Colors of Remnant

(Updated: 09/7/2020)

(NOTE: Eventually non-student character applications will be allowed for community members and criteria will be posted for these here and elsewhere. For now, the below criteria assumes you are making a basic STUDENT application, which is what most members will start with.)

This guide is here to serve for those of you who do not have an idea of where to start while creating your character and shaping them to be fit for Roleplay in the RWBY universe. This guide is not a list of hard requirements for what your character should be like, though all of the information contained here will certainly increase your character's quality and your chances of being approved or creating a character that others will want to Roleplay with.

This guide is also intended to serve as the guidelines for Approval voting, if there is a concern with a person's profile that is addressed here, then you can assume it is a problem worth addressing.

Colors of Remnant has an approval process in place that is intended to serve several specific purposes:

1. To ensure that the core concept of a given character is realistic and suitable for the setting of our roleplay, as well as respectful to other characters and writers.

2. To ensure that our members are capable of reading, understanding, and following rules.

3. To ensure that writers are able to receive and handle constructive feedback in a collaborative writing environment in a mature and reasonable manner.

4. To ensure that our members are fluent in the English language. ESL writers are welcome, but fluency is a requirement.

5. To ensure that our writers understand what is expected of them well enough that they can make unsupervised edits to their profile in the future as they build on and develop their characters through roleplay. Approval is a one-time process per character.

Characters are a constant work in progress, so you don’t need to have every little thing figured out to be approved and we expect your character to become more fleshed-out as you play them. Your work also does not need to be professional-level fiction; we just need to be able to read it, understand it, and determine if the work meets our standard. Approval is required to begin posting on the site, and we aim to help our writers get through the process in as few passes as possible through effective communication and transparency regarding our standards. The approval criteria may be edited and changed over time as needed as is deemed necessary by the community and staff.

As part of this process we first offer feedback that is specifically intended to help you get approved. We make an effort to make this feedback as clear and concise as possible, and as objective as possible. After this primary feedback, we offer secondary feedback that is intended to help with profile presentation and appearances to better help members attract fellow writers to roleplay with.

General Criteria for a Beacon Student

These are general standards listed to assist people in figuring out what kinds of things are expected of students in-universe. You may see reference to taking specific courses, but do not be daunted by this; while classes do play a part in roleplay here, not all classes are roleplayed in-depth. This is just to help give an idea of the thematic nuances and essentials and may play a role in helping some students figure out backstory and the basics of what life is like for them in the Academy.

1. A student’s age should be between 17-21 on average on enrollment. Exceptions can be made in rare cases. While older students may be permitted in other parts of the world or in specialized classes to train as Huntsmen or Huntresses, they are not a focus at Beacon Academy.

2. A student needs to be able to generate and effectively channel aura. Huntsmen and huntresses are by definition aura specialists.

3. A student needs to either have some formal education, or be willing to take remedial educational courses as part of their first year of Beacon to get caught up to their peers. Huntsmen and huntresses travel the world, they have responsibilities beyond simply killing monsters, and they need to be smart and capable of acting without causing diplomatic incidents everywhere they go. These remedial courses will replace standard electives and ‘fun’ courses for students who need them.

4. A student needs appropriate background and training in combat theory. The easiest way to achieve this is through taking part in a specialized secondary education curriculum offered by a Combat School, such as Signal Academy. There are other ways to receive this training such as from tutors or graduate huntsman. In some cases, self-training or sheer hard work can suffice.

5. A student needs to comply with a mandatory psychiatric evaluation along with a physical. This evaluation is intended to ensure that students are mentally and emotionally capable for the rigors of a career in defending the kingdoms and other territories, as well as receiving appropriate physical care for any conditions or disabilities they may have. Students are expected to either pass their evaluations or consent to treatment and management programs as part of this, and excessive deviation from plans can be cause for dismissal from the academy.

6. A student needs to pass a rigorous combat exam. The combat exam is a controlled and managed combat encounter that ensures students are able to fight effectively solo as well as follow specific orders and instructions. This exam is not graded on a scale – it is strictly pass or fail.

Enrollment does NOT require:

1. Payment. All students that meet the criteria for enrollment that are accepted will receive basic dormitory accommodations, passes for transport through the City of Vale, and a monthly stipend. Taking an entrance exam may have a small fee at most to prevent people from wasting the Academy’s time, but this can be waived for special cases. Beacon accepts students from all social and economic classes as long as other standards are met. Having wealth may still provide some students with some benefits that are unique, such as more luxurious living arrangements.

2. Semblances. Your student can begin training without having access to their Semblance. Note that if you want your character to discover their semblance later, their semblance will still need to be approved, so please include it with your profile!

We expect your character backstory to detail your character’s motivations for attending Beacon, and also show that the character did the work, had the potential, and made the right moves to belong in Beacon Academy.

Paint Within Remnant

In general, we ask that writers exhibit caution whenever creating characters or backstory details that operate on foundations that require large-scale value judgments about the setting of Remnant as a whole. If a detail exists that is non-canon and requires a judgment that could affect a lot of writers within our community, then we will ask for that detail to be changed.

An example: It is fine for an individual character to develop proficiency with aura and learn their semblance at a pretty young age, but if in the same backstory we see the writer say or imply that this is unusual or rare in a general sense, our hands are tied as to whether or not we can allow this. Saying yes or no to whether or not this is “normal” requires us to make a large-scale judgment not just about this character, but about the world and its norms as a whole. Canon information in this specific example does not strictly define when it is normal to develop a semblance, with characters in the show learning theirs sometimes at extremely early ages and others not developing them until adulthood. Thankfully, this judgment is generally unnecessary. We can operate without declaring whether or not this is common without issue.

We like to say “Paint within Remnant, but never over Remnant”. Just because a village wasn’t referenced in the show doesn’t mean it can’t exist, for example. You can make up a village your character is from. As long as the details you’re providing do not inherently contradict canon or risk massively invalidating concepts in other people’s works or the established world, then we have no problem. If you are ever unclear about this, please ask us about it in our discord.

Things to Consider When Creating A Backstory

NOTE: This is optional information and is not 100% required for approval! However, this stuff will certainly help your chances!

The most demanding part of many profiles is often the backstory. A good backstory is necessary; we’re a writing community after all! Your backstory serves a role not only as the foundation for the future of the character you’re making, but also as a writing sample to show that you’re interested enough to be here. Below are some guidelines we can offer to help give you an idea of how you should structure your backstory:

1. The backstory must be readable. Your grammar, punctuation and spelling don’t have to be perfect, but we do hope that you make an honest effort to make your profile as easy to read as possible. This obviously includes your backstory. The easier it is to understand, the easier it will be for us to read it and give you helpful feedback. This is an English-speaking community for young adults and up, so please only apply if you are able to fluently write in English. ESL members are absolutely welcome! Recurring or constant errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling may be noted in your approval, but we also know minor issues and typos happen.

2. Events in your backstory need to proceed in chronological order (generally speaking). Some variation is acceptable for stylistic reasons, but we should have a clear idea of the order in which events occurred.

3. The backstory needs to exist free of obvious contradictions. If something genuinely doesn’t make sense in your backstory, we will usually point it out and ask for it to be fixed. It’s okay if some aspects of your backstory are uncertain, but actual plot holes usually need to be addressed.

4. An effort needs to be made to include details on relevant motivations for being a student. Becoming a Beacon student isn’t a whimsical career option, and requires training and understanding of essential combat theory, tactics, and personal wellness among other things. If your character is picking up fighting as a casual option, they should be looking into mercenary work, law enforcement, or military enlistment. Beacon trains Huntsmen and Huntresses – highly adept aura specialist fighters that are peerless not only in potential but also experience and/or training.

Noting family, important people, and/or other important events that helped make your character who they are now will help give them shape and form. It is always a good idea to make sure this information isn't insufficiently detailed.

At core, your backstory need only be a basic recounting of key events that explains why your character is the way they are now. You will be permitted to make changes later freely. Any effort you make to make it fun and nice to read is up to you, but the approval process exists to insure certain basic requirements are met, and taste is up to the reader. Your backstory is going to serve to give people an idea of what scenes will be like with your character, so keeping it neat and concise may also help you find roleplay. As long as you’re making an honest and sincere effort to make your backstory good, we will always help you with any changes you need to make as constructively as we can.

The backstory does not need to encapsulate every aspect of a person’s history. If you feel like it’s getting too complex to keep straight, too convoluted to follow, or if there are details that are best omitted for dramatic reasons or because they may be too inappropriate for the site, then by all means feel free to leave things out. Sometimes it’s better to simplify and boil things down than it is to expand. Some things may be better noted as OOC notes in your approval.

ADDENDUM: We try to make objective claims about whether something in backstory is strictly possible or impossible as little as we can, but if someone makes a claim on their character that’s unusual or that strikes us as contextually improbable in universe, we will almost certainly ask things like ‘how’ and ‘why’ in response. An example: A writer can make a claim that their character killed their first Grimm at age 7. This is obviously not the easiest thing to imagine, as if 7-year-olds were killing Grimm it’d be unclear why they were a threat. In this example we would want to know details about why this event occurred as written, and how the writer intends to justify this highly unusual thing occurring, pending them temporarily until the writer presents this to us in a way that seems believable. The more far-fetched something seems contextually from an in-universe perspective, the more likely we are to ask for more information.

This doesn’t mean you always need to take the safe options in backstory writing. While it’s easier to just nod our heads and go with things when claims are made that aren’t strange or odd enough to question, we don’t want to make people feel like they have no room to be creative. Making a creative or offbeat concept is generally more work though, and we feel a need to be transparent about that. A good story is a combination of raw creativity tempered by measured attention to detail. That said, as much as we don’t ever want to tell someone their idea is impossible, we do have to try and maintain consistency in presentation here on this site. If something seems impossible or improbable and the details don’t line up, we can’t approve it. We will always try to provide clear, constructive feedback that will give you good direction if this ever occurs.

Getting an Approved Semblance

Semblance is a fascinating and amazing part of RWBY’s setting, and it can add a lot to a character concept. It can also be difficult and overwhelming at times to come up with a Semblance concept that’s fun to use, applicable to a variety of situations, true to the spirit of the character, and not overly broad or too extreme in power. To try and make this process easier, we have some guidelines on what to do and what not to do.

About Quantifying Aura:
Everyone knows the scene in Volume 1 of RWBY where Pyrrha Nikos unlocks Jaune Arc’s aura, and comments that “he has a lot of it”. Something that must be pointed out however is that Pyrrha and no other character in the story ever make a real comparison between the quantity of aura he has and what other people have. Like this scene, there is nothing stopping you from declaring your character “has a lot of aura” because huntsmen and huntresses need a lot of aura to do what they do. But we discourage students from claiming they have more or less than the the hypothetical “normal” amount of aura because mechanically, variances in aura are going to typically be rather superficial and aura is so integral to huntsmen that everyone should always have a fair amount. It’s what lets huntsmen do most of what they do.

Aura on this site and in our combat system is not a stat you invest points in. Aura is, in fact, the points themselves. You determine where you focus your aura as a prospective huntsman or huntress. As people post and become more active their auras will naturally grow and they’ll get more points to allocate. As a result, most characters are going to have about the same amount, and their aura will grow and become greater in quantity as they train it and get better.

DOs
-Go with something that reflects something about your character, even if the relation between the character and their Semblance is abstract.

-Create a Semblance that costs something to have useful effect. The cost can be abstract in some cases and may not need to be listed as a finite percentage or exact sum of a person’s aura. It should generally take some kind of effort to use and/or control your Semblance as well. More powerful or broad Semblances should typically require more effort, focus, discipline, mental/physical energy and/or raw aura cost, so an abstract cost alone won’t do in these cases. Drawbacks can be permitted as general limiters to power use, so long as they are relevant to the scenes the Semblance will be used in. Arbitrary drawbacks are not the same thing as appropriate costs; if a drawback is easily circumvented, highly situational, or feels ‘tacked on’ for the sake of justifying extremes of power, we will most likely point this out in your approval feedback.

-Include approximations of how aura-costly a Semblance is, or how regularly it can be used. You don’t need to provide strict time limits or exact percentages as these are unreasonable to enforce, but we should have a general idea of how often your character can access their Semblance. Some things you can consider: Does the Semblance have specific situational triggers? Can it only be used every once in a while? Does it have any sort of conditional requirement? Can your character essentially use it all the time? Is it always on by default, or do they have to activate it?

-Be specific. If your character can create body doubles similar to Blake’s Semblance in the show, then you should go ahead and clarify what sorts of things the doubles can and cannot do. These are important factors to consider when approving a Semblance. The more specific you are, the better. Reference the Inverse Law of Complexity to Power if you think your Semblance might be overly broad in applications. More specific or situational Semblances are more likely to be approved. Versatility is permitted, but we need to understand all the ways the Semblance can be used. Try to spell it out as well as you can, and leave no room for misinterpretation.

-Remember that Semblance isn’t everything. Your character also has access to all the powers granted by their Aura as well as amazing weaponry and dust supplies provided by the academy gratis. The best huntsmen and huntresses use all the resources available to them, and typically avoid relying completely on their Semblance. Nobody's Semblance can or should help them in every single situation, so if you find your character falls back more often on their Semblance than anything else, it's a good idea to examine it further and scale back their reliance on it.

-Make something you find interesting. Semblances that add to the scenes they appear in are going to see far more use than Semblances designed only for sheer combat practicality. Huntsmen have a lot of tools to account for a lack of a combat-applicable Semblances as noted above. Don’t be afraid to make a Semblance that trades combat utility for the ability to create interesting RP scenes. What good is a powerful Semblance if it’s not fun to use it?

-Try to make a Semblance that’s self-contained and doesn’t require additional resources other than aura or perhaps dust to use. Semblances should not require arbitrary components, motions, or resources to use.

-Make a Semblance that grants your character utility or strengths beyond what Aura can already do by default. Aura makes huntsmen and huntresses stronger, faster, and more durable already. If a Semblance serves as a shortcut to the natural progression of a character’s strengths that are already achievable through practice and training, then it’s by definition not unique enough to be called a Semblance. Semblance is the aspect of aura that is unique, so let it make your character unique.

DON’Ts
-Don’t be vague or overly broad. The more vague your wording within your Semblance description, the more often capabilities can be inferred or assumed that may not have been intended to be allowed during approval. If Semblance limitations are not well established, the character may end up versatile or powerful to a degree that our combat system cannot successfully emulate, or the power could end up having destabilizing elements that undermine the setting itself. How do we deal with a student that can control technology when they decide to access all of Beacon’s servers and glean information they shouldn’t? How does anyone stop a person that can control air from suffocating a person and killing them in a way that aura can’t protect them against? We have to consider all of these things whenever approving Semblances, and you can make it easier for us by drawing lines around what your Semblance can do and clearly presenting these limitations to us.

–Don’t create invasive Semblances that directly control emotions, thoughts, or behaviors. If you create a Semblance that allows you to read someone’s mind or feelings, it will only be approved if it can be justified to fail for any reason at all. Other writers must, at all times, have the ability to say NO to a Semblance that affects their mind, emotions, or their behaviors without it detracting from the immersion of the scene. We are extremely wary of mind-affecting Semblances for this reason. An example of such a Semblance is Emerald’s from the show; while Semblances like hers may exist in canon, they pose far too many issues to be allowed in a collaborative writing environment like this one outside of highly controlled circumstances. As always, you CAN NOT ever control a character in any way without permission from the writer that owns the character.

-Don’t create ‘auto-success’ Semblances. Semblances should, generally speaking, give a student interesting or unusual options for approaching situations, but they should also have room for skill and development. Your character should develop more ability to control or use their Semblance in creative or powerful ways as they grow. Semblances that allow you to always succeed at a given thing you’re doing usually end up discouraged. A Semblance that always makes you completely undetectable is likely to not be approved. A Semblance that greatly decreases the chances of you being detected, however, is definitely allowed.

-Don’t create Semblances that require the sharing or spreading of bodily fluids. This is generally just kind of gross and will discourage others from interacting with your character when they use their Semblance. It’s also not thematically in-line with how Semblance is shown to behave in the show.

-Don’t create Semblances that require harm to your physical body to function, or that can cause you to die just from using it. Harm to your aura is fine; Semblance is an extension of aura and aura is the main resource that protects you anyway. Risk of self-injury isn’t generally encouraged but it’s not always forbidden either. Risk of accidental suicide from aura use is permissible, but it’s not a valid drawback that justifies power.

-Don’t create Semblances that grant you OOC information or allow you to ‘metagame’ by using information your character normally should not have access to. Metagaming and acting with information your character shouldn’t have OOC is actually grounds for disciplinary action in this community, and a Semblance that “allows” you to do these things generally isn’t going to be approved. There needs to always be consent whenever characters are making accurate inferences, even if for some reason Semblance mechanics seem like they should be able to allow it.

ADDENDUM: It is important to us that everyone understands why these guidelines are here. Some of these rules also exist to make sure that Semblances are thematically appropriate for the setting as well. Power and versatility aren’t the only things we have to consider when approving a Semblance.

Semblances operate on some consistent or at least mostly consistent rules. Rather than being generic superpowers, Semblances are deeply connected with aura. A superpower that allows you to have poisonous fangs would be a fine superpower in an X-Men RPG, but as it does not have anything to do with aura it would be a bad Semblance despite not being ‘overpowered’ or anything like that.

So these ideas exist to help us make sure that Semblances…

1. Aren’t too powerful for our combat system to allow.
2. Aren’t too broad, mostly for thematic reasons. People already have a full suite of common ‘superpowers’ via their aura, and a lot of options via dust.
3. Aren’t liable to be used to take control of other people’s characters, or otherwise break our general rules.
4. Aren’t intrinsically disruptive to the RP. If a Semblance could cause a very big mess that’d effect a lot of people in ways that it’s not feasible to obtain consent for, we can’t allow it.

Gearing Up Appropriately

Outfit descriptions don’t need to be detailed to an extreme, but if you don’t have a picture for your character then you should do your best to account for the lack of a reference with a good, detailed description.

There are acceptable breaks from reality with weaponry, outfits and gear in general that are in keeping with the spirit of the show. You can wear a skirt, or heels in battle without it detrimentally impacting your combat prowess because that’s just how the laws of the world work in Remnant. You can dress in somewhat revealing armor (within reason) whether you’re male or female, and your aura will do MOST of the work in protecting you (though armor might help when aura runs out). You can wield a weapon twice your size, generally speaking, even if it’s some kind of weapon that’s usually considered kind of impractical in the real world, like a shovel or a scythe, and probably still get work done with it because as a future huntsman or huntress you infuse your weapon with aura and in most ways wield it as an extension of yourself.

Sometimes, though, weapons can go too far. A tiny handheld pen that somehow conceals all the mechanics of a multi-platform shoulder-mounted rocket launcher is obviously a bit much for suspension of disbelief. Wielding a full blown combat mech is not only impractical for portability reasons, but it’s also overkill as that would be a disproportionately resource intensive solution to the sorts of problems low-level huntsmen/huntresses in training typically have to deal with. We need the concept to make sense in at least a general sense.

On the subject of mechs, since it’s come up frequently: they do exist in Remnant, but piloting them is not part of the huntsman curriculum. Students are expected to reach their greatest potential in a fight without the assistance of a massive powered exoskeleton of any kind. If anyone could take the entrance exam with a large armored weapons platform, why wouldn’t everyone? The answer is pretty simple; you go to a military academy to learn to do things that the military does, like operate siege weapons and heavily armored vehicles. You go to a Huntsman Academy to be a specialist with aura.

Remnant vs. Reality

Remnant is a world that is clearly inspired in some ways by our own, along with some other fantasy-related settings. That said, everything in the roleplay needs to have context WITHIN Remnant. The most common way this becomes a problem is when real life places or cultures on our Earth are referenced or mentioned, or mythological entities from real life religions are referenced.

This isn’t always a bad thing when the references aren’t direct. A person can use a foreign-sounding word for a weapon and that probably won’t be an issue. But when people start detailing that their character’s weapons have Arabic or Egyptian script on them instead of just using a name inspired by those languages, it gets murky. Where in Remnant do we find these scripts? Where in Remnant are Greek or Roman or any other real-life gods acknowledged? What does it mean for a person’s accent to be ‘German’, or for the style of their fine suit to be ‘Italian’? Germany and Italy don’t exist in Remnant, so we shouldn’t reference them in character or in our profiles.

There’s always a little wiggle room, and in these cases, it’s sometimes better to be vague about what mythological concepts or foreign/unusual scripts are being used. Direct references to real-life cultures, languages, and such need to be removed so that the character exists sensibly in the context of the world of Remnant though.

Mental Illness & “High-Risk” Characters

We permit people to create diverse characters in our RP. People are able to apply to be huntsmen or huntresses regardless of skin color, whether or not they’re faunus, or even if they have disabilities or mental illnesses in some cases. We do, however, have a responsibility to ensure that the setting of Beacon Academy is immersive, so we ask that writers convey these conditions in their profiles.

While the ways physical disabilities can be circumvented are obvious in this setting given the existence of aura, semblance, and high-tech prosthetics, dealing with mental illness requires us to be hands-on. We as a community take this very seriously.

Characters that suffer from behavioral personality disorders and other neurological conditions are not barred from participating in Colors' RP. In some cases, even criminal records can be overlooked. We are aware that real-life parallels such as military organizations and the like do not permit conditions like these, but we all also know that real-life isn’t devoid of stigma and societies aren’t always ideal. Beacon and the other academies of Remnant are a little more progressive thanks to better awareness of mental illness and better treatment options – we know this isn’t necessarily implied by canon in RWBY, but it is a decision we made specifically for our community. It’s possible for students to have mental illnesses and still be effective if not incredible huntsmen and huntresses someday.

All students that join with Beacon Academy take a mandatory psychiatric evaluation before taking their entrance exam. Students have two routes here: they can be honest about their conditions, or they can lie. Either are valid options that we permit in backstory, but we encourage everyone to think very carefully about how they go about it. Either way, students are expected to be functional, suited to teamwork, and able to put others before themselves. Students that are honest about their conditions will presumably be in recovery and on some kind of treatment plan while training as students, and their right to continue as enrolled students is contingent on sticking to these plans. We are happy to give some general ideas for what this may entail in your approval, as this may vary depending on the nature of your character’s condition.

The other option – to lie in an evaluation – is probably the better option for high-risk students.

Anything that paints your character as a clear and obvious destabilizing influence in Beacon can be wildly hurtful to everyone’s immersion if not handled with care and discretion. High-risk characters are generally defined as being likely to routinely engage in behaviors that Beacon may find unacceptable if their behavior is widely known. Characters that are violent, impulsive, or that don’t perceive value in the lives and well-beings of others are harder inherently to justify attending Beacon. We would also consider a student a high-risk character if they have conditions they choose not to acknowledge or be honest about when they should. Keep in mind though that not all mentally-ill students are necessarily high risk, and not all high risk students are necessarily mentally-ill. If your character chooses to lie in their evaluation you should say as much in their profile. Beacon’s screening processes may not be perfect, but the harder of a time your character has ‘blending in’ the more likely we are to ask for extra details or changes to your character to approve them.

If you play a high-risk student that does not consent to treatment or care, then the character needs to be able to fake it and at least appear functional well enough to not disrupt the immersion of other writers. If a character behaves in a way that should result in severe IC action such as expulsion or suspension, then staff have to work that out with the writer. That’s a situation we want to avoid if possible.

We don’t want to force people to play perfect always-lawful-good heroes without flaws. We want characters to have problems and issues they struggle with, but we have to maintain immersion in this community. We allow mentally ill and high-risk students alike as long as writers portray these matters with respect and care. These students still need to be able to go to their classes and complete their assignments and such without routinely falling apart, and poor performance can still result in expulsion, as can being too obvious about how much of a risk your character is.

If you want to RP a ‘risky’ character, by all means tell us. We will help work out what kind of IC allowances can be made for your character, if any are even necessary. Remember, if you are not a person who actually suffers from the mental illness you are choosing to portray, RESEARCH IS YOUR FRIEND! The last thing we want is for somebody to be offended by the way their own personal mental issue is portrayed by somebody else who isn't really familiar with the truth behind it. Often times mental illnesses are surrounded by various myths or misinformation, it can never hurt to do some homework before adopting these as a core part of your character's concept.