Hello there! Saw the banner ad up top and was intrigued enough to read the welcome blurb. I’d love to experience a more free-form, collaborative telling of the game, and had some questions to make sure I got the idea. I’m new to freeform RP (almost joined one for PXFire but got too busy) so I don’t know what to expect, or what range is allowed. To that end – some questions!

Character:
Story version Diamond/Pearl – will this have any real effects on the experience?
Backstory – how wide from the character is expected – relatives, ancestors, or just the past few years of their life and maybe a few key players in it?
Special talents – how powerful and/or common are they capped at? The example character has a subconscious link to Water type Pokemon, which seems relatively minor but common. Would the ability to understand the speech of Legendary/Mythical Pokemon be too overpowered, or would it never come up?
Special Pokemon – Platinum is where I got back into the Pokemon franchise and I’ve always had a real fondness for Darkrai, would that be acceptable? Example character has two Legends here, but I am not sure if those came about through prior incarnations.
Contest starter – this seems to imply a second starter can be picked, is that going to be part of the character’s main team or is it for some separate events/side story?
Drawing or Writing – I really enjoy writing, and am just getting into drawing. Are the events exclusive (a drawing path and a writing path) or would I be able to dabble in both of them?

Gameplay:
Looking at the posts, I’m not sure if there’s one missing with the basic mechanics of GCEA. As a complete newbie I don’t know how any of it works – if you can point me to a ‘getting started’ post I passed by it’d be greatly appreciated and may answer the rest of these questions.
From the location threads it looks like navigation will be pretty straightforward, but that’s as much as I can tell. Will people be chasing badges and working towards beating the Pokemon League?
Do the Pokemon have XP and levels to keep track of? How about their movesets, is it locked to 4 at a time or are they all available?
Items, prize money, inventory – do the participants have to battle NPCs for money or is it accrued some other way? How does PvP work or is it disabled?

Thank you for your time!