RPG Breaks The Fourth Wall

[Bartmanhomer]

Is it possible that RPG can break the fourth wall? (You know that PC and NPC found out that they're being control by real human players and they live in a RPG World.) or is it not possible? :confused:

[JenBurdoo]

In Munchkin D20, Farce users have figured out that they are PCs, and can buy cheats feats such as Farce Feed (bribe the GM with food), Farce Shift (move your disadvantaged mini somewhere else that you meant him to be all along), and Farce Ghost (When the GM tells you you're dead, ignore him).

[Mr Beer]

Can a character break the 4th wall by being aware that they are merely a construct of a player's imagination? Sure, why not? There's probably games that have it as a specific concept.

[Avigor]

While not an RPG, in the Harry Potter and the Natural 20 fanfiction (I so badly wish that more chapters would come out already), the D&D world Milo Amastacia-Liadon came from knew the D20 rule-set that governed their world, and there was a reference at one point to the Coastal Collegiate of Theoretical Arcanists (i.e. wizards living along a coastline) who researches and tests the laws of the universe and publishes their findings as the Rules. Milo even frequently references the DM, using a variety of acronyms such as Destiny Manipulator and Dispassionate Moderator and seemingly acting like each and every different acronym is a separate facet of some universal law. The world was also Genre-Savvy, being fully aware of the difference between a PC and an NPC, and of story conventions. Maybe not quite breaking the 4th wall however as they didn't really know that they were fictional characters.
The closest Milo came was when he once addressed the Munchinkin PC Archetype (his former PC) directly through his replacement during a return visit to the D&Dverse.

[Grod_The_Giant]

As with all things RPG, it's entirely up to your group. Fourth wall breaking is more of a tone-based thing than anything else.

That said, for a while now I've kind of wanted to play a character who's convinced that he's living in an RPG, but the wrong RPG. So, like, he'd talk about motes of essence and charms and botches and such in a D&D game, or blather about fort saves and hit points and spell slots in an Exalted game.

[Anonymouswizard]

One of the suggested 'delusions' in the Savage Worlds Hindrances section is 'we're all just characters in a bizarre game'. So yes, it is completely possible.

To the point Grod isn't the only person who has the desire for 'wrong system' characters. The example I tend to use is an Unknown Armies character who's so convinced that they're in a game of Urban Arcana that they get Adept powers from it (they generate a Major Charge by resting for eight hours).

[Tinkerer]

It's the type of delusion which would fit perfectly on a Crazy from Rifts. I also really like Grod's suggestion there, I had something similar a while ago but I never thought of using another RPG. Instead I used the slightly more mundane concept of the incorrect medium like a RPG character thinking they were a comic book character or (always a classic) a 1950's noir detective. Then the Deadpool movie came out and I abandoned the idea since it seemed a little over-saturated at that time.

[The Glyphstone]

I knew one person, way back when, who had that as his delusion for a Malkavian in a OWOD game.

[Nifft]

I knew one person, way back when, who had that as his delusion for a Malkavian in a OWOD game.

Deep Fish Malk.

[The Glyphstone]

Deep Fish Malk.

Yyyyuuuuup. What's worse, this was in a LARP troupe, so he was also convinced the other vampires were just LARPers really dedicated to not breaking character. Fish Malk to the max.

[LibraryOgre]

Yyyyuuuuup. What's worse, this was in a LARP troupe, so he was also convinced the other vampires were just LARPers really dedicated to not breaking character. Fish Malk to the max.

That's even more obnoxious.

[Jay R]

Oh, go the next step. The PC knows that there is an entity out there outside of his world that created him, makes all his choices, gives him his spells, and can choose to crumple him up and throw him away. By any valid measure, the player should be the PC's god.

[VincentTakeda]

I've been running some experiments. Come here... Watch this... This mundane task that I've been doing for decades and I'm fantastically good at it... I still seem to fail at it drastically one time out of twenty...

I hear them talking a lot about this over at the church of numbers...

[EccentricCircle]

I once ran a scenario, back when we were testing D&D next which fits the bill. The the PCs learned that a rogue wizard was trying to steal the books in which the Wizards, who lived in a tower by the coast, wrote the laws of reality. The game ended up with them following him through a Dungeon based on the cover art from every D&D core rulebook to date. Each level of the dungeon was themed around a different D&D edition. The 3rd floor was deserted, because everyone now lived on a mezzanine level, where they were engaged in a literal flame war with the people who lived on the fourth floor. It was a very fun game to run.

One day I really want to run a game, which starts off as a cheesy dungeon crawl, where they have to break into the dungeon, fight a room or two of goblins, and rescue a princess from an evil sorcerer.

Then when they get to the end of the dungeon, far sooner than expected, things get a little strange... The princess escapes through a magical portal to another dimension, and the sorcerer is in hot pursuit.

At this point the other members of the ref team burst out of a nearby wardrobe dressed as the princess and the sorcerer respectively, and the game suddenly becomes a modern day Larp, where a bunch of D&D players find that their game comes to life, and have to help the princess get back to her own reality, and defeat an evil mage, before he can take over the real world...


I'd also quite like to do a dimension spanning game, where the PCs regularly travel between realities. When their world starts to unravel they discover that they have to travel to a strange world and prevent the assassination of the DM, who happens to be running the game in which they all live.

[LibraryOgre]

Oh, go the next step. The PC knows that there is an entity out there outside of his world that created him, makes all his choices, gives him his spells, and can choose to crumple him up and throw him away. By any valid measure, the player should be the PC's god.

Or the demon he resists.

[Joe the Rat]

I knew one person, way back when, who had that as his delusion for a Malkavian in a OWOD game.

I'd suggested this is an Orphan paradigm for Mage (with a copy of the M:tA book as his primary library resource). That was shot down.

TOON is pretty much on the line, though that's more about the awareness of being a cartoon character and having an audience to interact with than being a game character. But it does have one bit of Fourth Wall shenanigans. If you Fall Down (reduced to 0 hp) your character is out of the game for three real world minutes.

[Lapak]

Depending on the game you’re playing, this could end up playing out as anywhere from light-hearted farce (PCs in a storytelling game or with a DM who believes in PC glow run amok when they realize they are literally the center of creation) to a thoughtful exploration of what gives life meaning (PCs on a serious but survivable quest confront what it means when the life-and-death matters they face are some distant god’s entertainment and decide if their existence still has meaning) to a nihilistic depress-a-thon (the game being played is Paranoia.)

Interestingly, the seriousness of the discovery to the characters may have an inverse relationship with the mood of the game - the sillier / more gonzo the system, the more arbitrary and cruel it may seem to the inhabitants.

[Chromium Snyde]

There are a series of books called "The sword and the chain" where this happens in a kind of reverse. A group of uni student players are transported to the world they were playing in and have been turned into thief characters (dwarfs, Herculean fighters, top level thieves, and crotchety old magi). They are all affected by split personality disorder as they have the traits and personalities of both player and character, and quickly realise that living in the fantasy realm is hell as strength is the only real law, and they start to get mauled and killed. I forget who wrote it...

[Anymage]

It's tricky to do as more than a character's one annoying shtick in a game. Genre savvy heroes work well when one author controls all the characters and the world. It's less effective when there are other actors and the randomness of the dice that you have to consider.

More doable in a LARP (where there are other people to talk with instead of the same bunch sitting around the table), or in a campaign where that's the whole premise. But one-trick ponies get dull quickly. And unless this is in a pointedly comedy setting, it's hard for such a character to grow outside of their trick.

[Lapak]

There are a series of books called "The sword and the chain" where this happens in a kind of reverse. A group of uni student players are transported to the world they were playing in and have been turned into thief characters (dwarfs, Herculean fighters, top level thieves, and crotchety old magi). They are all affected by split personality disorder as they have the traits and personalities of both player and character, and quickly realise that living in the fantasy realm is hell as strength is the only real law, and they start to get mauled and killed. I forget who wrote it...
Joel Rosenberg wrote the Guardians of the Flame series, I think the Sword and the Chain is one of the books in it.

[LibraryOgre]

There are a series of books called "The sword and the chain" where this happens in a kind of reverse. A group of uni student players are transported to the world they were playing in and have been turned into thief characters (dwarfs, Herculean fighters, top level thieves, and crotchety old magi). They are all affected by split personality disorder as they have the traits and personalities of both player and character, and quickly realise that living in the fantasy realm is hell as strength is the only real law, and they start to get mauled and killed. I forget who wrote it...


Joel Rosenberg wrote the Guardians of the Flame series, I think the Sword and the Chain is one of the books in it.

Lapak is correct. The first is The Sleeping Dragon (http://amzn.to/2hNimU8), the Sword and the Chain (http://amzn.to/2BhpSPC), then The Silver Crown (http://amzn.to/2zha7Hj), the Heir Apparent, (http://amzn.to/2zfOfvJ) The Warrior Lives, (http://amzn.to/2Bhtwcy) the Road to Ehvenor (http://amzn.to/2A0OZrT), The Road Home, (http://amzn.to/2A1kcev) then Not Exactly the Three Musketeers (http://amzn.to/2hMJJOa), Not Quite Scaramouche (http://amzn.to/2Bh4QAC), and Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda (http://amzn.to/2hLNdk1). Unfortunately, he died before he went any further, leaving several things unresolved.

Note that this is not Joel C. Rosenberg, who writes political thrillers.

[Zale]

Oh, go the next step. The PC knows that there is an entity out there outside of his world that created him, makes all his choices, gives him his spells, and can choose to crumple him up and throw him away. By any valid measure, the player should be the PC's god.

This reminds me of something that Jenna Moran on her blog (http://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/158818824128/chthonic-actions-1-of-2):


If there’s a fundamental world, a framework into which the power of wishes and Imperial miracles fits, that world is Auctorita. Auctorita, and the things that create them:

Afflictions. Conventions. Wounds.

… players.

Character sheets. Drama. Shapeless “do what they must” effects. The process of play.

… the HG.

I don’t mean to get all meta when I talk about “players” here.

I just mean that the kinds of effects that wind up stepping back from the world and dealing with what the players know, or who they play, or what the HG narrates, or whatever, that those kinds of effects are intrinsically also going to be part of that deeper fabric of the world. The players themselves can be invisible to the game, that’s fine, we don’t have to break the fourth wall, but the deep structure of the way in which they interact with the character, the shape of that—that’s part of the substrate, of the deep, pre-wish world.

When you think about it, the players are in many ways part of the underpinnings of a game world. Their desires and interest are reflected in the game setting and world, and the things the decide to do as players have a huge impact on how the world changes.

I know I've had players's running jokes evolve into actual things within the setting, and the things they as players are interested in are what I often use to encourage them to follow a plot- if one of your players really like boats, then it's very likely the game world will have a fair amount of sailing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This reminds me of something that Jenna Moran on her blog (http://jennamoran.tumblr.com/post/158818824128/chthonic-actions-1-of-2):



When you think about it, the players are in many ways part of the underpinnings of a game world. Their desires and interest are reflected in the game setting and world, and the things the decide to do as players have a huge impact on how the world changes.

I know I've had players's running jokes evolve into actual things within the setting, and the things they as players are interested in are what I often use to encourage them to follow a plot- if one of your players really like boats, then it's very likely the game world will have a fair amount of sailing.

I take the setting as the stage for the play, and everything is a prop or foil for the player characters. I've had many cases where my players had better ideas for what was going on than I did when I wrote it, which I then gleefully stole and made canon.

[Jay R]

Or the demon he resists.

Oh, I like it. The character worships the GM as the true god and creator of the world, and resists the player who is the tempter who tries to lead him astray.

[lightningcat]

Joel Rosenberg wrote the Guardians of the Flame series, I think the Sword and the Chain is one of the books in it.

This is also the plot of a book by Andre Norton that was written after gaming with E. Gary Gygax. Which I think is the first D&D based book. Now I need to go find my copy.