[quote=@Zeroth]
<Snipped quote by Jabber>

Honestly the entire point of a One Piece RP seems to be going on adventures like the Straw Hats do and pursuing all the different goals--find One Piece, find All Blue, become the strongest swordsman, etc--so removing the whole "do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!" aspect of it would kind of defeat the purpose in my opinion. Unless these new marines have undergone vast reforms and aren't as Knight Templar as they are in the canon, being Pirates would probably suit the story much better.

As for whether it should be set in the future of canon or an AU, my vote goes to an AU where the canon characters have simply all been replaced by either player characters or NPCs of some sort. This would allow the GM to create their own Seven Warlords, Four Kings, so on and so forth. It would, however, be more work for the GM. Again, this is where communication with players can come in handy--you could potentially offer players that you think would do a good job of it the task of designing such important setting NPCs, as long as they don't end up doing things like "I call dibs on making a Four Kings character!" and try to use that as their MAIN player character. It'd be a balancing act to make sure people don't powerplay or intentionally bring the fleet of a warlord down on some first timer pirates just for funsies and to make themselves look "so extra special badass and cool."
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remember if your doing all the warlords and emperors or whatnot, you don't need to do them all at once, only bring them up when relevant. Just like the show!