A place for our creations.

https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/faq-i-have-awesome-idea-charactercard-can-i-send-it-you

They don't want custom heroes/villains posted on here. The only exception was during their villain contest. If you go to BBG, you can find a lot of custom characters.

I would check this site out:

http://www.spiffworld.com/sotm/

There is some good stuff there.

I wouldn't be too surprised if this stance changes in the future, after all planned expansions are released, but that is just my own personal speculation.

Those laws exist for no other reason than to make creative people miserable for the benefit of uncreative people.  Tragic.

I think they also exist so that people can reap the rewards of their creativity rather than having others immediately copy their work and sell it as their own.

True, if those laws didn't exist, there are plenty of people who could release and make money off their own personal expansions to the game, or make a new game with different characters and the exact same mechanics.

So I guess I should scrap my Gentiles of the Nick Nolteverse idea then?  And I was so hoping that people could play as Subsolute Zeroni and Tachylbox agianst the dubious Errant Jade...

Original creation.  Do not steal.

Sorry Reckless, I'm going to have to steal Tachylbox. You can keep all the others though.

I want to play the Irrepressible Bunky.

On the subject of derivitive works, has anyone else noticed that DC has been using Sentinels superhero names recently?  Granted, their Teen Titans Bunker character is nowhere near as interesting and cool as Sentinels Bunker, but there is now a Tempest in Ame-Comi Girls' Teen Hellions.  They're an all-female reimagining of the Teen Titans, with Tempest being a female Aqualad styled after a "kawaii" version of the creatures from The Trenches in the first New 52 Aquaman arc (yeah, I know, it IS wicked creepy).  It's actually surprisingly well written for being little more than an eye candy ongoing series...

I know these names are probably coincidence, but if a Tachyon or Absolute Zero character shows up any time soon then Greater Than Games may have to get Paul to make a few phone calls.

Aqualad has been Tempest in DC for quite a few years before 52 happened, so I think that one's a stretch.

Well, my upcoming game will contain Fanfic, Agent Alert, Exparrot, Jim'll Fix It and Bra. I'm claiming copyright right now.

If that was the case, there would be no reason for the law to prohibit anything OTHER than selling.  The whole "we have to aggressively defend our IP" thing is the reason an utterly terrible Fantastic Four movie got made years before the Jessica Alba one, and was locked away in some back room in Hollywood.  They never had any intention of releasing it, they just excreted the thing out so that they could prove to a judge that they were still interested in retaining the IP.  This prevented anyone else from making an FF movie that might actually have been good, or at least accessible to the public.

Eh, I've seen Corman's FF.

I believe that would be an acceptible risk.  Enough of the fans would be ethical, I think, and would want to reward the company for having designed this awesome game, by paying for it...unless they *can't* pay for it, in which case I don't think it's fair to deny them the fun.  Basically the way Shareware works with computer programs; you know you should pay if you're able to, but you get the product regardless.  And ultimately I think going down in history for having created something excellent is a better Legacy (heheh) than sitting around in an office threatening to sue people for cutting into your profit margin.  I mean, the law might be protecting a small business like G2G some, but it protects a monstrous juggernaut like Warner Brothers a lot more, when they deserve protection less, and usually use their shield as a weapon to grind lesser beings into the dirt.

Ah.  My mistake!  Either way, Sentinels Bunker is way more interesting than DC Bunker.

At any rate, no one is stopping you from creating and sharing a custom character. You just can't do it on this site.

That's equivalent to saying that nobody is stopping you from living somewhere, it just can't be in your own house.  This is THE Sentinels forum; there is no other place remotely as appropriate for anything Sentinels-related.

This is not your house; this is the house of Greater Than Games. They bought it, they decorated, they pay the bills. There are plenty of other nice places around, like BGG, but just because this forum has been set up for us it doesn't mean we own it.

I dunno much about DC or Marvel and their message boards (if they have any official ones), but do they really want you popularizing your tales of Original the Character hanging out with Spider-Man and Aquaman all the time?

Maybe I'm a bit boring, but I generally stick to Greater Than Games and their creations (or official endorsements of other peoples' creations such as the "Create-A-Villain Contest") when it comes to mechanics.  I'm sure other people come up with great ideas for homebrewed cards, but that's not an aspect that really impacts my playing Sentinels of the Multiverse.  Also, a lot of this game rests on thematics and the plot developed by the creators, so I tend to put custom characters and cards in the same category as fanfiction.  There isn't anything wrong with it, but I don't feel like that is an "essential" thing that Greater Than Games needs to support directly on their own site.

If the creators are worried about legal mumbo-jumbo, then fine.  Do away with fandecks until further notice.  But hearing about some forumite's new character they've inserted into the Sentinels Multiverse seems like something that isn't really a need to include in the forum.  This fandom is full of fan-created work that is fantastic (randomizers, statistics, deck boxes, etc.), and including a fan creation on one of those sites will do nothing but add credibility to your creation.  It by no means is a void that needs to be filled on this forum.

I'm sure, in time, there will be a homebrewed section on this forum that people can use.  In the meantime, there are already sites and groups willing to hear about a fan creation.

GtG encourages people to make their variants, and they even said as much in the podacst about Sentinels Tactics. I could be wrong, but the rule is to protect GtG from us, so that we don't sue them. Consider this, someone puts up a character, and later, GtG comes out with that same exact character. What happens now? We all know that Christopher knows all the characters already, but that won't stop someone from suing them. Also, with having everything planned out, should he then have to change something, because one person had an idea. Regardless of whether they win the lawsuit or not, it will be a hassle, so their lawyers told them not to have any ideas here. 99.9% of the people might not care, but you only need the one who does (or thinks he can get something). This was my understanding at least.

This is a big issue in Japan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Djinshi

To be clear, I don't currently even have any fan-creations that I would want to post (beyond a tweaked version of Omnitron which I've already discussed in general terms without any complaints).  It's just that I object to the mentality that creates a rule specifically prohibiting the possibility of anyone exercising their creativity, just because it MIGHT conceivably go wrong.  It's like murdering children in case they grow up to become serial killers; it's an act whose immediate cost far outweighs its potential risk.

This can EASILY be taken care of with a single sentence in the forum terms, something to the effect of "In no event shall the Company be held liable for any coincidental similarity between the Company's publications and material posted to this forum".  Some companies go further by claiming that everything posted to their forum becomes their property, but that's even more evil than regular copyright law.  (The real evil is the very existence of litigation, but as so often true in war, the existence of one weapon mandates the creation of more of them for the sake of defense, resulting in the world becoming ever more dangerous until it eventually self-destructs.)

I fail to see what's an issue about it.  Doujinshi are a huge part of the reason manga have become as popular as they are in the first place.  The greater creative freedom possible when not working inside some corporate monolith almost invariably produces more appealing results.  GTG itself is proof of that.

It's just that I object to the mentality that creates a rule specifically prohibiting the possibility of anyone exercising their creativity, just because it MIGHT conceivably go wrong.

Welcome to the real world.  I remember being at a concert back in the day, where a fan ran up and handed something to the singer while he was monologing between songs.  He took it pleasantly enough, but when he opened it to see what it was, he dropped it to the stage like it was kryptonite and kicked it off into the front row, explaining that it looked like a song, and he didn't want to be in any kind of position for someone to say that some future song of his was in any way derivative of that song they just tried to hand him.

You can exercise your creativity anywhere you want, just not here. :)

If we as a society weren't so focused on suing everyone to try to make a buck, it wouldn't be an issue...

But we are, so it is.

I agree with arenson9 that this will soon no longer be an issue, and we might even be able to have a forum focused on home-brewed creations. Hopefully sooner than later.

And just thought of something else: Having the >G folks work on getting the legal review/approval on this will probably take away from current work on new sets / games, not to mention that answering rulings questions is also probably higher priority than this.

There's only so much they can do with the time they have.

Those are part of the system of law.

Whether they should is another story IMO.  "Loan shark" is a job description, after all.  So is "thief" or "murderer".  Only the whims of a governing body decide which of these careers is legitimate and which is criminal.  Just because a society has a concept of "laws" does NOT mean it requires lawyers, because the definition of "lawyer" is "someone who argues over what a law does or does not mean".  In a society which had only the minimal necessary number of laws, and revised them as necessary due to the passage of time, there'd be no need for prosecutors and defense attorneys, because you could just ask the governing body to clarify anything ambiguous, and regard any law which requires too many such queries as needing to be thrown out and replaced with a simpler, cleaner version.

We disagree on this as well.  I say that if someone doesn't like what happens, they have a right and an obligation to change it.  And I don't think "ownership" is an institution terribly deserving of protection.  When a plot of land sits undeveloped or a building stands empty, because it profits the owners to let that space go to waste even though people are going homeless, I say "ownership" should not be protected, but disregarded freely in favor of "need".

No, we are talking about the principles under which a society should operate, which apply regardless of whether the subject is real estate or entertainment (both of which are fundamental rights IMO, although one is obviously more important).

Generally, the needy person.  With some check based on common sense being administered by the general population.

There would be no formal authority, but something resembling the old tribal system of a council of respected elders would tend to keep things from getting completely ridiculous.  The Internet has made us a global community, so we ought to organize our society along such lines, with a goal of minimizing suffering for all involved, generally by defusing conflict.  The result would bear a vague resemblance to the administration of loosely-moderated forums, such as this one or the Goblins community, where the overall rule of "don't be a d***" is about the only one that's needed.

*****

Getting back on the subject, if I understand the policy right, it would be perfectly legitimate to create homebrew on another site, and then link to it here, yes?  That way, the admins can just not follow the link.

I think the general understanding is that if we want homebrew decks then we should look elsewhere.  Homebrew formats (playing as villains, multiple villains in one game, etcetera) are less dangerous because you're just using the components given to you in a different fashion.  I don't pretend to understand the distinction.  I just accept it as the rules.

Your best bet is to go to BoardGameGeek, post/find what you want, and go from there.  I don't know what their policy on links is, so you might want to check with the admins before posting any links up.

Dude, seriously, whining and complaining aren't going to get them to change the rules, and the rules are there for a good reason, whether you understand it or not. So please, just get over it.

So please, just get over it.

That is not likely to be a very useful comment in a conversation with someone who obviously cares very deeply about the topic.  I'd agree that complaining about the state of society at large in a forum for a superhero card game probably isn't too useful either though. ;)

I'd like to ask that we don't debate our views on big and small government here on the >G forums.  I don't see that going anywhere good, and it's not going to make >G change their policies about fan creations.  In fact, this topic may be a good candidate for being locked down by an admin before it spirals towards the Bad Place.

Is the Bad Place SotM's version of the Forbidden Zone?

Thank you Spiff.  I pretty much do "get over it", as the only alternative to launching an extremely short armed insurrection against an unjust but invincible regime.  But I reserve the right to complain now and then, as a way of venting my spleen, lest the constant pressure of silencing my soul's righteous fury in order to survive in our Fallen world should give me an ulcer.

I didn't have in mind "small government" so much as "large anti-government".  The population would be educated in their own self-interest in order to protect them from the attempts of others to take advantage of them.  The system of such education would be administered solely by those enlightened enough to understand the importance of ensuring it is never corrupted; they would run it in such a way as to exclude from the organization anyone ambitious enough to want to use the organization to their own purposes, instead of its stated ones (an intentional aversion of Pournelle's Iron Law).  Put more succinctly, give the crown to whoever LEAST wants to be king, simply to keep anyone at all from being king.  The "crown" would be something like root admin access to the ultimate database containing all information; everyone could view said database, but nobody would have the ability to edit it, except the single person most thoroughly proven to have no interest in corrupting the data.

They could just trust to fate; the odds are fairly good that nobody would have both motive and opportunity to act in any way that would actually cause them significant harm.  The lawyers are so afraid that someone MIGHT bring suit that they never even consider whether it's LIKELY.  To paraphrase a Vorkosigan book, "the evils they wish to protect against are imaginary; the ones they commit in the course of such protection are real".

It sounds like you're very willing to take a chance with other peoples' creative property.  That's like gambling with someone else's money because you "just have a good feeling."

More like telling *them* to gamble with it.  I'm not trying to keep the proceeds for myself or anything.  I just think the world is legitimately a better place when people don't let fear of consequences stop them from doing awesome things.  Although I'm a hardcore pacifist, I tend to agree with the common warrior ethos that, because death is inevitable, dying sooner but gloriously is a profitable trade.  Applying that ethos to a person is questionable, since people have feelings and stuff, but applying it to a corporation makes perfect sense, because corporations are artificial constructs and devoid of emotions, survival instincts, or human rights.  No corporation should ever outlive its purpose; if it can be dissolved, but leave a legacy which people will still praise twenty years later, then it has done better than if it "sold out" and stayed operational that whole time at the expense of its original principles.

I just don't see too much of a problem with the current situation. It would be one thing if the Greater than Games Folk hunted down people who use their mechanics to make custom characters and serve them legal warnings, but they don't. There is a very active forum on Boardgamegeek dedicated to custom characters that the G>games folk regularly visit. There was a post somewhere on the forum where someone had a link to a custom Bunker built deck on BGG and Christopher totally okayed it.

There are also many variations and mods of existing characters on this forum that G> have not at all interfered with, and so I don't think it's completely fair to compare them to companies like 4Kids and Toei that get youtube parodies pulled or like Sony who served a cease and decist letter to fans who were doing their own 3D Chrono Trigger remake, it's not like they're ever going to make one.

If I remember correctly, part of the reason Richard Launius was contacted to collaborate on Infernal Relics was he had posted Nightmist and Gloomweaver on the BGG forums.

Even though it would be cool and convenient to share custom hero designs on this website, the reasons G> gives for not allowing that are reasonable, and they don't stop people from doing it anywhere else, and so even though I can understand and sympathize with your position, I really don't think people's creativity is being stifled, and again it's really not fair to compare the G> folk who really work hard for their fans to mindless corporations that only care about money.

This makes absolutely no sense.  If the game's designers can go and look at custom stuff on other forums, why on Infinite Earths wouldn't they be able to look at it here?  I can sort of understand the logic behind them not being able to look at it at all, in case it influences their design process and leads to frivolous plagiarism suits.  But this...I can't fathom how it could possibly be okay for Christopher to see something elsewhere but not allow it to be here.

I wasn't so much "comparing" them as drawing a parallel.  Ultimately, the system is the same, regardless of how you use it.

... Drawing a parallel IS, by definition, comparing them.

It would be a comparison if I was saying one was greater than the other.  Simply saying that they bear some similarities isn't a comparison, as it's not evaluating them compared to each other; it's simply noting the presence of a link between them.

That's not how the word works. If you say one is like the other, you are comparing them. If you are saying one is better than the other, that's an EVALUATION. You were comparing them.

Technically, to say things are similar is comparing, while to say things are different is contrasting.  I remember my middle school math. (Or was it elementary school math?  I don't remember.)

As noted earlier saying that there are some similarities is a comparison. Whether you're drawing a parallel, contrast, or comparison between the two, you are creating an association between G> and the mindless, soulless corporations that want nothing more than to crush people's individuality for their own personal gain. Again, G> gives its fans a lot more creative freedom with its properties than most companies and artists. Having the restriction of not being able to put original characters on the main site is a small restriction, especially since the Sentinels community has many other networks and outlets. Is it a bummer, yes, but it's not the end of the world or freedom. Why is it okay to post original characters on BGG and not the main site? Probably has to do with liability, even if there are similarities between a character created on BGG and G> the distance between the two is much greater and probably easier to deal with legally then it would be if the character was posted on the main site. I'm not actually a lawyer and I don't think you are either, which means that neither or us is really qualified to talk about what G> could actually do to circumvent possible lawsuits. I can agree that it's a little unfair, but an alternative exists and the reason behind the decision is an understandable one. If you want to do something about it, you can create a site or even Google plus community dedicated to SOTM custom characters. If that gets shut down for no reason other than existing, then I'll probably join the revolution.