Hi there! I'm new to this forum and to RPing in general but one thing I have always liked is writing stories.  Now as said before I have never really made an RP so I had some trouble changing a story from story format to RP form.  Really Id just like some feedback on the story, what you liked about it, what should change, should I add more detail? Maybe even have less detail.  The main problem I had was trying to give the RPs enough leeway without going overboard, so any questions, comments or concerns would be very helpful.  This is meant as a Forum RP even though I would like to eventually work on a die system for future games.

(Here is the background story I have so far)
Billions of years ago there was a planet complete enveloped in water. Every living thing on that planet was so closely tied to it that they possessed elemental powers that allowed them to channel, control and sometimes even create water. Their bodies also tended to act like water, in that they had very fluid, graceful and flexible actions. Some could bend into seemingly impossible positions. In these days, magic and science were one in the same, such that traveling to alternet realities was possible. On such journeys, the water folk discovered many new worlds; each governed and shaped in similar ways as the water planet, only with elements such as fire, rock, wind, darkness, and light. However, these jumps from planet to planet proved to be very dangerous, draining the traveler of energy. Also adjusting to new environments took time, and it was unwise to stay in an uncharted land in such a weak condition. As a result of this dilemma, several powerful individuals—known as Magi—from the various elemental planets came together and decided to create a planet with components of all seven elements; a kind of in between resting place for travelers. The christened it the Breaker Zone. Not only was this an important spot for travelers, but the planet as a whole possessed incomparable power. Nothing thus far had an equal amount of elemental power and resources as the Breaker Zone. Many wanted it, and one particular individual from the water planet desired it so much, that he cast a spell, drawing it closer and closer to his own planet so that he may absorb its power and rule over every planet. Unfortunately for him, he proved to be too weak to control that kind of power, and eventually as the Breaker Zone drew nearer, the energy he absorbed destroyed him, his evil ambitions disintegrated.
Yet the Breaker Zone remained close to the water planet. The oceans were polluted by the influence of other elements, large bodies of water began to evaporate, and as a result continents began to erupt everywhere. The spirit of the water planet was dying. In order to prevent similar catastrophes from occurring, once again a number of powerful Magi met and decided it was best that the Breaker Zone be sealed off forever. Generation after generation, the Breaker Zone became a myth, nearly forgotten. On the water planet, all evidence that there had ever been something called the Breaker Zone was gone. It was as if it had never been. The water planet, now with large growing continents and other chunks of land floating miscellaneously, was given a new name by its inhabitants: Earth.

The story begins with a man named Benjamin Rex. He grew up on planet Earth but when he uncovered link to the forgotten Breaker Zone, he became a planet traveller. Being the first Earthling to travel to the other worlds since the evil Magi tried to control the power of the Breaker Zone, he set the example for people to come. Save for a few individuals, Earth itself still remains ignorant of the presence of the Breaker Zone and the other elemental planets. With Benjamin's discovery, the other planets shed their Billion year old fears, and people began to travel again.
There are countless lands that are uncharted and dangerous. There are millions of individuals with unimaginable power, waiting to be discovered. As a traveller it is your job to make these discoveries. Uncover, meet and learn of what has been hidden away for much too long.

Along with this over laying story I have some details on the planets

Water: aka Earth.  The majority of Earth has lost its water elemental powers but when any human travels to the Breaker Zone the element in their DNA is unlocked allowing then to tap into their elemental powers once again. Keep in mind that hardly anyone on Earth knows about the other planets and will more then likely find it by accident.

Fire: A planet consumed by volcanoes and rivers of bubbling magma. Ridiculously hot climates devoid of almost any form of plant life. Its two polar Ice cap's are giant lakes. The people on this planet come in a variety of skin colors, primarily the colors of fire—red, yellow, green, blue, and white. The hair on these people are even more diverse, ranging from normal carbon based threads, like humans, to raging manes of fire and smoke. The aggressive opposing governments in the land are constantly at a high political tension with each other, and war could break out at almost any moment. Disputes over land and power have always divided this world. The powers possessed by the fire people enable them to manipulate, control and even create heat or fire.

Wind: A planet with the most mysterious land formations of all the planets—the famous floating islands in the sky. The incredibly strong wind currents that snake all around the planet's atmosphere keep these formations afloat. To an inexperienced person, these winds can prove deadly. The people there have learned to ride these currents as easily as a human might drive a car. The wind people are known for their tall and lanky build. Their skin ranges in all shades of blue, and their hair white. This planet lacks strong centralized governments, and as a result, bandits and thieves are common, commonly known as wind pirates. Yet what this place lacks in government, it makes up for in powerful Magi that help fight off these wind pirates. Powers of the wind people include controlling, creating and directing wind currents. They can create shields of air, and forces powerful enough to knock opponents to the ground. The most powerful Wind Magi can even summon storms.

Rock: A dry world with many expanses of desert and mountain ranges. The natives of this planet are set in their ancient traditions save a few rolling stone's if you will. These are a people of strong beliefs and strong bodies. Normally their skin is a tone of some kind of rock ranging from sandstone to obsidian, their skin takes on a rocky texture that makes it impossible to scar instead they seem to grow cracks in their hides not that harming them is easy. Additionally there are the diamonds these are known as the flawless in their tribe and are quite the opposite of the normally rocky composure in that they have exceptional beauty and are seen as gifts from the heavens. There is no main government in that they are primarily nomadic tribes. Magi in this race can pull rock out of the ground of make tons of sand crash down on a person. With enough focus they can make monsters out of any earthly element using it as a golem to fight along side them.

Darkness: A bleak, desolate world whose life forms are amoeba like and sentient beings of shadow. Because they are inherently formless their cities are basically pools of shadow and only take form when they want to or when they leave their towns. They have the ability to link up with other species for protection from sunlight while on other worlds, not to say sunlight kills them, they just find it very unconformable. There are no true Magi of this race, however they have the natural ability to sink into any shadow and pop up into another shadow as long as its connected and true masters of their body can split themselves into duplicates as well as take on a human from in such detail as making a perfect human body with cloths attached (along with this they can make their body parts into weapons).

Light: This planet is known as the Bureaucracy planet because it watches over the other worlds.  They are in possesion of one of the last working connections to the Breaker Zone which is constantly being watched by some of the most powerful guards in existence.  Not much is knows about the activities on the actual planet other then that they have powers beyond comprehension and weapons made from the oldest of Magi. Their bodies seem to emanate a light glow that varies depending on their emotions. Magi from this planet can blind people or bend light in a way to make themselves invisible. After becoming more powerful that can project this light like a laser from ether their finger tips or palms

Breaker Zone: A tropical rain forest with volcanoes, powerful storms that you can set your clock by and, Crystals that jut out of the ground. The sun is a brilliant white that contrasts the pitch black moon that seems the loom over head making the nights deadly and dangerous even though there is no natural life on the Breaker Zone. Several billion years have passed since the great cataclysm, when the Magi was destroyed.  Howevere three of his students where sucked onto the breaker zone. For the safety of existence their minds were erased and they where placed inside crystals to contain their power that has now become one with the Breaker Zone, in theory if they where awakened, when they went to a new planet they would become like the inhabitants on that planet eventually absorbing enough of the element to where they could permanently use the elements whenever they pleased.

If you have anything to ask me feel to email me.

Hi, and welcome to the Forge!

Now, if I understand this right, you basically have a setting, and want to enable others to play in this setting with a forum RP style, meaning little rules, and mostly story-telling. In this case, you are not designing a rule-set, but should still ask yourself the Big Three:
What is Breaker Zone about?
What do the characters do?
What do the players do?

If I may, I'll try to see if my interpretation of this corresponds to your ideas of what your setting is like. Breaker Zone is about a small number of humans being able to travel between planets, and discovering the different elements as well as their own powers. I'm not so sure what the characters would do, though. This setting has a lot of potential for great adventures, so if you already have stuff planned or written down, bring it on!

It's a nice introduction, but since you're trying to make an RPG out of this, tell us a bit about the playing aspects this setting can bring.

Qi

(Sorry it took so long to reply, classes ran a little long today)

I want the breaker zone to at first going to the other worlds and seeing what is wrong, so for the first half of the RP it would be mainly exploration with a few conflicts (other then conflicts between players as that might arise)
The Characters have to decide what path they will go down (represented by the 3 students stranded on the breaker zone one being repentance, someone who goes around saving and helping people. destruction, traveling the worlds ether destroying them for revenge or to gain power. the last being revival, which is trying to renew the old magic and technology along with restoring earth to its original form)
The players? Well they pick which path they want and eventually gain more and more elemental control over their aspect.  Existence is at their fingertips, or at least Id like it to work that way.

Right now I think it will be a small group of people (mainly because I don’t know many RPers and don’t know where to promo the idea) but they won't all be from earth.  The thing about this is that there are still devices that can teleport people to the breaker zone scattered all around the other planets (this is how Mr. Rex finds his way there in the first place) they range from armlets to swords to jewelry and when enough elemental energy is put into it, it will teleport the person to the breaker zone. (Ben's was already charged over the course of 6 billion years and activated when he touched it)  However I’ve been thinking of how people will teleport after there are more people and I’ve come up with a plot idea for that, although it’s an "event" that won’t happen unless I get a really large amount off people.

This story will be split up into 4 Forums.  The Intro, where people start the story and all I do is DM
The Repentance Forum, where the people who want to save the other worlds will join, Ill still DM but be an NPC of one of the 3 students
The Destruction Forum, where people attack the other worlds and have to fight large amounts of NPCs, against Ill DM as one of the 3 students
and finally The Resurrection Forum, where people explore and stay out of the affairs of the worlds around them as they try and piece together a long since forgotten past, where I will be the DM again and be the Last of the 3 students

Each one of these forums will branch off of the Intro Forum after the people in the intro forum awaken the students (I think they will awaken in the order that I have them listed above)

That’s all I have planned out really, again please keep the questions, comments or concerns coming.

Also Qi, Thank you very much for the questions it helped me think up a lot of the above ideas!

I think you're confusing 'character' with 'player', but a lot of people do that at the start.
What you've described about what the players do is actually what the characters do. The players don't get elemental powers, at least not from playing a game ;)

And I'm taking this is going to be a forum RP, with lots and lots of people playing at once? In this case, you might want to try and keep the mechanics of any rules simple enough so that other players can quickly assess stats without having to check through lots of other pages. And you might want to think about balance and PC power over other PCs.
Are the player going to create the setting bit by bit by having their characters explore new areas? Or will there be a mostly complete setting for them to wander around in?
Just some food for thought.

Qi

Ill keep the mechanics as simple as I can but again I don't think will will have many people for a while.  Oh, and yes I put the characters and players switched, sorry for the confusion.  Do you have any suggestions for rules or a character advancement  system? because right now I'm drawing a blank.  Thanks again for the continued help Qi

Ideally, everything in a system should be geared toward the core of what the game as a whole is about. That being said, there are a bunch of possible advancement systems, such as XP to Level, Rewards as Resources to spend on stats, Learning by Doing, just to name the most prominent. You might want to have an advancement system that facilitates what you expect players to do while playing the game.

For instance, D&D is all about killing monsters and completing quests, hence, characters gain XP for doing just that. The Black Eye, and German RPG, is all about the characters going on adventures and advancing through these adventures with clever actions and idea, and so they gain adventure points at the end of each section in an adventure, the better they have done, the more they get.

Alternatively, you can use rewards and advancements to incite some behavior from the players. Inn my current RPG-project, every character will be able to learn every skill, but they get the most rewards, and the fastest rewards, by sticking to a small group of chosen skills, so that you don't have a whole party of jacks-of-all-trades, but rather specialized roles such as warrior, thief, or doctor, where everyone in the party know his part. Players will still be able to advance their character any way they like, but they will have a big incentive (more rewards and faster advancement) by sticking to their role, if at least partially.

Just to give you some ideas to work with, hope that helps.

Qi

Alright, after spending some time thinking about an EXP system I think I have something. 

Since I want the game to be heavily story based there will be key events that will allow players to give their characters one new spell.  I still haven’t thought about how I will incorporate other attributes such as physical strength so I’ll need a helping hand with that.  I decided to have the game run more smoothly Ill have a set limit on the spells that a character can start with, as an example I will only let my beginning players start with 2 spells like for Earth folk it would be A simple water conversion spell like turning water to ice and anther that allows them to take the elemental energy and infuse it into their body allowing them to bend and flow like water along with this they can have a 3rd spell but only if the player has a reason for having that spell (basically they have to have a story behind it). 
As for Weapons, I’ve decided that I will leave that up to the player’s discretion as an example is someone has had a katana all their lives I would understand if they did something like removing limbs with surgical precision.  I will not allow a player to just pick of something they have never used before and wield it like a master though.
Feel free to rip on this idea because I want to make an amazing RP that the players will really enjoy