4th Wall

Can you implement messing with the fourth wall in your games without looking like a tryhard?

How would you handle characters that went meta and broke the fourth wall?

you just
can't.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Yes, in the very specific situation where in a Marvel RPG and the DM asks you to take Deadpool as a second character.

For plot?

I only do it for the god like beings in light hearted settings
For instance, the party was talking to a god, and asked something that would reveal the nature of a mysterious item that was a big mystery. Since i didnt want it revealed as he started to answer a piece of duct tape flew over his mouth with "GM" written on it.
it was kinda lazy and probably bad GMing but the players got a chuckle and didnt seem to mind

just fucking dont

My character got drunk as fuck, someone asked if he was trying to speak elvish.
>Who the hell is Elvis!?

If you are going to, don't write it into your notes beforehand. If the opportunity to break the fourth wall comes, take it, but don't force it let it come naturally.

I can't really think of any way to do so. Breaking the fourth wall involves a character to speak to the audience, it's kind of difficult when everyone in the room is a part of the game and interacting with the setting.

Not sure if it counts but we played a Pathfinder game that took place as if the characters magically crawled off of the table or their sheets into the real world. The same size though, so they were like 2 inches high, and had to go around trying to figure out how to get back home.

The location was based on the DM's neighborhood, and among other things encountered his cat.

The key to using fourth wall/meta stuff well in a story is to have the "meta" elements actually be part of the story's universe. Instead of just having the characters literally acknowledge that they're in a tabletop game with players and a GM, have in-story things that represent them, and have the characters acknowledge and work with those. In a "meta" sense, have them be illusions and symbolism, but in the actual literal sense they're still part of the game world.

For example, Exalted's version of the Fair Folk are a sort of allusion to roleplayers, in that they're naturally shapeless beings that take form to literally play a role in the universe. So while one of them might appear to be a fancy elf wizard, its true self is a reality-warping disembodied consciousness that's ~narrating~ your encounter with the elf. But the consiousness itself is also a thing in-universe, so with the right magic you can interact with the "player" directly instead of just the "character". However, they themselves operate on completely different rules from humans; even their stats are different, as if they're literally playing a different game.

>Elvis
Is that one of your old characters or something?

I once played a cleric and rolled Knowledge: Religion to try and find out who the hell this 'Batman' guy was.

That sounds adorable

It's not exactly 4th wall breaking, but I'm planning on exploiting the unintentional meta-gaming by players in a campaign I might run.

I'll run a Cthulhu system, and tell my players not to take any mythos skills nor knowledge. Then during their investigation on a murder I would drop hints about a mythos cult In the end it would just turn out to be an elaborate, immoral experiment on how likely people with mental baggage start to believe pseudo-religious nonsense as truth that got out of hand. PC's just stumbled into that experiment through their investigations. I predict that players ether metagame like crazy or act like their character is disbelieving what they see but in the end become convinced about the existence of mythos. They will feel like a bunch of knobheads when they realize just how crazy they have played their characters. I may even pull a double mindfuck and hint that the experiment organizer was Nyarlathotep in disguise.

I'm pretty sure there's a video game where this happens.

In general, fourth wall meta shenanigans are basically a way to make to make a character look cool or funny. They're a stylistic element, so it helps to approach them from that perspective.

So, how do you use stylistic elements without seeming like a tryhard? You give them substance. Make them happen for a reason. If there's a character who has a black and red color scheme just to be badass, he'll come across as a silly poser; if he has a black and red color scheme for a good reason, such as having magma-themed powers, then it works because it fits. Meta stuff works the same way. It fails when it's just style without substance, but it works when it's there for a reason.

For a good example of meta shenanigans done right, I'd recommend looking at Undertale. Saying too much would be spoilers, but it has quite a few fourth-wall-bending meta nods, and it makes them work because they're closely linked with the plot of the game. They're treated like a story element that's there for a reason, so you can appreciate them as such; they work with the story rather than against it.

Depends. Do you play the game for light-hearted fun and say "Fuck the rules" for appropriate shenanigans? Fourth wall breaking is a go.
Do you play the game for immersion and serious role playing? Fourth wall breaking is a no go.

Look at deadpool comis books and borderlands games. Did it? Now just do the opposite and you'll be fine.

>undertale
No. Just no. It was forced as fuck.

I sometimes imparted IC/OOC instructions to my fellows in the same vein as Otacon. I didn't do it often, only when they kept forgetting what to do and people were tired of reminding them. Did it garner a few laughs? Yes. Was it annoying to the GM? Absolutely. Did it earn a threat of implementing a Sanity mechanic to the game to keep this in check? You bet. Did they forget how to do the thing I instructed them to do? No they did not.

Needless to say, such things should be done mostly never, but if it's necessary then use it absolutely sparingly.

>I may even pull a double mindfuck and hint that the experiment organizer was Nyarlathotep in disguise.
He would do that, wouldn't he?
Just for shits and giggles.

I ran a game where my Player's Characters were the Avatars of Elder Gods, above even the Gods normally worshiped. What they didn't know, until a ways into the plot, was that the names of those Elder Gods were bastardized versions of their own names.

Underrated post

He would do it because it would, in the end, lessen the belief in the other Outer Gods. Understanding some of the Mythos, and then not believing in it, gives you some defense against it.
So it would be a "Fuck you" to the other Outer Gods, who he hates.

They did something like it in some D&D MMORPG for April Fool's Day.

I ran a one shot comedic game a couple years ago where the PCs visited a Temple called the Hall of Stories in which there was a Story Room with 4 walls depicting various events. The temple priests explained that the first wall was the past, the second the present and the third, the future while the fourth had moving images that bound reality as they knew it together.
The fourth had been vandalized and ruined by a former caretaker. They asked the party to find the Gnome that'd done it and force him to pay for his crime, which they suspected would magically right the wrong.
Along the way, basic foundations of their fantasy world were falling apart and getting meta.
>NPCs all carried around their own statblocks on pieces of paper and asked how game night was going.
>etc.
When they finally found him, he had gone mad from having ruined the fourth wall and was rambling about his destiny to become the main character and how this was his story. Unbound from reality, he turned himself into a dragon and combat ensued. All the while the party had banter with him about his story being a comedy or tragedy.
At the end, the party rogue put a rapier into his brain up through his jaw and finished by telling him "I'm pretty sure it's a tragedy" wickedly before pulling the blade out.

Looking back it might've been a little "tryhard" but we all had a lot of jokes to make during the game and all the players said they had fun.

i might have to steal that idea

> How would you handle characters that went meta and broke the fourth wall?
For humor, and it fits the character (like Deadpool), it's a-ok. Otherwise, stop it or GTFO.

I don't know if that count as breaking the fourth wall, but I had a group of influence warn the party by sending them a message in real life.
It was the first time that group interacted with the party, and I hired my girlfriend to send them all a grouped sms just before unleashing hell on their faces. They didn had her number and whe are playing via internet, so they ended up confused as fuck.
Though now that I think about it, it's probably more of a form of meta-game than fourth-wall breakage.