How would you make a metagaming villain, /tg/?

I watched Deadpool the other day and I don't get how he has the superpower to be aware he's in a film, yet he doesn't use that to his advantage.

I guess Last Action Hero is a better example. That villain had the right idea.

>>47020616
The same way you'd make a metagaming hero except roles reversed.

>>47020616
Obviously the best way is to have them do ALL the cliches, and then subvert them. Collapsing lava bridge? It falls up to the next floor. Second in command that is probably equal in power? He's on vacation and left you his status-symbol weapon of asskicking for safekeeping. Giant castle on a mountaintop? It's actually just a detailed model magically grown to full-size, the actual boss room is the cottage further up the road.

>>47020616
Literally Undertale's Flowey.

>>47020636
Good call on Last Action Hero, too.
Deadpool isn't aware of the fourth wall because of powers, it's just the way that he's written.

>>47020616

Three routes. Sorry, I'll have to use some TVtropes lingo.

The first is to set up obvious cliches that the players fall for (but are really traps). This is called being dangerously genre savvy, as in >>47021439

The second is to have the villain be a player. Bonus points if you reveal this to your most power-gamey, diabolical player in the midgame. The idea is that his precognition revealed that the players would be dangerous to him someday. So he suppressed his own memories and joined the group.

The third is to have the entire setting be a virtual reality kingdom. Even the PC's don't know it, but they're either players (again with suppressed memories) or even AI-operated NPCs. The villain either an AI or professional actor hired to play a villain. Or if the players are the AIs, then he's the real player, getting off on being evil and foiling pesky heroes trying to stop him. Can't get more meta than someone else who knows it's a game. Especially if he knows the REAL game and the players don't.

>>47020616
BBEG uses an attack, that literally drops the fourth wall on the players for xd20 damage.

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>>47023704
>Can't get more meta than someone else who knows it's a game. Especially if he knows the REAL game and the players don't.
This.

For the last few years every single campaign I've run with two groups, that often intertwine, has been part of the same meta campaign all along. The meta campaign being the players being pieces in the last few games between 4 gods. Every god has their own characters in the different campaigns and their personality and preferences are showing off on their characters.
There has also been some not-so subtle themes about stopping cycles and such.

I'll hopefully start the reveal campaign this summer where the gods challenge the players directly. After/during that campaign the players will get to choose between continuing playing with the gods for a while or leaving them.

>>47023920

whoa! That's a pretty sweet reveal. Be sure to post here afterwards to tell us how it goes.

>>47023941
Thanks! I'll try though it looks like might take a while if our current campaign isn't finished soon.

Simple, you have him do two plans, one of which is incredibly obvious and cliche and the other of which is being run smartly and covertly.

For the bait plan, spread rumors about peripheral locations related to your activities to get the ball running and defend them mostly with traps and sparing numbers of your least talented and experienced lackeys (though under the ruse that they are being "promoted"), in as obscure and out of the way locations as you can reasonably put them, on shoestring budgets so anyone who could actually pose a threat doesn't get anything material out of it. Make sure that adventurers will be able to find the names or locations of other of these peripheral bases but keep the fake operation wholly separate from whatever the actual evil scheme is, ideally, each half wouldn't even know about the other.

By the time anyone who knows about your evil organization has figured out that they've been chasing a red herring the whole time, they'll be exhausted, out of supplies, and unprepared to deal with whatever it is you've been working on.

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>>47023891
I chuckled

>>47020616
>powerful Diviner Wizard
>likes scrying so much he build a tower with a specialized magic lattice to let his scry on ALL the planes
>amplified his scrying so much he could see alternate timelines
>then one day he saw something he SHOULDN'T have
>a record of everything in his life, even childhood details he'd forgotten
>but HOW
>pans the 'camera'
>sees the table
>sees the DM and players
>sees a note saying that he's witnessed the real world and discovered that he doesn't really exist
>realizes he isn't real
>"If I'm not real... I'll BECOME REAL!"
>"This 'real world' is a plane, like any other! If it can be scryed, it can be Plane Shifted to!"
>gathers up seven other Wizards, shows them what he's seen, has them use their specialty to build another tower
>the Enchantress brainwashes adventurers into retrieving the right artifacts for the ritual, the Illusionist disguises their efforts, the Conjurer summons Elementals and Fiends to build the tower, the Necromancer begins constructing a soul engine to power it all, the Transmuter turns a bunch of people to stone to use them as wiring in the superstructure so the soul engine isn't doing nothing, the Abjurer lays all kinds of protections on all the parts, and the Evoker blasts anything that gets too close to prevent disruption
>their plan is to sacrifice the souls of nearly the whole kingdom to power their Soul Engine, thus allowing their Conjurer to fuel his Plane Shift with the extra power and Plane Shift them all into the real world, where they'll use their magic to take over the world and rewrite all the stories in their own image
>they find out about the PC's by scrying on the players
>prepare for their capabilities by reading the character sheets
>the original questgiver who sent them to retrieve the last piece they needed was actually the Enchantress, and each of those Wizards is later revealed to have once been a PC or prominent NPC in a different campaign themselves

(cont.)

>>47024738
>before the final battle, they offer the PC's a chance to break free from the players' control and join them, become gods among men, and take their revenge on the ones who USED them as tools for their escapist fantasies

>>47024738
>>47024760
That's pretty cool. I'd like to run a campaign like that.

>>47024738
>>47024760

Also agree that this would make for a badass meta campaign.

>>47024760
>>47024738
>Just as the BBEG and turned players enter the portal, the GM places a handful of pewter minis on the table
>"Unfortunately, they found out they couldn't exist in this dimension."
>End