The Scrappy/Tabletop Games

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Examples of The Scrappy in Tabletop Games include:

  • Many gamers resent board games in general, as Moral Guardians who protest against Video Games often cite them as an alternative for children, often calling it an example of the kind of game that children should be playing, or as an example of something "productive" or something they can do while having fun with their families rather than sitting alone in the room interacting with nothing but a machine.
  • Keenan Caine of Bliss Stage is a Jerkass. His Kick the Dog moment in the continuing examples in the rules and being a Carefree Hedonist in game terms probably doesn't help much.
  • Kender. Maybe it's the way they're almost always played as Chaotic Stupid. Maybe it's because they seem rather out of place in a world as crapsacky as Dragonlance.
  • Marneus Calgar from Warhammer 40,000. Even most Space Marine fans hate him these days, possibly owing to him being a Mary Sue.
    • The Ultramarines as a whole. While they still have their fans, the majority of players can't stand them. They were alright when they were kept more in the background, but then Games Workshop fell in love with them and started promoting them out the wazoo.
    • For a lot of people Mat Ward has become a scrappy fluff writer due in large part to writing the background for the above mentioned Ultramarines and for the 5th Edition Blood Angels Codex.
      • This has been taken to truly staggering levels with the release of the new Grey Knights code; quite a few players are furious at Ward's new fluff, which among other things has one of the Grey Knights become the Grand Master of the chapter at the exact same time he's stranded in the Warp for several centuries, as well as making some Knights slaughter a convent of Sisters of Battle who have managed to remain pure despite their world falling to Chaos, and following that up with using their blood to anoint weapons and armor to protect against Chaos. The exact same wargear that's already been blessed and specifically made to fight Chaos in the first place.
  • In Dungeons and Dragons, one monster that is almost universally despised is the Flumph. First appearing in the original Fiend Folio, this flying jellyfish-like Aberration - and Ridiculously Cute Critter - was the only Lawful Good monster in the book. That kind of limited its usefulness - it's only real uses are for a party of Evil PCs or a Let's You and Him Fight scenario with typical ones. However, in either scenario, it's going to be a Curb Stomp in favor of the PCs, because the only truly useful ability a flumph has is its foul-smelling musk that might attract other monsters after the flumph is defeated. Among both players and creators, the flumph has been regarded as ugly, stupid, inappropriate, boring and generally one of the worst ideas to come out of D&D. In 3rd Edition, it didn't appear at all in any of the five Monster Manuals, two Fiendish Codices, or that edition's version of the Fiend Folio, nor did they appear in the Lords of Madness sourcebook, despite it being all about aberrations. It was likewise left out of 4th Edition, the dev team explaining that "if it's Good aligned, it shouldn't really be in the Monster Manual; those books should be full of creatures you can realistically expect to battle". (It should be noted that in 4th Edition, Metallic Dragons are changed from Good to Unaligned, and Storm Giants changed from Good to Evil.
    • Flumphs still have a few defenders, and 5th Edition has a few trying to Rescue them from the Scrappy Heap; they are in that edition's Monster Manual, and Pathfinder gave them something of a backstory with the Splatbook "Misfit Monsters Redeemed" splat, where it answered the question "why are Flumphs Lawful Good", and if you consider flumphs to be confused little aliens that fell off a Spelljammer craft, they almost make sense. For now, however, they seem to only fit as Joke Characters.
  • For Ravenloft players, other then Strahd and Azalin Rex, all the other Darklords/Domains have detractors and defenders; but Death and the Necropolis is almost universally despised. For those who do not know the setting. Picture a city in the middle of a populated Kingdom. Now everyone in this city is undead - sounds like a guilt-free monster bashing fest, right? Wrong. This city is surrounded by The Shroud - which immediately kills everyone who crosses it, and animates them into undead, no exceptions, no saves (sure there is a plant that prevents this, but it's a hard-to-find supplement). The Ruler Death also fails to leave a lasting impression. For most DMs, they found the obvious danger to PCs and the setting's aversion of Death Is Cheap trope renders Necropolis nigh-unplayable without some serious railroading, and often found it easier just to excise it.
    • The boxed set with the epic adventure Requiem: The Grim Harvest suggested TSR had been planning to use Necropolis as the center of a Spin-Off setting where players could use undead PCs. As cool as that may have been, it seems to have become an Aborted Arc.
  • For Magic: The Gathering players, there are many variants of this:
    • The Tier-Induced Scrappy colors are blue (for being too broken) and green (for being too weak). Red also gets some hate, because all the good red cards are at common, so many fans think you can always tell a n00b by the fact that it's turn 5 and all he's played are mountains.
    • The Scrappy Mechanic is countering. It just seems unfair that all your hard work will be removed. Of course, if it's a permanent, it can be removed anyway once in play...
      • Even with the prevalence of removal spells, countering is still considered far, far more of a Scrappy Mechanic. For one, there are only a tiny handful of cards that can't be countered. Anything else, even Progenitus, whose whole schtick is that nothing short of a board-wiping nuke can touch it, can get countered, usually meaning critical or game-ending spells can be thwarted for a measly two mana. This tends to have devastating consequences in more serious play, since the havoc counterspells wreak on tempo means even a soft counter like Remand can be devastating for the mana it makes you waste. Combine this with the fact that one of the single best equipment cards in the game, Sword of Feast And Famine, means any deck that runs counterspells has a way to always have land open during enemy turns while also giving one of their creatures a sizable power boost and four bonus abilities, and you can start to see why people dread playing against decks that pack a lot of counterspells.
      • One should note that this is exactly the reason why formats exist (apart from keeping up the income from the franchise). An old card becoming powerful way beyond intention due to new, stronger cards being printed, is not supposed to ruin the game. As it is these old cards (Wrath of God, Counterspell etc.) can only be used outside of vintage when the recent edition contained a reprint of said card. Most of these cards were made back when a powerful card cost 7 mana, was a 7/7 monster and had no effect at all.
    • The Scrappy sets include Homelands (too weak), Fallen Empires (all the good cards at common, a print run being six times the core set of the time), and The Dark (too weak, and even had Sorrow's Path, long considered the worst card in Magic.). The Kamigawa block also got a huge hatedom.
    • The Eldrazi Titans are Scrappies as well, either for being extremely powerful (In Vintage, it's possible to get them in play as soon as you have certain cards in play.) or for being too weak. (Emrakul costs 15 mana!)
    • Nicol Bolas has a huge hatedom, mainly due to his Villain Sue characterization.
  • In the Exalted fandom, there are large sections who view the Solar Exalted in general as this, for anything from their significant power (they're supposed to be the mightiest of the Exalted), their perceived lack of interesting features (their powers are more human-based than the other Exalted, and part of the jump-off point is based around them being uninvolved in the world's history for more than a thousand years), their setting centrality, or ideas of them being entitled (the Solars having been tyrannical rulers in the distant past and some portrayed as expecting such authority to be handed to them by right).
    • The Green Sun Princes are also subjected to some of it by people who think their introduction throws off too much of the setting, that they're allowed to make a Deal with the Devil and encouraged to not suffer any consequences for it, and the perception of their powers being expansive enough to "make all other Exalted redundant".
    • In terms of individual characters, the Scarlet Empress gets the most of this, often viewed as somebody who is given too many victories for too little effort, and who makes other characters look stupid for having failed to get rid of or otherwise deal with her (alternatively, there are those who view her as portrayed as having displayed too many incompetencies and having too many failures for her extended centrality to make sense).
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