The Charter of In-Character PSO

[Forge]

I was reading a thread on the PSOBB boards, and it got me thinking. The thread was about role-playing in PSO, and I realised that I would really enjoy this.

But in order to make it viable, I need to set out some guidelines explaining game concepts 'in character'. If anyone has anything that they feel should be added, post away, and I will amend the Charter as we decide.

The Official Charter of In-Character Phantasy Star Online by Forge and the members of the Ragol.co.uk community

(1) All that is set out within this Charter is deemed to be guidelines for In-Character (from now on referred to as IC) playing of PSO. Therefore, there are no sanctions for breaking these guidelines, and are entirely optional.

(2) In order to ease team building and item trade outside of the game, characters will only go IC when they start a game. For ease, while a character is on Pioneer 2 or on Ragol / VR system, he is deemed to be IC if the team decides to follow these guidelines. Out-Of-Character information can be discussed using square parentheses ('[' and ']').

(3) A team that decides to play IC should have 'IC' in their team name. Characters that tend to play IC should also have this on their Guild Card and possibly the web address of this Charter.

(4) As PSO is a community based game, flaming is not to be encouraged. However, characters may have dislikes and likes of their own. Eg. My HUnewearl, Nei, dislikes using dagger style weapons and a distrust of scientists.

(5) IC Items. Items can be stored as streams of data, and can be materialised at will using a photon manifestation device (similar in effect to the Germ, but good-aligned). It is this system which allows teleportation as well, and since character details are stored in the Section ID of the character, this shows how players can be revived and teleported.

(6) IC Enemies. Enemies spawn depending on type. Each is explained here:
Native - are physically hidden within the surroundings.
A-Beast - I am stuck for ideas here, so I need a hand or some time to think.
Machine - teleported from storage facilities.
Dark - manifested by dark photon (D-Cells, Germ) in a similar way to items.

Also, when an enemy dies, its body degenerates horrifically quickly due to the high photon levels in the setting. Technology has prevented this happening to characters.

(7) IC Item Drops. I'm mostly stuck for ideas here.

When an enemy drops its body parts, this is because a genetic mutation has caused this part to be more resistant to photon decay.

(8) Characters. Characters should develop a short back story to flesh out their character. This should include some likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, etc.

Characters taken from other games are a major issue, but I am unsure of how to deal with them.

Underlined passages are things that I need help on.

Any suggestions/thoughts?