Rules:Characters
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A character is your avatar in our roleplaying world. They are people that you create in your mind (and on a character sheet) and then use to act out scenes. We have special rules that decide what kinds of characters you can make for our room, and how you should manage them.
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Most characters in Alternate Dragonball Z are people or sentient creatures (like robots) with enormous amounts of fighting power ... enough for many to consider them demigods. When used carelessly, some characters can level cities, bring down mountains, and even destroy planets. This room is strongly slanted towards fighting -- Most characters you create should be able to fight at superhuman levels. While it is possible to create a character that can not or does not fight, it can be difficult to get those characters involved in the room without a lot of help.
Aside from that, however, we accept many kinds of characters, from nearly every kind of story there is. We have sword fighters and knights, as well as robots and mechanized mobile suits. We have mutants, magicians, martial artists, and mental cases. We are generally open about the kinds of characters we allow into the room, because we have given many opportunities for different kinds of characters to get involved. Please keep in mind that certain kinds of characters are NOT acceptable, however.
Here are a few kinds of characters we don't allow most people to have:
Gods, and other all-powerful beings
While characters in our room are very powerful, they have definite limits. It would be unfair to be able to play a character who is impossibly stronger than all of them, especially right off the bat. This kind of character is only usually allowed by invitation only.
Canon/Source Characters
Canon and Source, as they refer to a character, mean that that character is a direct take from some published work, such as Dragonball Z itself. We ask our players to please at least try to be original with their character ideas. This includes characters who are supposed to be original but are related somehow to the source characters (or knew them somehow). All Dragonball Z source characters no longer exist, and nobody related to them still lives, with few exceptions. Those exceptions are already owned, or are given out by invitation only.
Prank Characters
While it's an amusing idea to make an entirely unrealistic character who embodies some kind of ridiculous joke or improbable concept, please reconsider before applying. Having characters with believeable backgrounds make things more consistent and easy to play with; conversely, having joke characters around whose only purpose is to do live out a joke and then be forgotten makes the story hard to get into, and is usually a waste of staffers' time. Keep such concepts out of character, where they can be joked about and forgotten without any loss of quality to the roleplaying world.
Experience
Characters created in our room should generally be new to the superpowered fighting world. If they have previous fighting experience, it should be low-key and below notice of most other characters. Please do not try to make your new character out to be a war hero, or a famous/infamous person, even if you are bringing the character in from another roleplaying setting where you actually played out those accomplishments. This allows us to keep our facts straight, and keep the playing field level.
Types of Characters
There are several, broad types of characters in this room: Competitive, Non-competitive, Plot, Static, and Mortal. Of these, you will generally want a Competitive character. Most characters are Competitive type. Competitive just means that your character fights at super-powered levels, and thus, in one way or another, competes with other people in the same situation. Almost all of our rules are directed at Competitive characters.
Things to Think About
When you are creating a character for AltDBZ, you are creating a whole imaginary person. A person has all kinds of depth to them aside from being a random humanoid who can fight things. They were typically born to parents, and possibly had brothers or sisters. They might have gone to school and/or college. You might consider what friends they had in the past, and if they had or have a job. Fighting things doesn't always pay for itself, after all -- especially when you're on the bottom of the food chain! Consider how your character got into fighting, and how they got into fighting they way they do.
Understand that in order for another character to meet your character, there has to be some logical way for them to not only be in the same place at the same time, but for one of them to catch the other's attention. If you design a character that is anti-social and stays away from civilization and other people, you may not be able to match the character with others very easily!
Power Type
For that matter, consider how your character fights! People who fight with martial arts are common -- they develop a special soul energy called Ki, which gives them the ability to fly, throw bombs made out of spiritual energy, and other amazing feats. As a new player to the room, it is a good idea to make your first character a Ki character, because the rules that go with a Ki-using character are the simplest and easiest to understand of all the different kinds. Other kinds of fighters include the mentally powerful Psions, the mysterious and elaborate Magicians, and Physical characters, which can be those who use their muscles more than anything, or some kind of robot.
Techniques
No matter what kind of power your character uses, they are going to want to have techniques. The word "technique" in this room describes special abilities and maneuvers above and beyond what you can normally do with just the power by itself, but beyond that, it also includes special training that makes certain aspects of your character stronger than others, as well as items, such as weapons and armor. All of these things are considered techniques, so keep it all in mind when you are applying for the character.
Application and Play
Most characters, such as Competitive ones, need to be applied for with our character application form. Once applied, they will be reviewed by the staff within the following several days, and you will get a response at the email you gave (so make sure it's a real email address!). Once the staff have approved your character, you only need to make the required changes to the character's tag (see the Competitive rules for details), attach a character sheet, and you're ready to play!
You can play characters before they are approved or even applied for, but what your character can actually do in this state is limited, and there is a limit to how long the character can be played like this before you (at least) apply for it. See the Playtesting section of the Competitive rules for details.
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