Playing Character Creation Tips
This and the following post contains guidelines and tips for creating a character.
Orphans are frowned upon. It is a popular choice but it is unrealstic to have the majority of Playing Characters as orphans.
Try to create a normal person. The adventures that your character may partake in will be extraordinary but the characters are mortal. Don't try to impress anyone by writing a short novel about how your character is a legend that has already lived tlhrough a series of epic adventures and has a past that they can't escape from. We want to see your best writing but aren't that interested in seeing the most fantastic character that you can create. You will impress us more if you can make the life of an ordinary person interesting than you can with an epic about an extraordinary person.
Avoid the extraordinary. If you want your character to be born to influential parents, fine, but you don't have to be the son of general, leader of country, or the CEO of a major corporation. There are only so many of those very influence parents to go around. Your character could still be related to someone of influence, but it doesn't have to be at the highest social and/or status level 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 player characters' fleet. Don't try to be friends or related to any of the actual Macross characters, invent the latest VF, or find the Protocultures. We roleplay in an established universe which we want to disturb as little as possible.
Avoid cliches If you're new to this game, how will you recognize them? If your great idea for a first character is about a young, reckless, hotshot pilot, who carries a katana and rides a motorcycle, then welcome to the club. When you come up with a great new idea, think back if it reminds you of any other popular fictional character. If it does then a thousand other people have already used that idea. Try to repackage an 'old' idea in a new one. You can try using one aspect of that fictional character instead of all of them. The best advice to avoid a cliche is to be wary of your first ideas, and not to recycle characters that you've used in other roleplaying games. Sure, there will be Hikaru or Isamu types, but imagine a squadron filled with only Isamu Dysons!
Content and substance are preferred over style. Avoid writing a long, poetic story using every adjective you can think of. In a chat room based RPG, being overly descriptive in everything you type can be impressive, but it is of little use at this stage. We just want to see that you can make a fully developed character that makes sense. We want details, but we want it to be useful information. The people to impress with your overly descriptive posts are your GMs when you start playing.
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 in playing them? Make a character with a few flaws that they have to overcome, and give them goals to reach for.