Creator's Pet/Tabletop Games

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Examples of Creator's Pets in Tabletop Games include:

• In the Living Death RPGA campaign setting for D&D the character of Jason Lindaman was supposed to be a super-intelligent, Crazy Prepared investigator who was taken out by the enemy before the PCs arrived. Because the PCs' only real interaction with him was after something heinous that took all four to six of them to handle had physically or emotionally crippled him, many players considered him a joke and/or incompetent to the point that they wished for his death.
• Elminster from Dungeons & Dragons. For the crowd that is not into roleplaying: Think about what would happen if Gandalf was the main character of Lord of the Rings and the story consisted of him beating up anything that is a bother and boning the goddess of magic whose boobs are totally big and rad to the max.
  • Or just read DM of the Rings and imagine what it would be like if the game's GM had his way and actually got to force all the stuff he wanted with Gandalf.
  • When your creator is writing novels whose entire plot is 'Everybody, up to and including his patron goddess, loves Elminster so much that they will single-handedly assault Hell itself and defy the entire natural order of the universe to save his soul', you are an exceptional example of this trope.
• From Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Necrons of have proven problematic for some fans. When the army got its proper launch during 3rd Edition, with a codex positing that the Necrons' undying C'tan masters were essentially the prime source of all evil in the universe, secretly worshiped by a pivotal faction of the Imperium, and responsible for the rise of Chaos, many fans complained that these Terminator knock-offs had usurped Chaos as the setting's Big Bad. The 5th Edition codex has attempted to rectify this by drastically reducing the C'tan's presence in the background, specifically with a Retcon describing how they were betrayed and imprisoned by the Necrons. The book also assures readers that many Necron Lords have gone insane over the eons and enjoy delusions of godhood, and points out that what little the Imperium knows about the Necrons are mostly half-truths, lies, or flat-out wrong. Naturally, some fans are now complaining about the changes.
  • 40k‍'‍s oldest Creators' Pets have always been the Space Marines themselves. As Warhammer 40,000‍'‍s mascot characters, the Space Marines get the most exposure and the most updates, while Codex Creep ensures that they remain a potent force on the tabletop. In the setting's narrative, Space Marines are so awesome that they've been awarded the "moral victory" even when they failed a campaign's objectives. Roughly half of 40k‍'‍s armies are some variant of guys in Power Armor, and Space Marine merchandise sells more than all the other factions combined.
    • And then there are the Ultramarines, the Space Marines to the Space Marines. Thanks to letting an enormous Ultramarines fanboy do the writing, the Ultramarines have dominated the current Space Marine codex. Twenty-nine other Space Marine chapters are mentioned in the rulebook's background, and get a picture of their uniform and a paragraph or two of description - the rest of the book is all about the wonderful Ultramarines. The "Histories" and "Battles" sections of the book are devoted to the Ultramarines' exploits, while any other chapters get lumped into a comparatively brief seven-page section. Of the twenty-one pages of miniatures galleries, only two of them do not feature any Ultramarines. Of the special characters listed, half are from the Ultramarines, and half of those had not appeared in any previous edition. The Codex insists that even other First Founding legions, with their own traditions and proud histories, all aspire to emulate the example set by the Ultramarines. It even divides Space Marines into three categories: the Ultramarines and their successors, Space Marines from other gene-stock that try to be Ultramarines but can't due to their defective blood, and "aberrant" chapters who will eventually diminish in importance. Interestingly, before this the Ultramarines were considered kinda bland by many players, a generic by-the-book sort of chapter; now they have a massive Hatedom and even long-term Ultramarines fans are annoyed by how much their army's being overhyped.
    • Ward's irritating hype aside, at least some of the hate for Ultramarines qualifies as Hate Dumb, given that, as a percentage, they actually occupy less of the current codex than they did the previous one. Also, the previous Codex had two non-Ultramarines characters (out of seven), where as the current one has five (out of eleven).
      • It goes even further than this. The original "Space Marines" codex was called Ultramarines. The reason they are "by the book" is because "the book" is literally written by their Primarch based on how the Ultramarines are set up. The reason most other chapters follow "the book" is because they are ordered to follow it essentially under pain of death. The ones that violate it give at least lip service to the idea they are following it. The reason so many chapters were founded by the Ultramarines is because the Ultramarines played virtually no role in the Heresy since they were too far away from the battle, while almost every other legion took heavy casualties for one reason or another.
  • The newest Grey Knights codex - which was incidentally written by the same author as the latest Space Marine codex - introduced Lord Kaldor Draigo, who managed to one-up the Ultramarines through the sheer, over-the-top Sueishness of his accomplishments, which includes but it not limited to: surviving an endless walk through Hell, banishing a Daemon Prince in his first combat action, defeating a Daemon Primarch and vandalizing its still-beating heart, killing a Bloodthirster all but bare-handedly before stealing its unholy axe and reforging it into a sword with the power of his mind, and rampaging through the Chaos Gods' private demesnes without consequence.
• In Warhammer Fantasy the Blackorc Warboss Grimgor Ironhide is hated by a large part of the fandom for replacing a black orc considered to be better thought through, the writers likes him enough to let him defeat Archaon, another badass character, and thus save the world by being badass.
• The Elemental Heroes (and their spiritual successors, the Neospacians) from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX are certainly qualified here; already having a strike against them as the signature cards of the anime's unabashed Boring Invincible Hero Judai, they are absolutely reviled by most duelists due to their weak stats, underwhelming effects, their Fusions being unable to be summoned by fan favorites Cyber-Stein or Metamorphosis, and half of the Elemental Heroes being normal monsters. What pushes them over the edge, though is how throughout the show's run, Konami could hardly go through a set without dedicating at least a fourth of it to the E-Heroes/Neospacians and support cards.
  • Elemental Hero Mudballman is the king of this trope, being the only fusion with no actual effect, but still can't be summoned outside of fusion summon. At least Master of Dragon Soldier and Five God Dragon has reasonable effects to make up for it.
  • Similarly, Elemental Hero Flame Wingman and especially Elemental Hero Neos, as Judai couldn't seem to go one duel without using them almost exclusively. At least Flame Wingman remained silent, though; Neos also had the distinction of being The Obi-Wan since his introduction, and in seasons 2 and 4, he became a virtual Deus Ex Machina, becoming "real" to take care of non duel-related threats. As you might have guessed, fans are sick of their overuse.
  • Synchros and Tuners are (albeit less commonly) hated by fans for similar reasons - they utterly dominate the plot and duels of 5Ds, Konami dedicates an average of three-quarters of a set to them, but unlike the E-Heroes, the majority of Synchros * cough* Dark Strike Fighter * cough* are on par with effin' Chaos, which either totally redeems them or makes them glaringly worse, depending on which side of the Broken Base you are on.
    • Don't forget the predecessor of Synchros, Fusions. It's like the purpose of GX was to try and make them relevant. Never mind that you have to go through so many hoops to play them that Synchros were made to make them usable, every duelist in GX used them. Jaden's E-Heroes, as stated, most prominent.
• Elves in general seem to have slowly turned into this trope over time for large portions of the fantasy roleplaying fanbase, regardless of the system or setting in question. Broken Base doesn't even begin to cover it. People either love them to death or think they're an entire race of Creator's Pets, and there doesn't seem to be much middle ground, with each side thinking the other is Fan Dumb personified. Drow in particular suffer from this trope in a bad way, not the least of which because of the exploits of a certain scimitar-wielding fellow and his legions of fanboys. It's telling that the trend in modern fantasy games/settings leans much more toward Our Elves Are Worse.
• Genius: The Transgression: Referenced.
  • "Kid geniuses" aren't as common as many people think. (Though they are often as annoying as people think.) Minors make up 14% of the Inspired population, with one genius in 50 being under the age of 13. These characters show a slight proclivity for computer science, with dimensional research also being popular.
• The Old World of Darkness setting had Samuel Haight, arguably the worst Villain Sue ever published in all of pen & paper roleplaying. The writers just kept giving him more and more rule-breaking, crossover powers and kept instructing GMs to ensure he lives for another adventure before they finally clued into the massive Hatedom he had accumulated and killed him off brutally. (Then, in the afterlife, he was turned into a (still sentient) ashtray.)
• In Magic the Gathering, there is a bet every new set: "Which new strategy will be so imbalanced that players will bitch about how unfair it is and blame Mark Rosewater?" In the case of infect, Rosewater took blame because he loved poison counters so much.

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