For all Tropers hre, gaze upon the page that is known as the TV Tropes page for Sentinels!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/SentinelsOfTheMultiverse
Not exactly the neatest thing in my opinion. It needs work. Serious work.
Who's with me?
I'd really like to strike that "Expy" trope. These characters definitely are inspired by certain heroes and villains, but saying that The Wraith is a straight up export of Batman vastly oversimplifies the character and seems slightly insulting. I don't know that Sentinels has any characters that are interchangeable with established heroes in the Big Two comic companies. I think they're pretty unique and show an excellent understanding of homage and inspiration rather than Family Guy/American Dad/The Cleveland Show expy exploits.
Hey! I made a post similar to this a while ago!
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/the-tvtropes-page-needs-your-help-2855
Expy doesn't mean "clone character". An expy means they are based on or have several similar ties to another character while being different enough to be thier own character. For example Goku can be considered an expy of Superman, even though thier personalites, powers, family life, etc are vastly different. SO yea, while Wraith may be an expy of Batman, it doesn't mean Wriath is a clone of Batman.
AH. DId not know that. Anywho.
The plan so far is to clean up the main page, and add as many tropes as possible. Anyone is welcome to help. THe goal is to for the main page to have tropes pertaining to every part of ht eame, while the character sheets are were character spesific tropes go. Looking at other character pages and other pages is a good idea to get a feel of it.
Regardless, saying "Pretty much every character and environment is an Expy to one or more existing Marvel or DC characters." doesn't really make the game sound terribly unique. I'd rather it go in-depth on every character or say something rather than "everyone and everything is an expy".
Hmm… isn’t almost every DC and Marvel character an Expy of another Marvel or DC character?
I fully endorse this plan you have!
As for expies, everything can consieveably be based on or similar too anything else in literature of culture, so I don't think talking about what sentinels characters are similar to really makes their characters less important, and furthermore is fun to see what Chris found inspiration for his characters. Of course those could be shout outs, and that might fix that issue, right? Or homage?
Well the TV Tropes page isn't an advert for Sentinels, so honestly we shouldn't be trying to give a "good impression" or anything. If characters are expies then they should be described as such - you can't ignore an aspect of a character or game or whatever just because it isn't an aspect you consider to be a positive one.
Sure, it would be great to have some other info on there as well though.
Okay, that part about "Pretty much every character and environment is an Expy to one or more existing Marvel or DC characters." wasn't me. Just saying.
And that's what I'm saying. Expy is fine, but in its current form it's very oversimplified, lazy, and without more information makes it look like Sentinels is just "Narvel and BC comics fighting for justice! For the first time, Duperman and Badgerine can fight the might of Daarksyd and Green Skeleton!"
Which, as we all know, it isn't. As the first poster stated, the page needs to be cleaned up.
So, allow me to rephrase my comment. We should clarify the "Expy" trope immediately, and give some context for what these characters are expies of. Like "Tachyon is a speedster super-scientist, i.e. What if Reed Richards became The Flash?"
Sure. And btw, anyone can edit the page. Just signup to the site and you can chip in as well.
Okay, I know that this is off topic, but who else would throw all of their wallets at the screen to actually read this comic?
I wouldn't throw money. Not pointy enough.
Unless it was Marvel and DC. THEN I would throw money at the screen.
Did some work on the character page.
Quick note on the Expy debate, straight from the trope page: "The key difference between this and Captain Ersatz is that an expy is not clearly supposed to be the character, but is rather very similar, while Captain Ersatz is obviously the same character but with the Serial Numbers Filed Off."
That makes me feel much better. I did notice, however, that the Expy trope is used very little on the characters page. I was quite surprised that Ra was not listed as an Expy of Thor.
I didn't start the page, and started adding to it from the top. If someone doesn't add it by the time I get to Ra, I'll likely add it in. Only adding it to clear Expies though, by which I mean if I have to use more than one character to describe a SotM character, I'm not putting it in.
I totally understand. And I think that's where I was getting with the Expy trope on the main page. There are a lot of inspirations for the characters, but there isn't a straight 1:1 correlation with the SotM characters to established DC/Marvel characters. For instance, X Meets Y might be appropriate for some characters. Tachyon could be described as "Reed Richards meets The Flash", for example.
I see that (except Tachyon's not useless lol). I might go over the characters I've done already and see what I can do. Also, I may need to add Gamplay and Story Segregation to the main page, since some things from the backstory just don't come up in the game.
Hey guys. I forgot I even made this page and the pages are looking GREAT! Thanks to everyone who is helping out on the page!
That being said, I added a bit to the character page, mostly relating to cards from the base set, as I just got my hands on that and that's the only set i own at the moment.
Make any changes you feel is nessessary and leave behind a reason why when editing the page. Makes things neater.
Very cool. I'm glad I'm not the only one editing it now! I've been mainly dealing with the character page, but when I'm (more) satisfied with it, I'll work on the main page a bit.
Yea i think i noticed some of your changes when I went to work on the Character page. Thanks again for the help.