Alrighty, so maybe I'm not the best for writing all of the rules down. Sue me. I have minions for that.

First and foremost would be the steps to making a character. These are fairly simple, but their execution is complex.

Sol's Guide to Character Creation

Step 1: Concept
What kind of character are you making? All characters fall under some sort of archetype. Most are identical to the archetype, the player having made the mistake of not doing any real work on the character. Such characters will be denied. If you stop at Step One, you don't get to play the damn game.
Concept may well be the most difficult part to execute properly. It is the early stages of character planning, and I generally find that what I start out with doesn't look like what I finish with. Each person has to figure this out for themselves, though, but I will say this: If you come up with a Ancient Zoidian, I'll shoot you. A lot. And I like shooting things.
See Appendix

Step 2: Personality
This is where most people choke. Your character should have traits, habits, little insanities that make him/her different from the faceless mass of n00bish characters. Does your character have phobias? Does your character prefer one thing over another? Does your character have a political opinion? Put it down. In the personality section, you should strike a balance between writing an explicit description so I can tell you actually put thought into it and leaving room for the character to grow without necessarily editing the bio.

Step 3: Background
If someone doesn't choke at personality, then they're real likely to screw up with the background. Not only does the background have to stay within the mythology of this site, it also has to be comprehensive. For those with small vocabularies, that means the background has to be beleivable. The character can keep it a secret, but a quick peek at your belly button will tell you that the character had to have come from somewhere. Unless it's a So tell us. I'd like to see at least three paragraphs, with the least amount of bad cliche as possible.

Step 4: Description
Hair color, eye color, and height is a good place to start. Bad place to finish. If I can't sketch out a picture that people could recognize as your character, then your description ain't good enough for this site. A list is not sufficient; paragraph form, please.

Step 5: Revision
D0 |\|07 5|-|0\/\/ 0ff uR l337 7'/p1|\|6 5|<1|_|_z!!!
You will be graded down for spelling/grammar errors, and it annoys me. You don't want to annoy me. Remove any and all unnecessary fluff. If you can say something in three words or in ten, go with three. Do not use vocabulary you do not otherwise know - cheating to use Microsoft Word's Thesaurus is blatantly obvious and quite pathetic. Go back and make sure all of the things with the personality, appearance, and background fit. Go back and see if you can think of new stuff involving one of the three and another one of the three. There is a very real and very noticeable chain of cause-and-effect with each of the three components of a character. The background, appearance, and personality are all interconnected on multiple levels. How a person acts is influenced by the way other people treat them, which is greatly determined by how they look and where they come from. How a person looks has an impact on how people treat them and thus has an effect on how their life goes.

Step 6: Stylistic Guidelines
Don't write it in first person; that's creepy and is a cheap trick for getting fluff in. Don't put it in a format other than what I have below. Don't put anything in a list. Do use proper grammar and spelling.

Step 7: Double-Check
Check to make sure your character isn't breaking any rules. Make sure you're in line with the plot of this site. Make sure you have a character that is unique . . . unless it's someone's clone. Because then I'll have to hunt you down and shoot you.

Appendix: List of the Deathwish Cliches
Stealing an anime character: This one'll get you laughed at while I'm performing physics experiments on your soon-to-be corpse. Trust me. They'll laugh. If you can't understand why doing this is a bad thing, then you don't need to be here.
Copying an anime character: See above. I can tell when you do it. This goes for names, appearances, weapons, concepts, just about everything. They can be distantly similar, but if I can spot it you're dead.
Orphan: Exactly how many people do you know who've lost both parents and had to grow up on the streets? Ya, precisely. You don't. Or if you do, you can sure as shootin' bet that they won't have the funds to engage in one of the most expensive hobbies on the planet. Unlike the above, this one can sometimes be pulled off. Sometimes. Usually not.
Child Prodigy: The laws on Zi state that nobody can even get in the cockpit of a zoid before the age of sixteen. They can use simulators, but the ones you find at the arcade aren't very much like the real thing. As a rule of thumb, don't be good at anything before finishing puberty.
And even then, you're far more likely to simply think you know everything, sport.
Rich Kid: Good luck explaining away the family fortune, sport. Don't use the 'trying to prove yourself' routine, either. I don' like it when folks come from rich families. Makes it way too easy to godmod. Nobody likes playing with the person who has everything, so don't be. Royalty, nobility, and warlords all fall under this category.
Poor Kid: Riddle me this, Batman. How does someone who can barely afford to keep themselves fed manage to pay for their initial zoids and all the trappings of zoid combat?
Correctamundo. 'E doesn't. So stick to the middle class. Karl Marx would love me. The Rich Kid and Poor Kid could sometimes work out, but I wouldn't count on it.
Muscular Physiques: I know folks like to RP to get away from reality, but that far is a bit much. I can understand with a handful of characters, but most would simply have relatively normal builds. Trust me on this one. Sometimes it's fun to play the weaker character.
That, by the way, has more than one level of meaning. Figure it out, kiddies.
More Guns than Friends: Unless the license plate on your primer-colored pickup reads "NRA 4 EVR" you're not going to need a gun. Now, a select few people would actually have firearms. Most of those firearms would be standard-issue, if you're catching my drift. The rest look at the first day of hunting season as a national holiday. Naturally, you're not going to hunt deer with an AK-47. Especially considering how the AK-47 doesn't technically exist on Zi . . .
Katanas: Boy. Drop the katana, bend over, and prepare to meet the seventeenth century. We have these things called firearms. If you'd like, we can look at a few historical models of what happens when folks with swords pick fights with folks who've got guns.
Remember the number one rule of street fighting: Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
Most swords are costly display and one-of-a-kind museum pieces. You wouldn't use one in a fight for fear of the blade getting nicked. You buy a modern-made sword, then they're still going to be inferior to my boomstick.
Martial Artists: Unless you know them yourself, don't play a character who does. Don't play a master of the martial arts unless you and the character have both spent a decade or six training in them.
Non-Humans: I'll admit I have a bit of a soft spot for non-human characters. But you'd sure as Hell better have a good explanation for how your character got that way. I'm a major connesseuir of SF and even fancy myself a writer of it.
After all, whaddya call this site?
But that, m'friends, does not work in your favor. Genetically-engineered super-soldiers, shoddily-done extraterrestrials, folks from the future, and combat androids are pretty much out from the beginning. You want to go non-human, you have to get very, very creative about it.
Supernatural: No. Just . . . no. Don't even think about being a spell-slinger. Nor a werewolf or a vampire, either. I have a fondness for bustin' out the ol' burnin' stake. So go ahead. Make my day.
Alien Species: Remember when I said I allowed non-humans? That didn't include aliens. Ancient Zoidians count as aliens, by the way. Don't try it, unless you want the government doing a 'cover-up.'

Sol's Preferred Bio Format

Rules of PCs and NPCs
1. You may have only one PC, and as many NPCs as you can keep track of.
2. PCs are your title characters; they feature in just about every RP you have. Secondary Main Character NPCs are NPCs whom you have written a bio for; they might as well be PCs. Secondary Character NPCs tend to be two-dimensional static characters; they do not have bios and take a secondary role in RP. Background Character NPCs are those bystanders not even named.
3. PCs start off with fifty thousand credits. Secondary Main Character NPCs start off with thirty thousand credits - they may pool their resources with the PCs or not, depending on how they are. Some SMC NPCs will receive fifty thousand credits (or more), depending on whether or not they are part of the PC's storyline or if they are villains. Secondary Character NPCs and Background NPCs have no affiliated rules; however, financial exchange between them and PCs or SMC NPCs will be highly limited.
4. Any and all bios, regardless of the character's status as a PC or SMC NPC, must meet the standards of this forum before entering play.