched because members want their characters to be young, hip, and attractive. That ain’t how life works. In fact, age has a major impact in what your character can or cannot do. Like it or not, the drinking age in Edge is 19. That doesn’t mean it is impossible for your underage character to drink alcohol, but they sure aren’t going to be served in a bar. Factions like Section 12, Axis Systems, Metro Police, and Blue Gear aren’t going to even think about hiring you if you’re a minor. In fact, if you’re 16 or under, you’re going to be in school all day while the members who had the bright idea of making adult characters are out contributing to the plot.

Faction qualifications apply to starting in that faction. Perhaps through role-playing, a faction will see the advantage to having certain characters join their side and overlook a few qualification discrepancies. Don’t expect this, however.

For more information on each faction qualifications, see the individual profiles.

NPCs

Most of the important NPCs will be handled by the admins or moderators. Usually, important NPCs will have some small profiles in the NPCs board. Leave the role-playing with important NPCs to us.

Regular members are free to make and control minor NPCs, defined as insignificant and having nothing or very little to contribute or affect the plot. These include bystanders, personal friends that aren’t really involved in the story, all that stuff. If a minor npc gets really involved and the mods like them enough, they may even be upgraded to important NPC. Now isn’t that rad?

Keep in mind, just because there’s a bunch of fancy NPCs around doesn’t mean you should focus on them and not other PCs just because it’s convenient. Now that doesn’t mean you have to limit your interaction with NPCs. Just keep it at a reasonable balance. When there aren’t a lot of PCs around, you might be doing a lot with NPCs. Most of the time, you won’t even have to worry about this.

Retconning

Over time, you may want to change something about your character’s history due to something that has happened after role-playing. Say your character has been looking for a specific vehicle, one that belongs to someone you need to find. Another PC comes along and happens to own a vehicle that is uncannily similar to how you described the vehicle in your character’s history. There are many things you can do, say like make it that that PC is the person you’re looking for, or if you really want to, retcon your history and change a detail about the car or be more specific with your description. This is just an example. Please notify an admin before you retcon anything.

Also, do not retcon major details because you’re unhappy with your history and want to make it cooler or fit how your character is behaving now. Should have thought of that earlier, stupid.

Salary

Your character begins with a set amount of money depending on your starting faction. Your character’s starting equipment (prosthetics, armor, camouflage, weapons, etc.) is bought with this starting money, so you will have less money if you have more starting equipment. Factions may start you off with equipment that you do not need to pay for. This will be detailed in their profiles, and you may even get your choice of faction-supplied equipment. This generally does not apply to independent factions. For the most part, you will be allowed to carry this equipment as if it were yours, but it is still technically owned by the faction and you can’t do shit like sell it. Sometimes, you may have to pay for replacements if you lose or damage the equipment.

You will also get a weekly salary, assuming you actually do what your faction pays you to do. If you spend a week’s worth of role-playing sitting in a bar, instead of working for your faction, chances are you are not going to be paid for that week. This is usually not an issue, since many of the requirements for getting paid are simple and will be assigned to you by the high-ranking NPCs in your faction.

As a member, you are responsible for keeping track of your own money. The other admins and I will not be your accountants. But we sure as hell will audit you if we think you’re cheating, so make sure your balance is accurate. Admins will check your balance in your character profile before they approve it, so don’t forget to subtract your initial spending from your starting money.


Purchasing

Equipment

After you start role-playing and wish to purchase items from the market list, you’ll have to notify an admin or mod or just post so in a thread that will be designated for that purpose. Please tell us which character is buying it if you have more than two. Be sure to subtract the amount you’re paying from your character’s money.

You won’t always be able to buy things exactly when you want them. If you’re character is in the middle of tracking down an enemy in a warehouse, and you realize they have enough money to buy a fancy new prosthetic arm, you can’t buy it and implant it and then continue tracking the guy down. Surgery would take hours. You’re character would have no way to place their order. Especially if you want that prosthetic custom fit to your character. That would take time to complete the measurements and get the right sized parts sent to the vendors from the factories.

Some factions, like Blue Gear and Metro Police, have an emergency set of prosthetics for each of their starting employees. That means that they already have these custom models at their base of operations. All they need to do is install them, but that process still takes hours and the character has to be in the right place and have a qualified personal install them. So keep your head with this stuff.

In Role-play

For some reason, a lot of role-players on the webbernet like to have their characters chill out in bars and drink like fiends. That’s all fine and dandy, but you still have to pay for those drinks. The bartender doesn’t go way back with everyone, you know. This same logic goes for a lot of other stuff, too. It doesn’t matter how insignificant to the plot it is, it probably costs money and not everybody can be a bastardly thief.

Role-playing

The admins are going to try and be pretty relaxed with a lot of the rules, but if we need to enforce them because it could cause a problem otherwise, we will. We don’t want to have to draw up physics equations when arguing whether a move should be allowed or not. Please try and be in keeping with real-world physics. It just makes things easier. When it comes down to it, if there are arguments over a specific move, an admin will bring down the final decision in a way that seems most fair to them. Whether you like their ruling or not, just deal with it and keep playing.

I said we were going to be relaxed, but if we start seeing stuff going on that just completely stands out as “wrong”, “preposterously unlikely”, or “just plain stupid”, we will comment on it and may even ask that you change it. We will usually have a good reason for doing so and will explain to you the problem we see with it. Try to keep your characters actions grounded and possible, and realistic in terms of likelihood. If your character has a charisma of 5 and walks into a bar, he’s probably going to strike out. And if he doesn’t, it’s not going to be with some hotty-with-a-heart-of gold. It’s most likely going to be some desperate, drunken, mediocre catch.

Please try to keep things interesting. If you work for Section 12 and are looking for the lost Axis shipment, do not make your character magically find the shipment. You’re probably looking at a lot of investigation in order to get that close, and you’re probably going to have a lot of people trying to get in your way.

Please do not try to control major NPCs or other PCs. An admin will count that as godmoding. Just do what you can with the limitations of your character.

When you are role-playing, it doesn’t matter if you use present or passed tense narrative, first or third person, or whatever. Please try and put effort into your posts. A post that’s a sentence long doesn’t let your character do much; it certainly doesn’t offer much description, and it’s pretty boring for the rest of us. Describe the thoughts going through your character’s head. Use detail to establish the surroundings. Paint us a picture of what’s happening. Create a suitable mood. Describe the action being performed so that the rest of us aren’t confused as to what’s going on. Write enough to really contribute without going overboard. A few sentences leaves a little to be desired, but writing a whole page is gonna suck. Other players probably won’t want to read it either. Especially if it doesn’t affect them.

Fatigue

You gotta eat sometime. If you go for a long time of exerting energy without properly resting, drinking, or eating, your character will become fatigued and that must be factored into your character’s abilities. They won’t be up to snuff when trying to perform actions and may even develop medical problems.

Combat

Combat works a lot like role-playing, but since it has more impact on the other characters, it has a few more restrictions than freestyle role-playing. What will happen is you will post your actions, and the other people immediately involved will post theirs. Then an admin or mod will come in and act as a judge to the move. Generally, if the players keep it going and don’t necessarily complain with each other about it, the judge won’t say much.

They will mostly just approve the actions if they think it’s fair. If they have a problem with it, they will intervene and tell you why it doesn’t work. They may say your move never happened, they may alter it slightly to something more agreeable and award the damage if any, or they may even let it slide and let you guys off with a warning. If a lot is going on, they’ll probably make their own posts declaring their rulings. If it’s just something going back and forth between two characters, they’ll probably edit themselves into the offending post.

“Offending” is a bit harsh of a word. Don’t take it or the ruling personally. Just keep in mind the reason why it was ruled the way it was and learn from it. If you truly have a problem with the judge’s call, talk to them about it. Respect their argument, and they’ll respect yours. But do not carry it for too long, because at the end of the day, they don’t have to change it. They still have the authority. If you can convince them to change their ruling, pat yourself on the back, but don’t expect them to do it again for you whenever you want.

Like when role-playing, it is important not to godmode in combat. Godmoding is a lot of things. It may be controlling other PCs, using deus ex machina to keep yourself from getting injured, pulling off unrealistic moves in order to achieve what you want, ignoring other people attacking you, claiming that perfectly qualified gunmen miss mostly (or every) shot they take at you, failing to acknowledge your injuries, grossly misinterpreting the effectiveness of your weapons, armor, and equipment, or having your character act outside their established skill set. We have quantified skills for a reason. Keeping godmoders in check is just that.

We scold godmoding because not only is it cheating, it’s unnecessary. The admins have geared this game in a way where it is really hard to die. We might not have magical revival kits, but if your character dies, they definitely went through a lot to get there.You shouldn’t have to break the rules when they’re on your side. So you might not be able to pull of that crazy awesome move you wanted, or your easy escape route might have been blocked. Big deal! Think on your feet and figure out another way to do what you need to! Deal with the ever-changing situation! Know when you take a hit! Find a way to work with what you’re given! Find a way around the obstacles presented before you! That’s what makes role-playing fun!

While we’re on the subject of death, it might be important to tell you that while you can only have 2 characters at a time, you’re allowed to create a new character when one of yours dies. You don’t need to if you don’t want to, but you’re allowed to fill the void.

Content Discretion

You might find that after role-playing a while, you and another character, PC or NPC, really hit it off in-character. You might think it would make an interesting storyline if you two became involved. We don’t object to that; it’s all cool. Just make sure that if you feel the need to post what you’re characters do when they finally get intimate to not be too graphic. We ain’t prudes here, (dick fuck titties) but it could get pretty awkward if you start writing erotic posts. Imagine what new members or search engines might pick up. Also, don’t let it drag on. Two or three appropriately-sized posts. Tops. We won’t laugh at how quick it makes you seem.

If you have two characters and you’re having the two of them hook up, just skip the sex scenes all together. It’s allowed, but it’s just lazy. No sexy posts for you.

Admin Narration

Admins control the major NPCs. That’s been well-established. Guess what else they can do? They get to provide omniscient narration in order to move things along. They’ll add to the story so that you don’t have to figure everything out. We’ll also establish the passage of time if nobody else does. And for the sake of making a payment schedule for all your shit, we’ll tell you when you need to make your prosthetic/insurance payments. We’ll generally keep it to a month.

Players can get a piece of that action, too; as long as it doesn’t significantly affect other players. You can say it starts to rain or make your action happen the next day if you aren’t in the middle of something. You can’t make a monsoon or earthquake happen out of the blue. You can’t make a riot break out. Shit like that. You’ll get some narrative say for drama’s sake, but for the most part just work with what the admins give you. If you have a problem with it, tell us. We’ll hear you out. We may or may not change it, but we’ll definitely listen.

Member Profile Requirements

Your member profile must have your character(s)' current money amount and a link to your character profile(s) in your signature. Do not make your signature, including the image, bigger than 200 x 500 pixels. You’re avatars shouldn’t be bigger than 64x64 either.