These are fairly minor things, but we've let it go for a while, so here it is.

Please have a link to TRF visibly featured on your board. The group links would be preferable but are not required. The URLs for the minibanners are:

http://gashjiren.homestead.com/files/TRFX/trfbutton.jpg.
and
http://members.roadfly.com/sigmatrf/trfbutton.jpg

Even a text link will suffice.

If your board looks like an ugly piece of @#%$, fix it, please. Remove ugly broken images and fix clashing color schemes. Red text on a black background is not an acceptable board for TRF. Even Mon Calamari porno (like on the Observer Order) is permissible, but put SOMETHING up.

You can even find templates to copy on a variety of ezboard-related sites. At the very least, have the common courtesy to copy and paste one into your HTML section, get rid of the bloody red Xs on your board and put some sort of header or banner at the top. Even a monkey can make one -- trust me on this, if Gue, Ahnk and I can do it, anyone can.

As everyone knows I don't really give a rat's ass about blatant, random advertising and growing TRF to the size of a bloated behemoth by creating uselessly vapid and pretty boards to attract idiots. But the fact is that the level of effort that goes onto some boards we let join TRF is ridiculously, ridiculously low and it makes the community look amaturish and retarded.

So those that are @#%$ or do not have a link have two weeks to fix them up, or I assume you just don't care and take you off the links.

Almost all of the boards on TRF right now look pretty good, but in the past there have been times when every second board looked like it was designed by Rush Limbaugh when he was up on his painkillers, and I don't want that.

If there is one thing I want to foster on TRF that is conspicuously absent from some RP boards it is a sense of quality instead of quantity. Learn from Star Wars Tales: they're the best Star Wars role playing board out there right now, hands down. Their design isn't some spectacular work of art designed by an obese computer nerd over a period of 30 straight hours on the internet, but it looks good and it's functional.

Which brings me to my next point. There are, in my humble opinion, too bloody many groups on TRF who are into this "empire building" phenomenon. I want to be perfectly straight with you: the point of fleeting was never "LET'S AMASS AS MANY PLANETS AND SHIPS AS POSSIBLE AND THROW THEM AT ONE ANOTHER". I hate that misconception.

Now, this may seem hypocritical coming from me, because I run a group subsidiary that has more planets than most groups on TRF, which is a member of a group with about three times the number of planets of its next competitor. But do something for me: go back and read all of those takeovers. Read Sins of the Fathers.

A lot of those takeovers are absolutely genius pieces of writing. Everything from scathing social commentary to epic stories of redemption. There is a broad, ambitious, branching storyline behind the Empire going on right now, and any who care to look will be treated to a lot of very good writing which serves a purpose other than "O I GET MOER PLANETSSSS!!!!1".

I'm not at all saying that anyone with over ten planets is just writing meaningless drivel, nor am I saying that TNO is the only group with a worthwhile storyline nor am I saying that TNO is never guilty of putting out BS for the sake of expansion. In fact, there's a lot of really creative, brilliant @#%$ going on right now, the likes of which you aren't likely to see anywhere but TRF. But I do see a lot of writing on the Battlegrounds that seems like someone just cooked it up to get more planets. I also see a lot of pointless fleet RP that is primarily just bullshit to get ships and planets.

Now I realize that I cut the "must be a logical reason for all attacks" rule out of the rules page; that is only because it served no purpose when people could just offer up the explanation "expansion". But put some thought into it, people. Come up with a worthwhile storyline and motivation before you throw a bunch of ships into someone else's system, not after.

I'm not saying you can't expand. Expand; it seems to be a good promoter of activity. But thoughtful writing and fleeting can coexist.

I hope you read all of that very carefully because Kas or Organa will probably delete this thread and ban me for posting it.

Finally, someone who agrees with me on the Empire building crap.

No offense, but its easy to sit back and complain about Empire Building and planet amassing when the group your in is strong enough to take on a good number of groups at once. It gives you the assurance of being able to go off and do great storylines without threat of every minor action endagering the future of your group.

Im sure if every group worth its weight in Roleplay ability at TRF had the same amount of worlds and ships, and there were no threat of being overpowered by anyone, this crappy thread 'lets fight and gain MORE worlds' trend would end and the roleplays would get better.

My Point: Until I see a three planet group with good roleplay ability make the same final complaint I've seen you just make, I'll take it with a grain of salt. Frankly, any member of TNO has the viable resources at his IC/OOC disposel to make great RP's and storylines without hassle to the group overall.

(BDE has a nice big image at the top of the board that says "The Rebel Faction" and is also a link, just an FYI)

Red on black doesn't fly?

When did this happen!?!?!

No offense but TNO was still writing good roleplays right after the fleet restart when we weren't a superpower and idiots like Xilen were running rampant.

Suprisingly enough I wasn't complaining about empire building and planet amassing. If you'd actually gone back and read the post instead of firing off some reactionary complaint right off the bat, you'd notice that I didn't say I disapproved of people expanding their groups.

You may be suprised to note that whether your story is good or it sucks, your fingers will move at the same speed. In fact, writing something worthwhile may actually take less time, because it will prevent procrastination. I am not demanding Pulitzer Prize winning material here. It doesn't really take that much work to come up with a good plot. Once you have, executing it won't take any longer than executing a shitty one. The difference is that one way makes you look like an incompetant jackass and the other does not.

By the way Gue, do something for me here. Go into my profile and count up the number of threads there that involve actual OOC assets. Count up the ones where I make use of any amount of IC or OOC clout. That is the most bullshit excuse imaginable and I am embarassed for you that you even brought it up.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't think I've read anything by you in months. If it's good, wonderful. If not, I really don't care. Because if it isn't, inevitably that writing will only reflect poorly on you. I can't believe you're actually on a board that basically produces writing and you're arguing in favor of writing bullshit.

We started talking about it the other day. You see, we don't want to be slaves to the Dominion, and that whole 'shadow over your ISD' thing is starting to creep out our captains. So, it was decided that the easiest way to remove your group was to invalidate your board design.

:(

Damn, wish I wasn't banned at JP, LOD, TGC, NRA, SWM...

Don't forget the StarFox Yiff board Ahnk...

I doubt I'll ever be desperate enough to RP there.

Let me be perfectly clear: I don't think I've read anything by you in months. If it's good, wonderful. If not, I really don't care. Because if it isn't, inevitably that writing will only reflect poorly on you. I can't believe you're actually on a board that basically produces writing and you're arguing in favor of writing bullshit.

You obviously arn't looking then. As Raven Shadowclaw I have been writing a continuing (Non-Fleet) storyline in the New Rebellion thread since it started. I asked you if youd like to roleplay together as Gash (For no OOC asset benifit) with my Gue character at your RJO board months ago, to no response. As such, my Raktus character has been active accross multiple threads as well, though those admitantly are shorter, crappy posts.

Im not posting in favor of writting bullshit, Im posting in accordance that TNO has the luxary of time and defense in terms of writting better RP's in differance to group defense.