Breaking the Fourth Wall: Narrative Imperative

[LurkAway]

The always refreshing Jared von Hindman has a new article here:
Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Fears for Tiers)

In your campaign, do you allow a PC to be cognizant that there are mysterious forces (which we know as xp, levels, encounter design, narrative imperative) shaping the course of their adventure in-game?

Conversely, how often does your PC break the fourth wall?

 

[I'm A Banana]

It's all a little Pratchett-esque.

Which is to say that this is how Discworld works. "One in a million chances happen nine times out of ten" and such. Narrituvium.

It doesn't lack punch, and I often truck with the idea of "stories have power" IMC, but I steer away from anything overt. It works in Discworld, because Discworld is comedy, and can be hilariously self-referential without deflating my enjoyment of it.

I think it would deflate my enjoyment of D&D, though. A D&D game's shared imagination is a much more fragile thing than a book's personal world, so its more important not to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.

 

[LostSoul]

I liked the article. It's too bad that there aren't more ties between the fiction of a paragon path/epic destiny and what happens in the game.

In your campaign, do you allow a PC to be cognizant that there are mysterious forces (which we know as xp, levels, encounter design, narrative imperative) shaping the course of their adventure in-game?

In my campaign (ie. where I DM), I play the NPCs as though they were not cognizant of the game's rules. They don't know what HP are, but they do know that some people are harder to bring down. I do give them a good awareness of their own competence (ie. their check modifiers), though, probably more than makes sense. I should probably rein that in.

I let the players decide what their PCs know. It's not my job to play the PCs. I don't care if the players want to metagame or not.

Conversely, how often does your PC break the fourth wall?

When I play (3.5 right now) it's usually for jokes; however, sometimes I find that I need to break the fourth wall in order to figure out what I'm up against. It's hard to get a good idea of how dangerous any foe is in 3.5 just by referencing the fiction.

 

[The Shaman]

In your campaign, do you allow a PC to be cognizant that there are mysterious forces (which we know as xp, levels, encounter design, narrative imperative) shaping the course of their adventure in-game?

No.

That may also have something to do with the fact that I'm not "presenting a story" and powerful characters may indeed stumble across weak opponents. One of the reasons I enjoy roleplaying games is that they can stand narative imperative on its head.

 

[LurkAway]

I liked the article. It's too bad that there aren't more ties between the fiction of a paragon path/epic destiny and what happens in the game.

I was thinking that it would help if players pre-planned their destinies in advance. For example, if a dragonborn is going to choose a winged destiny, then at heroic tier, he could narrate wingbuds emerging from underneath his shoulder scales, as a foretelling plot device. (If the player decided to pick a different destiny, then the wingbuds wither and die.)

 

[OhGodtheRats]

@ Kamikaze Midget: I think this might've been the 1st D&D Outsider in a while that didn't have a Discworld gag in it somewhere. I am a less than secret fan. Also, he's the only fantasy writer besides Alan Campbell I read and reread. I'm hopeless.

To answer the question though:
I'm too meta for my own good. I struggle to restrain my MetaBard from coming forward, usually to no avail. (Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Naughty or Nice?)) That said, I think characters knowing that they're making their own story or in one is no less meta than the inspiring speeches we see in Harry Potter or the Goonies, where the characters declare that this is their time & this is their story. You know, because everyone can relate if you use Harry Potter doing the Truffle Shuffle in your post, right?
:sigh:
-Jared

 

[Rechan]

I've never been in a game where players don't talk about HP/levels/meta knowledge. I've never been in a game where PCs do (unless the player/DM is making a joke/comment and it's not at all serious).

 

[howandwhy99]

I feel the players do it much of the time and using game terms as shorthand can speed game play along. As a referee I don't have NPCs break the fourth wall, but that is due to the design of the game.

 

[LurkAway]

I'm too meta for my own good. I struggle to restrain my MetaBard from coming forward, usually to no avail. (Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Naughty or Nice?))

So a MetaBard is like Deadpool, but referencing RPG tropes instead of comic book tropes?

Or is it roleplaying an insane bard who believes that he's the protagonist of his own tale and that he's simultaneously narrating and reliving his story. He doesn't make references to hit points, xp, etc. because he's not a true Metabard, but any narrative imperatives are totally in character.

I bet such a character believes he can't die because he was still alive to tell the tale before retroactively reliving the experience -- thus death would come as a bit of a shock. What would the ghost of a pseudoMetaBard be like?

 

[masshysteria]

I've been thinking about this and really want to run a dungeon romp game where the player characters are well aware of the meta aspects. They know they are heroes, they know they are a "party," they can't wait to hit the next level and hanging out in bars waiting for old men with quest to stumble in is a perfectly acceptable career choice.

After all the games where we've pushed for deep role play a back-to-the-basics let's just have a fun time and laugh until our stomachs ache sounds like the thing to do.