Step by Step Joining

First thing's first: Register an account with the MRC Boards.Already an Active Member working on a second or new character visit Advanced Character Generation for Graduated Players

Important Notice

Effective 10/13/03 there will be a limit of Six(6) New Players a month. This is due to the current availability of game masters and player openings. This is first come, first serve. Creating a new character takes several steps. At any time you may be told that you don't meet the minimum requirements and will not be allowed to continue. It is advised that you try improving your chances at a later date through practice and study. Cheating your way in before you are ready may get you in, but eventually someone will notice that your not ready. If cheating is discovered or suspected you may be asked to leave. We invest a lot time bringing new players into the game and we want to make sure that you succeed. We are not going to send anyone through that we have doubts about.

After the six are chosen, no other character will be worked on. If there were other character on the board at the same time and they were good as well, the players will be invited to try again next month. These players do not have to redo what they have typed, they just have to post that they are still interested at the start of the next month.

The only exemptions to this number are new players that come highly recommended by an outstanding existing player or GM. Note that current players who are currently playing in an active Unit may keep making new characters as long as their current GM approves and the new GM is willing to take them in advance.

Process Key

• Character Basic Information Sheet
• Creation Notes
• Special Considerations
• background and location details

New Member Process

1. Post a new topic on the Joining Board expressing your interest to join as a player. Provide the following information: name, e-mail and a brief (paragraph in length) character proposal. This is for us to see a brief sample of your work, get a taste of your ablilties and your base knowledge. A member of the JB will then come and look at it. Making the perfect proposal isn't required. The JB may tell you that the proposal doesn't work at all, but if your creative writing ablities and base knowledge are still good it may not even matter if your character proposal is a bit off. Provided that there are no major issues the JB will tell you to go to #2.
2. Now is the time start making your character by copying & pasting the Character Basic Information Sheet on to your thread, and then filling it out.
3. Once the JB staff member thinks your first draft can fit in with the game the [[[MRC Staff|Staff Member]] will give you numbers to assign to your character's attributes. During this step you will keep expanding or fine-tunning the basic character sheet as needed.
4. After the JB staff member who was handling your character is satisfied they will mark it as "Ready For Approval" (never do this yourself). The most senior present member of the JB (typically the Director of it) will then give it a final review. They may approve it right away or will ask for some changes (and in some cases a complete rewrite).
5. Once your character is Approved you will be told to email the completed sheet to someone (Usually the Director of the Beginhill). At this point you go on to basic training. Even if you have played using the same game system before you must still go through training so you understand how we do things.

At this point you can add the Character to your Profile, using the name and information from your new character sheet.

Current Player Process

1. If you're making another character you must make sure you have passed the 'hill and have played in an active Squadron for about 3 months. Ideally there should be 3 months between the creation of each new character (characters for alliance campaigns don't have to follow this guideline). If you meet this basic requirement go to step #2.
2. Talk to your current GM. Tell them that you your interested in taking on another character. They will tell you yes or no. If they tell you no it's because you may be struggling with the character(s) that you already have. If they say yes go to step #3.
3. Contact the GM of the unit that you wish to join. They will tell you if they have room, if they will take you and what they are looking for. After this make the complete character. The GM that has accepted you will assist in creating the character.

Suggestions

• Print out a copy of your final character sheet, just in case your computer crashes, and Lanji is an idiot and forgets to backup the database.
• Don't always trust your GM's computer to remember everything!!! Statisticly, computers belonging to GM's have a tendency to crash more often than those of players.

Special Considerations

Orphans

The MRC does not accept characters who are orphans. The number of orphaned-character proposals that we have received in the past shows a very unrealistic number of them across the known UNS Territory; and somehow, they all want to join Spacy. if you create a character who is an orphan you will be asked to change the character background details.

Character Background

When generating your character's background please remember to provide at bare minimum 2 to 3 paragraphs. Remember that this is where you can truly bring your character to life and be more than just a set of numbers and skills. You have everything from birth to the present (in game) to describe (which is usually 21 years or more). The best character sheets can be a dozen paragraphs long, and more, however we don't ask that much from you.
Please take a look at the Creation Notes section for some tips/suggestions on what to put in your background.

Joining Board Staff

Please remember that the Joining Board Staff, and Senior GM's all have real world commitments and on the rare occasion you may have to wait a while before you receive a response from a staff member, don't panic as we will get round to you. Its just that we all have lives away from the MRC as well

Creation Notes

First Characters

When making your first character for the MRC try to make a ‘normal’ person who will just happen to be going on extraordinary adventures once you start playing them. Don’t try to impress anyone by writing a short novel about how your character is a legend that has already lived through a series of epic adventures and has a past that they can’t escape from. The JB wants to see your best writing but aren’t that interested in seeing the most fantastic character that you have ever created. Most characters in Macross are ordinary people who are in extraordinary situations. You will impress us more if you can make a ‘ordinary’ person who lived a ‘ordinary’ life than you can with an epic about a ‘extraordinary’ person.

Additional Characters

When you start making additional characters you will find that you have more freedom to increase the ‘epic’ part of your character. This would be the time to finally present the most fantastic character that you have ever created. It is assumed by this point that you have been playing with the MRC long enough to get a good idea of what type of character would fit in and you would know to adjust your new character idea accordingly. It is also at this point when your Game Masters (should) know if you can truly handle such a character or not. The more extraordinary the character the more we want to make sure you can role-play the character properly.

New Characters in General

Content and substance are preferred over style. Avoid writing a long poetic story using every adjective you can think of. In chat room based RPGs being overly descriptive in everything you type can be impressive but it is of little use on JB. We just want to see that you can make a fully developed character that makes sense. We want details and good length of written material but we want it to be useful information. The people to impress with your overly descriptive posts are your trainers or GMs.

Interesting vs Extraordinary Characters

To return to the subject of "extraordinary" characters...
In general we want you to make the very interesting ordinary people and avoid the extraordinary. For example if you want your character to be born to influential parents, fine, but you don’t have to be the son of General, a Leader of country or the CEO of Microsoft. There are only so many of those very influence parents to go around. You character could still be related to someone with influence but it doesn't have to be at the highest levels possible. You can imagine how odd it would be if there are a couple dozen characters whose parents have more influence then the current Commander of the playing group's fleet.

Macross Characters

Don’t try to be friends or related to any actual Macross characters, invent the newest VF or find the Protocultures. Such is not our place. We role-play in an established universe which we are to disturb as little as possible.

Clichés

Avoid them.
If your new to the game how do you recognize them? If your great idea for your first character is about a young reckless hotshot pilot who carries a katana and rides a motorcycle... then welcome to the club.
Quoted from Jet Jocky: "My first character that I created for a related RPG 15 years ago was exactly that. A decade and a half later I'm still finding that it is an idea that most of us think of for our first Macross-related character."
When you think you've got a brand new idea, think back... If it reminds you of any another popular fictional character, then a thousand other people have already used that idea. Try to repackage an 'old' idea into a new one. Just use one aspect of that fictional character instead of all of them. Best advice to avoid a cliché is to be wary of your first idea and not to recycle characters you used in other roleplays.

Other Tips

Don’t be afraid to be someone other than yourself. If pizza is your favorite food make it your character's least favorite. Make each character of yours a different person.

Make a character that would be interesting for you to play; not someone that you wished you could be.

Nobody is perfect. If your character is perfect to begin with, then what is the point playing them? Make a character with a few flaws that they have to over come.

When in doubt, Consult with a GM. The JB is looking at how characters fit into the overall MRC Universe. Individual GMs may actually want some things that are different. If your making an additional character, consult a GM for what they are looking for ahead of time. They can give you valuable feedback.

SPECIAL SUBJECTS

Places of Birth and Hometowns

Even though some cities were rebuilt, they may not be the same city. Many times they are completely different places with a new name or they are the fictional ideal of what the old city was. If you want your character to be from a famous old world city, it is suggested that this city is actually a new colony named and inspired after it.

If you’re really interested in being from Earth and what to know what are the names of some of the actual new cities that were established after the war here they are. By the current date, all of these cities have to have a population at least reaching 100,000 to 1,000,000 (or greater). These cities are likely also to have surrounding suburbs and farmland in case you want to be from a smaller place.

Bjorn City
Located in the Danube Area.

Gante City
This city of humans and Zentradi struggled early after the SW1.

Highlander City
Located a few hours from Macross City (by air). This city was a thriving pretty well just after the SW1 and attrached a lot of show business types.

Lonesco City
A city best known for being the city that Kamjin took Minmay hostage.

Macross City
Located in old Alaska near the Grand Cannon I site. By far the largest and strongest city in the U.N.. Macros city is home to the Macross, U.N. Government and Military HQ.

Onogi City
A major industrial city (Reaction Engines) located not far from Macross City. Onogi is on a coast and is possibly located east of Macross City.

South Coast City
City most likely located on a southern coast line. In 2012 the City had become self-sufficient enough to leave direct U.N. control and be self-govern.

Trad City
Trad City is located in old America and has high Zentradi presence (50% population is Zentradi.)

Clones

Cloning was used to help rebuild the population. Nearly every young adult character is an (natural) off spring of one or more both clone parents.

"The Clone Table"
The majority of characters 21 and older are clones. This means that the majority of characters under 21 are the natural born off spring of a clone.

If you’re 1 to 20:

• 01-95% Natural Born Clone; One of both your parents were clones. They could have of even been 2 years old when they had you .
• 96-98% Natural Born Human to Natural born parents.
• 99-100% Natural Born Mixed; One of both your parents were Meltran/Zentran.

If you’re 21 to 39:

• 01-83% Clone; grown to the age of young adulthood. This character is technically younger.
• 84-95% Natural Born Clone; One of both your parents were clones. They could have of even been 2 years old when they had you .
• 96-98% Natural Born Human to Natural born parents.
• 99-100% Natural Born Mixed; One of both your parents were Meltran/Zentran.

If you’re 40 to 55:

• 01-99% Clone; grown to the age of young adulthood. This character is technically younger.
• 100% Natural Born Human; was considered a child during the SW1. This character was on the Macross.

If you’re 56 and up:

• 01-90% Natural Born Human; considered at least a young adult during the SW1. This character was not on the Macross.
• 91-100% Natural Born Human; considered at least a young adult during the SW1. This character was on the Macross.

Don’t to be a clone or have clone parents?
First how old is the character’s parents? Lets say you’re character is 25 so say they are about 50. This character’s parent would have been a child during the SW1 (40 years ago). What location did people survive the destruction that would be the most likely place to have children? Macross City. There were 40,000 civilians on the Macross that survived. Let us say 10,000 were children and how many people are alive currently? At least 13 million. The odds that your character’s parents were one those 10,000 is very slim.

Being a Clone
(Don't quote this as actual Macross canon)
A clone created for the purpose of re-populating the planet would be created quite similar to the Zentradi. The clone is made as young adult (just past puberty). They are sort of like someone with amnesia. They know how to read & write, use silverware etc, but have no memories. Imagine having knowledge of how to ride a bike but no memory about the day that you learned to ride it yourself. The Clone also knows that they were ‘built’. To them they simply exist and see themselves as an individual. While the clone is born with enough knowledge to function they haven’t been socialized to function in a specific society. A new Zentradi would be new low ranking soldier. They would learn how to act like a Zentradi by being around other experienced Zentradi. It would be the same for clones that the U.N. makes. The clone would go to the equivalent of remedial high school/basic life skills boarding school. There they would study and practice human culture. After a few years the clone is ready for society. There is most likely a job waiting for them on the next colonial mission. They go to work, get married and start a family like everyone else. The clone could still have some difficulties, especially in their early years but they should do better then a Zentradi. A Zentradi already has been socialized in military culture and humans are to re-socialize them. The U.N. clone is a blank canvass and should be easier to socialize. A well adjusted clone is almost like a well adjusted human. They just didn’t have parents or an early childhood. The natural born children of clones would be like normal natural born person of natural born parents. They just don’t have any grandparents.