Forth wall perception?

[ParagonAlpha]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

A friend of mine has played a character on and off for several years, named Dark Wing (he's sort of a Nightwing clone). Dark Wing thinks that he's just a comic book character, so everything will work out for him in the long run because he's the hero of the book.

 

Everyone else thinks Dark Wing is insane. He never really breaks the fourth wall, but he does talk about back issues and genre conventions. It's outright funny.

 

I ran a one shot game with Dr. Destroyer trying to take over the world. Dark Wing was one of the heros who arrived to try and stop him. At the end of the game (after one of the other players sacrificed his life to stop Dr. Destroyer and blow up his space citadel) Dark Wing got a package in the mail. In it was the comic book adamtation of what had just happened.

[Great Beyond]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

Oh, it wasnt fourth wall - well, kinda sorta - but a couple of years ago, I had a dimension hopping character who came home one day with a HUGE box of comics. Apparently it was an entire run of their lives, in comic form. Secret IDs, intimate moments, stuff that nobody could have known. They, as I recall, were pretty tripped out about it. Especially as they were reading, when they got to the last issue they had - which included them reading their comics.

 

Even better? The blurb for the next issue - it was a classic old school marvel "Next issue! SOMEONE DIES!" blurb.

 

As it turned out, nobody did die next game, but they were all watching their Ps and Qs that day I can tell you.

 

I have a villain like this that I plan on springing on my PC's at some point - his only power is that he can hear the gaming table. He considers the "voices" to be puppet masters that control the actions of the different heroes in his reality, which means the characters are enslaved to petty inter dimensional tyrants who put them through pain and hardship for their own amusement. Therefore, the NPC (called "the Puppeteer") goes around the country, listening for the "voices", which let him know that there's a 'puppet' nearby. Once he identifies a puppet, he'll try to "cut their strings", thereby freeing them from the tyrrany of the puppetmasters.

 

The twist is that, by the time he gets to the PC's table, he starts hearing me, the GM - which means he realizes that he's being controlled by a puppet master as well. Thus, his interactions with the PC's are really an elaborate murder/suicide, whereby he cuts his own strings while 'freeing' as many 'puppets' as he can.

 

Oh, you need to post that character, stat! I'm so having that for my game.

[Evil Steve]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

Danger Sense defined as "Can hear the soundtrack" and Precognition as "Has a copy of the script?

[Midas]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

 

Still, I can't see how anyone else wouldn't end up coming to the conclusion that the one character was delusional. That being said, I wouldn't want to go into potentially lethal situations with a superpowered candidate for a padded cell. You'd have to come up with a compelling reason why the rest of the PCs would have to put up with the presence of someone like that...

 

$0.02

 

'k, how about because his precog and clairvoy skills are dead on accurate, even if the special effect weirds out the other heroes?

 

Midas

[Narratio]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

Breaking that 4th wall works in comics where there is a structured framework and, 99.99% of the time, the characters stay in that structure. An RPG is a bit too flexible time periods are variable with a month going by in a night or just an hour or so. And, as Nekkidcarpenter said, most players break that 4th wall multiple times during a game. They compare character sheets, point out abilities or knowledge areas each other has forgotten etc, all outside of the normal phasing.

 

So I'd agree with some of the others above. Make it a 20pt Psycho Limit or Reputation as being a flaming nut case who can somehow manage to be in the right place at the right time. Then just let the rest of it go as normal gameplay.

[Iuz the Evil]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

I'm another who finds it mildly amusing in certain comics (She-Hulk, Deadpool) but consider that almost a comic sub-genre. Probably wouldn't work great in an RPG, though depends on the player/GM as always.

 

Still miffed I got beat out by the Fool reference.

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Forth wall perception?

 

The old adage of "if it's not really a disadvantage, it's not worth any points" works in the converse here--if there's really no advantage, it shouldn't cost any points. Does he want to actually do anything with his perception, or is it just amusing schtick? If he wants to have some kind of precognition, then buy that with the special effect of "hears the players' voices". If he just wants to banter in-character about being a role-playing game character, well, forget spending on it. Let him be as weird as he wants, but there's no reason to pay for it if he's not actually going to do anything with it.