Yu Gi Oh Card Game Character Sheets Cleanup

The character sheets for Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game are a bit of a mess. The contents on these character sheets primarily describe the gameplay tropes exhibited by card archetypes or notable individual monster cards in YGO, and also describe the lore character traits exhibited by these monster cards. These pages have two main issues: trope misuses as a result of Missing Supertrope Syndrome, and a Signal To Noise Trainwreck that some folders have.

The first major issue with these pages is that due to the nature of Yu-Gi-Oh as an abstractified card game, a large amount of gameplay trope examples exhibit mild-to-severe Missing Supertrope Syndrome. An example would be the persistent misuse of Sixth Ranger, briefly analyzed on this ATT thread. Other examples of persistent misuses include Discard and Draw (used as what its trope name literally implies, which may be an issue of the trope itself?) and Man of Kryptonite (used to describe hard counters to certain archetypes). There are many more smaller individual misuses scattered across these pages.

I encountered this issue myself when I tried to describe YGO's "field nuking" with the tropes available on TV Tropes, and settled on the awkward Herd-Hitting Attack (these pages used to use Person of Mass Destruction to describe this gameplay trait, which I thought was far worse since the monsters are often not persons). TV Tropes simply doesn't have a lot of good card game gameplay tropes to describe YGO's many odd monster mechanics.

A second major issue is the Signal To Noise Trainwreck that several archetype folders are exhibiting. Examples include the Numbers, Chronomaly, and Doll Monster folders. The troper who wrote these examples had a particular desire to be as detailed and accurate-to-game as possible within their example writing, but in doing so ended up making a lot of them excessively long, and their particular writing style involved a lot of Word Cruft. It should be noted that I have a personal relation to this issue that may be interpreted as a conflict of interest; I had engaged in a quasi-edit war with the troper which ended with a compromised reconciliation after communications between both of us, and I actually broke this "edit ceasefire" once which was then reverted.

Edited by Wuz on May 10th 2021 at 7:18:46 PM

Unfortunately, I don't know how the Chronomaly and Doll cards work, so I can't settle the dispute you have described, but I completely agree that those articles are a chore to read and in dire need of a rewrite in order to conform with Brevity Is Wit. Let's start with something simple: This page has a folder dedicated to the Mirror trap cards. This archetype has no lore or even characters, and consists entirely of inanimate magic barriers/forces. Therefore, I don't think it deserves a spot on the Characters page. Cut?

To be really honest, why does there need to be a Characters page at all? People seem to be stretching out the "lore" a bit on the page.

The game itself isn't lore driven. Neither is Magic: The Gathering, but there's at least flavor text and things like that where people can infer things from.

Edited by Arctimon on May 10th 2021 at 7:58:29 AM

Some YGO monsters do have notable lore info; aside from the Normal Monsters who have flavor text, actual legit storylines involving monster cards have been written and documented in other official YGO publications like the Master Guide series of books. Even without these, some tropes can be taken from just the card art itself, and gameplay tropes surrounding the monsters should be valid character tropes, provided that they are properly cleaned up.

About the Mirror Force trap cards, I'm leaning towards a likely cut, though I'm hesitant because another series of Spell/Trap cards that are technically not monsters, the Solemn and Forbidden series, have legitimate characters and lore. Maybe cutting Mirror Force and correspondingly move Solemn and Forbidden S/T tropes to somewhere else more appropriate could work.

Edited by Wuz on May 10th 2021 at 8:17:38 PM

^ Hum, aren't those two archetypes part of the Darklord storyline? I'm pretty sure those cards tell the Condemned Darklord's backstory.

^^ Some monsters actually do have rather extensive backstories. Dai Grepher, the Duel Terminal monsters, and anime mascots like Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes all have enough lore to warrant their own folders, in my humble opinion. That being said, I'm in favour of cutting folders that describe cards that have no lore of their own. Right off the bat, I can tell that Apollousa and Vanity's are only there because of their competitive significance.

Edited by TantaMonty on May 10th 2021 at 6:02:48 AM

Are gameplay tropes not allowed on Character pages?

Gameplay tropes are allowed, but the real problem is that the subpages list several archetypes that have little to no lore. These cards barely count as characters given that they lack motivations, personality or even backstories. I see no point having things like Apollousa or Vanity's there when the only thing in their folders is a glorified explanation of their effects, especially when it invites so much misuse.

Edited by TantaMonty on May 10th 2021 at 6:59:53 AM

In which case, it's best to wait until we see actual lore be written in an official source.

We should cut everything that has next to no lore outside of gameplay tropes, such as the two just Tanty Monty listed.

Right, but do DM and BEWD have lore because of the show, or because of the card game?

If it's because of the show, then they should go with the show.

Edited by Arctimon on May 10th 2021 at 10:34:43 AM

I believe that cutting everything with "no lore" is a bad idea. If you ask me, being "glorified explanations of card effects" doesn't mean that there are no legitimate gameplay tropes here, and gameplay tropes for me is enough to distinguish an individual character and give them enough notability for inclusion.

Edited by Wuz on May 10th 2021 at 10:47:29 PM

We're primarily looking for characterization tropes, and gameplay tropes alone don't cut it.

Almost every folder on these character sheets have appearance tropes for the individual monsters, wouldn't that be enough to keep them relevant for these character sheets?

My intent here is to fix the trope misuses on the character sheets, not to completely overhaul the system and delete 90% of the content. There is value in keeping these archetype folders; one single arbitrary "we" doesn't represent the wishes of everyone.

Edited by Wuz on May 10th 2021 at 11:32:00 PM

Arctimon: I can see your point, but I'd say the card game expands on the show's lore. When Dark Magician Girl makes her debut in the manga, we are only told that she is DM's apprentice, whereas the cards actually show the two interacting and her development into a "Super Wizard". As for the BEWD... actually, I don't know much about his story, but didn't the card game introduce those "X with Eyes of Blue" monsters that are implied to worship him?

I did a little research and, as it turns out, there have been a lot of previous discussions about what should and shouldn't go on the Characters subpages. This one and this one imply that non-characterization tropes shouldn't be included in the folders.

Edited by TantaMonty on May 10th 2021 at 8:44:14 AM

It should be noted that there's a separate character page for discussing the monsters as portrayed in the anime and manga, which mainly focuses on the most prominent ones (though with a few outliers like Celtic Guardian).

I feel like we are getting off-topic. To address the two points raised by the OP:

• Sixth Ranger is for characters that join an established team; Man of Kryptonite is for characters that are literally made of an energy/substance that weakens another; and Discard and Draw is when a character loses their power(s) only to acquire new ones. Any examples that do not fit these definitions should be cut on sight.
• Several entries are walls of text that extrapolate the tropes' scope and are unpleasant to read due to excessive Word Cruft. These don't necessarily need to be cut, but should be trimmed or rewritten to conform with Clear, Concise, Witty.

Is everyone okay with this? I can start cleaning up some folders if there are no objections.

Go ahead. These issues should be easy to spot, and the changes most likely wouldn't be too controversial. If there's any other persistent misused trope on these pages, bring them up here and we can maybe discuss about them.

Edited by Wuz on May 13th 2021 at 8:34:52 PM

Okay, I've changed several things in the Odd-Eyes folder (as you can probably guess by the size of the edit reason). This example left me stumped, though:

• Take Up My Sword: If the Xyz Summoned Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon is sent to the Graveyard, it can Special Summon an Odd-Eyes monster from the Extra Deck, as long it is not another Odd-Eyes Absolute Dragon.

Another case of a story trope being used to describe gameplay. Should it be kept on the page?

Cut it. I don't think we have any alternatives to describe YGO's "floating" effects in trope terms; we just don't have a lot of tropes to describe abstract card game effects.

By the way, tropes on Collectible Card Game Tropes are quite... underwhelming. A lot of them are generic tabletop game/video game tropes, there's Discard and Draw which is a case of misleading trope title (it has nothing to do with card games - why is it even named like this in the first place?), and there's also Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, which more of a YGO anime trope than anything and is used to describe some real life trivia about Magic, and doesn't really apply to actual card games.

Maybe we can use this thread as a chance to discuss some proper card game tropes (present across multiple card games, that is) that we can later TLP.

Edited by Wuz on May 14th 2021 at 12:32:27 AM

An update. I'm in the process of starting some TLP drafts to make some new tropes applicable to card games to assist with the cleanup process. By creating more card game tropes, we can reduce the issues of Square Peg, Round Trope (and Missing Supertrope).

Edit: Deleting mad ramblings made during an obsession-induced mental breakdown.

So what initially began as an attempt to create a separate list for Gagagigo-related characters turned into Characters.Yu Gi Oh Recurring Monsters. This got me thinking on notability on these pages: some monsters, like Baboon of the Forest, to me, have no gameplay, story, archetypal, or even character notability. They are ancient cards with little that can be said about them.

Since YGO has so many cards, should we put up some notability restrictions on these pages so we don't eventually fill these pages up with all kinds of minor monsters? Or should we allow all these minor monsters?

If you ask me, what qualifies as notability on these pages comes down to fulfilling one of these points:

• Being in an Archetype/Series of reasonable distinctiveness
• Being in a card art storyline
• Having distinctive character design AND distinctive gameplay traits (for genuinely unique staple monsters like AA-Zeus; unique design and unique gameplay are both required for notability)

What do you guys think?

List of current clean-up points:

• Misused Tropes
• Signal-to-Noise Train Wreck
• Notability Discussion
• "Numbers" Folder (To Discuss Later)
• Spell Cards in Character Pages (To Discuss Later)

Edited by Wuz on Dec 27th 2021 at 8:19:42 PM

Edit: Deleting mad ramblings made during poor mental state.

Edited by Wuz on Dec 27th 2021 at 8:06:08 PM

Yeah, a tip would be not to do that... And instead spend the energy on Repair projects...

But okay... Lesse... Words about Cards...

Well, I don't think we have a trope on general Hidden Information games where each side is hiding info from each other...

I'd like that, before we start making the trope for Hand Reveal...?

...

Not sure if Card Archetypes is a general enough concept to work... I know that Mt G and Yu Gi Oh at least use it...

Edited by Malady on Dec 27th 2021 at 4:35:53 AM

Thanks for the reply. These are some good ideas for potential tropes in the future. I currently have a TLP entry for a board wipe trope, which can be used to replace the "Instant Death" Radius and Herd-Hitting Attack misuses on some of the YGO character sheet tropes (which only apply to situations where there is a 2D map, and not on an abstractified card game board).

If you guys identify any other consistent trope misuse on the card game pages, raise them in this thread. I've also been prepping for some Trope Repair Shop posts to fix Discard and Draw and Theme Deck, which are not card game tropes but are named as if they are one, leading to them being cosistently used for their card game meanings. I hope that TRS can maybe turn these into legitimate card game tropes too.

That said however, I think our current priority issue would probably be the organization of the overall structure of the YGO Card Game Character pages.

I think we need some notability rules in those pages.

Edited by Wuz on Dec 27th 2021 at 10:11:55 PM

After looking through several of the character pages, I have found that some edits were made by Tropers.Lady Jane Grey. This user was confirmed to be a serial ban evader. Permission was given in general to remove those edits on principle.

What makes this relevant? That troper has also changed many of the Yu-Gi-OH! character names to their Japanese counterparts despite rules making it clear we prioritize the use of English dub names and terminology if an English dub is available. Their edits have consistently made use of the original Japanese names.

If their edits are removed, it can make the task of fixing the Japanese/English naming conventions a bit easier since there's now less to work with.

Thank god I was redirected to this thread. I also have a massive problem with the way some of the pages are written at the moment, I think that the Doll Monsters folder still hasn't been fixed. Since it's apparent that there's some kind of agreement that the pages have massive issues, I'm gonna cut away many of the problematic examples. I already did some work in the Egyptian God's page (I think it may have been the same troper that did this one and the Doll Monster page, given their knack for copypasting card text and then explaining it), so I think this one is doable, though it will require some help.

Thank you anyone that helps in advance.