World Wide Wrestling
Hi folks!
So I’ve been working on a pro wrestling hack of AW for awhile now. It’s gone through some initial playtesting, revisioning and re-envisioning, and I think it’s ready to get some more eyes on it from people who I don’t have wrestling-bro-mind-meld with.
If you’re a wrestling fan, I imagine I don’t need to tell you much more about it. It’s pretty sweet. The core conceit is that you’re playing characters on a televised episodic wrestling show (a la Monday Night RAW). You’re playing a wrestler, encapsulating both the gimmick persona and the real guy in the tights. You have backstage and live segments and wrestle matches, of course. Creative (the MC role) books matches ahead of time, but you don’t find out the booking until the final part of a match. You have the ability to break kayfabe and the fourth wall, but it comes with consequences; generally, you’re aiming to entertain the imaginary viewing audience!
If you’re not a huge wrestling fan, here’s some of the mechanical changes I’ve made to core AW that you may be interested in checking out:
– Characters have 2 playbooks, one for their current role on the show (Babyface/good guy or Heel/bad guy) and one for their Gimmick (the type of wrestler they are). The Role can switch back and forth fairly regularly, while the Gimmick is more like AW playbooks.
– 4 stats that represent the different ways in which the wrestler makes themself captivating to the imaginary viewing audience: +Look (general look, charisma, appeal), +Work (ability to wrestle and execute moves) +Power (size, strength and impressiveness) and +Real (ability to break the fourth wall, connect to the audience on a real level)
– instead of Hx, characters have Heat (with the audience, with NPCs and with each other) that represents how entertaining their relationship with that person is.
– instead of Harm, characters are on an Audience Ladder, which rates how popular they are with the audience and marks when they’re Over (at the top of their game) or when they’ve lost so much appeal that they get fired from the franchise.
– the addition of Momentum, which is a bonus pool that is built over the course of an episode and can be spent on any roll. Promos can give you momentum to use in matches, or vice versa.
– special Match Moves to represent the key sequences in wrestling matches. How matches are handled overall is actually something I’m pretty happy with!
– the MC is called Creative, and they create and advance Storylines and Feuds among the characters.
– and more (different Agendas/Principles/Moves, but also just general play structure, how advancement works, and so on).
Anyhow, check the link, and I’d love to hear thoughts and get feedback from anyone who has some!