Popularity Power/Tabletop Games

Examples of Popularity Power in Tabletop Games include:

A variation on this frequently crops up in licensed roleplaying games: characters from the original canon will be given game statistics built on the presumption that such characters are the absolute best specimens of their particular niche. What begins as a hope for insurance against potential Mary Sue Player Characters running roughshod over the continuity can easily become ludicrous when compared to the game's own stated benchmarks for mundane characters, resulting in situations where such individuals couldn't actually be challenged/threatened by scenarios faithfully reproducing their own adventures. What makes it even worse are the Game Breaker powers and ridiculously inflated abilities designers will give canon characters that are often direct violations of the rules. Players who see these stats and abilities can rather reasonably demand why their characters can't attain the same levels of power, which can put a DM in an awkward position.
- Subverted often with those same characters. While they often have overinflated levels in the skills and abilities that they demonstrate on the show, they are usually so poorly built (as are most pregenerated "example" characters) that they cannot actually handle the canon adventures they are described as undertaking successfully, nor would they last very long at all in a real campaign. Nor would any PC with a mind to clear out the overabundance of Mary Sue characters have much trouble in doing so, even at a drastically lower level.
- The Star Trek RPG from FASA clearly assumed that not only was the Enterprise the most successful ship of its class in service, but that every position on the ship was filled by the single most competent individual in that field to be found in Starfleet. One must feel sorry for the security chief of any other vessel by comparison.
- White Wolf's Street Fighter RPG. Theoretically based on the arcade game franchise, a by-the-book starting campaign is more about the role roughly "real world compliant" martial artists would have in a world with Street Fighter characters in it (i.e. window dressing.)
- Averted in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel RPGs. All major characters are statted out, and they are indeed much more experienced than the PCs. However, the character's stats and xp are tracked for each individual season. Want to have Buffy on par with your group? Just set it around the first season.
  - Even then, the game gives you a choice of character type between Heroes/Champions, with awesome stats, and White Hats/Investigators, with worse stats but more Drama Points to begin with plus a lower cost for more Drama Points. There is also a third option, Experienced Hero, which gives you better stats than the Hero and the Drama Point use of the White Hat. The Experienced Hero is designed for a whole party to use together, for balance, to reach the power level of a slightly more experienced canon character, although still not quite as experienced as the canon builds.
- A particularly Egregious example would be R. Talsorian's Bubblegum Crisis RPG. The Knight Sabers were built to ludicrous levels; Priss was superhumanly strong and could survive a hit from a 120mm cannon without her Hard Suit or any other protection.
Many roleplaying games use builds of the creator's own PCs as background for their publishing the setting. Having been played for many years, they obviously reach extremely high levels. But, having been played for that long, they usually are pretty good at surviving a normal campaign or fending off lower level PCs.
- Elminster is obviously the most powerful of these for the Forgotten Realms, although most of the major FR characters are subjected to it in one form or another.
Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG had an elaborate character creation system that provided rules for creating mutant squirrels, Moose, Housecats, or whatever. But the title characters were impossible to create according to the rules. Their Ninja Skills were fine, but their mutations were more advantageous than was possible for Player Characters.
The Revised Core rulebook of the D20 Star Wars Roleplaying Game gives all the main characters average stats. Coupled with the fact that they are poorly built, this actually means that the Luke (circa Episode IV) of the core books is weaker than many heroes on their third or fourth adventures. Fortunately, later supplements improved the NPC quality, bringing the heroes to an even level with the average PC.
- Luke wasn't that powerful, though. Circa Episode IV, he barely even knew how to use the Force, had only some casual pilot experience under his belt, and was really just on his first adventure himself.
- This is also somewhat a backlash from the WEG D6 version of the rules, which gave all the canon characters incredibly pumped up stats. Han Solo, who is shown in the movies as being a pretty bad liar ('We're, uh, all fine here. How're you?') is given 8d or so in lying for instance. And 8d being basically one of the best people in a galactic sector or such. Their other stats are just as inflated. (Starting PCs for the record could start out at 5d-6d). Their focus skills were even worse. Someone once added it up and decided it'd take over a decade to get as high as Han Solo or Luke.
Starting with Dungeons & Dragons 3.0, dragons are given "Challenge Ratings" that are lower than usual for their power level. Thus, if the dungeon master follows the challenge rating system, dragons are always more powerful than whatever else the player characters are facing. The game designers state that this was intentional, so that encounters with dragons always feel special.

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