Misaimed Fandom/Tabletop Games

Examples of Misaimed Fandom for characters in Tabletop Games include:

Tabletop RPG

The Old World of Darkness supplement The Book of Nod was originally a source of stories and a prop for the setting. Imagine the author's surprise when Noddism became a cult.
- Ditto that for the Sabbat faction in Vampire: The Masquerade. Originally little more than vampiric orcs, the Sabbat became the setting's most popular faction among players, despite (or perhaps because of) the gory and sadistic supplements that described their behavior.
  - Some of the additional depth (and sympathetic elements) the Sabbat later received may have been an attempt to move the target a little closer to where fandom was aiming. They're still liberatingly horrible by and large, but with a few legitimate points to stand for.
A good portion of the Rifts fandom symphasise with the Coalition States. The Coalition States, for the record, is a totalitarian, Orwellian, fascist police state that heavily restricts media, education, and free speech, seeks to control the entire Earth, and is violently racist against non-humans - either they're wiped out on sight or forced to live in underprivileged ghettos until the day they die. If any of this is lost on you, they're aesthetically, philosophically, and socially based on Nazi Germany, which should tip people off that they're not supposed to be the good guys. Their caps even have skulls on them! Problem is, not only are they badass, but some nonhumans in the setting do pose an imminent danger to human civilisation, leading to many people ignoring - or worse, glorifying - the Coalition's atrocities. The creator was so fed up with this that he included an Anvilicious Author Filibuster in a later book detailing that the Coalition is fundamentally evil, but this hasn't stopped a thing.
- What book was that? The only Author Filibuster that I remember was the one he wrote where he was going 'despite the fact that the Coalition has some evil leaders and does some evil things, they really are the primary force of order in their world and have a lot of good, well-meaning people in their rank and file!'.
- Also, if the author actually does hold any disapproval for the Coalition, you sure can't tell it by looking at the plot. The CS catches lucky break after lucky break to Villain Sue levels.
- The latest official supplement in the Rifts line is called Secrets of the Coalition States – Heroes of Humanity. This may be the first example of the trope where the original misaimed-ness became canon, at the same time the detractors of the Coalition are now the ones out of sync with the creator's vision.

War Games

Anytime anyone at all thinks that one of the factions in Warhammer 40,000 is "the good guys" (hint: Evil Versus Evil is one of the foundations of the setting). This is almost always directed at the Tau, the Imperium of Man (mostly via the Imperial Guard) and/or the Eldar (and occasionally Da Orks), probably because their most common enemies routinely perform actions several orders of magnitude worse than anything the previous factions could possibly achieve.
- Some neo-Nazis think that the Imperium is some kind of post-neo-fascist paradise.
  - Note how the Imperium combines the worst parts of Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany and Maoist China with added piles of awful awful awful leadership. Not to mention the worst parts of Dark Ages Europe and pretty much the entire history of colonial imperialism.
  - It's probably safe to say the Imperium combines the worse aspects of most, if not all, of human history.
  - For added Irony one of the few positives about The Imperium is that ethnicity and gender are no longer used to discriminate against people and everyone is treated equally albeit equally poorly.
    - They make up for it with their Fantastic Racism vs. aliens and abhumans, though.
  - To be fair, while the Imperium is indeed horrifically awful, Warhammer 40k is the place where the entire universe is made out of horrifically awful. So sometimes fans confuse the statements 'the Imperium is incrementally less horrible than the competition' (true) with 'the Imperium isn't horrible' (FALSE). It brings to mind Churchill's famous aphorism about such-and-such being the worst form of government that mankind had ever tried... except for all the other ones.
- It was a bit more justified originally with the Tau, since the original material on them kind of glossed over any of their negative aspects. Character Development fixed that, though they still offer conversion as an alternative to extermination, which none of the other factions really do.
  - Take note that said Character Development only appeared after fans complained that they weren't Grimdark enough, and most of their negative aspects are described in quotes by Imperial characters. The Tau are either the best dudes in the universe if Imperial propaganda isn't true, or merely as grey as the Imperium if it is.
- The Harlequin as portrayed are probably the closest thing to "the good guys" in the setting. They also are severely underdeveloped.
  - They are implied to be trying to reunite the Eldar race but don't really care about changing the ideologies of their allies.
- The whole thing isn't helped by Black Library writers trying to give the Imperium a human face in order to make political officers sympathetic.
- Some claim that the whole setting was never meant to be taken as seriously as many fans do. In a fine example of this trope and/or Poe's Law, things intended as parody and Black Comedy were embraced unironically.
  - This has been gone back and forth with each edition, 1st was pure parody, 2nd took the story serious, 3rd took itself so serious and was so grimdark it became a joke, 4th and 5th are Lighter and Softer with real heroes and villains.

Back to Misaimed Fandom