I'm glad to see you both have been discussing things. Allow me to answer a couple of questions that have been raised.
"Why are we starting off as pirates?"
Well, to answer this I kind of have to provide a little history. See I was supposed to be a part of an RP taking place on a message board in which the players were playing a pirate crew. We had things pretty much set up, but then due to some conflicts in the other player's lives, the RP itself never actually came about. So when I came back to The Guild the first thing I thought of doing was bringing that RP here. We don't *have* to start off as a pirate crew. Hell, if you'd like each of our characters can be on their own doing their own thing as they come across each other. We can form a crew that way (a la how Luffy recruits) or we can be members of separate crews that have formed an alliance. Or we could be in the Marines. Or we can be revolutionaries. Or each of us can be something different. Basically, the short of it is you don't *have* to be a pirate. We'll talk more about this as we put together a story for our characters.
"Who has Devil Fruit powers and what would they be?"
Devil Fruits are awesome and amazing, but are also very rare, which is something we as One Piece fans often forget because we come across Devil Fruit users so frequently. Because of this, as well as the points @Lexah brought up, I would like for us all to start out as non-devil fruit users. As the story progresses and we've had one or two adventures under our belts and have a feel for one another's characters, writing and playing style, we can come back to the issue of who has a devil fruit and what it does. How does that sound?
I also love character development! I like to have a good foundation for my character, but I also love to see him or her grow and change as he or she interacts with others.
A couple more things, then I have to go eat something before I start gnawing on my arm:
1) I think it would be best if we set our story in the pre-time skip timeline just prior to the Straw Hat's battle at Enies Lobby. As much as I'd like to keep our crew separate from the established crews of the anime, unless we're living under a rock, its pretty impossible to ignore certain things that happen in the time line as the whole world knows about them and I don't want any players accidentally getting spoiled.
2) As I stated before, we don't have to start out as a crew. What do you guys think about that? This means we can all come from different towns or even seas if we like. I think this gives us all more flexibility in creating our characters. If we decide to do that, where should we start out? Should we start out in the East Blue (as I think we're all the most familiar with that area). Another argument I have for not starting out as a crew is that it also gives us more flexibility in our characters each individual goals. For example, I have an OC whose dream is simply to be able to live her life as she chooses (rather than one planned out for her) and I have another OC whose goal it is to meet up with his brother in the New World. Our characters can do or wish to be anything they want (within reason >.> ). I think we'd also be able to have more character development that way as well.
I had a third point, but I have literally become so hungry that I can't remember what the deuce it was >.< I'll get back to you on that.
Dinner time!!