A few questions:
*Advancing whenever you hit +4 audience:
It seems like two characters could potentially very quickly cycle between +3/+4 audience and get lots of advances. Is there a limit to how often you can get advances? Am I worrying over nothing?
*Champion’s Advantage
Is this a real thing in wrestling? It seems strange to me that you can lose the championship match, but somehow not lose the championship title.
*Actual Wrestling
Narratively, how does one win a wrestling match?
I can answer the second one! It’s a real thing. The champion can lose by countout or disqualification but keeps the belt. They have to be pinned in order for the title to change hands. Traditionally this was used by villainous wrestlers to hang onto the championship when the match isn’t going their way. They’d roll out of the ring and flee the match. Doing it too much could make the audience grumpy, but every now and then it’s a good way to make the babyface look like a real challenge to the heel, and for the heel to be a coward while keeping the outcome of the match in question for future resolution down the road.
And if I understand your third question correctly, the ways you can win a match are:
– Pinning your opponent for the count of three.
– Meeting some other predetermined victory condition (climbing out of a cage surrounding the ring, slamming your opponent through a table, climbing a ladder and pulling down a briefcase suspended over the ring)
– A knockout or some other injury causing the ref to determine that your opponent can’t proceed
– Your opponent being outside of the ring for a count of 10
– Your opponent breaking the rules such that the referee disqualifies them from the contest (using a weapon or some other foreign object in the match, not letting you leave the corner after the ref instructs them to, putting their feet up on the ropes while pinning you to gain “leverage”)
Bret’s got it on both counts! I had a big list of finishes to matches that I cut out of the booklet due to space! I’ll see if I can post that up this weekend.
For your first: yah, sometimes an Episode will see two characters bouncing each other out of that top spot. But I wouldn’t worry about it. As Creative you can control this with booking a little bit by booking the folks with high Heat with each other against separate, lower-heat opponents earlier in the Episode.
(There’s a general flow where, after a couple of Episodes, everyones at that +3ish Audience, and then someone pops to 4, the 3/4 goes back and forth in the Episode, then at the beginning of the next Episode your Audience has grown and everyone’s Audience drops again.)
Generally, unless a title belt is on the line, getting 1 or 2 Advances an Episode is normal!
It’s possible to get 3 Advances out of a single match, but those are the big feud-ending crazy ones (hit +4 Audience from either Heat or a good Finishing Move roll + gain a belt + end a feud).
Oh, I wanted to add thing about the victory conditions. Generally, only a pin without cheating or accomplishing the predetermined win condition of a match without cheating would be considered a “clean win” meaning that the one wrestler has shown that they’re the better wrestler and satisfied the crowd. Most other win conditions are “cheap wins” and are used to keep a storyline going. In the end, a wrestler can always say, “You never pinned me!” and another match will happen.
There’s also twists on this like what’s called the Dusty Finish (for wrestler and booker Dusty Rhodes) where the results of the match get thrown out after one wrestler is declared a winner because of a technicality. Usually the referee will get knocked out, another referee will come into the ring, a winner will be decided, and then when the previous referee wakes up the results of the match will be thrown out and the match restarted and the former victor’s opponent will win.
Cheap wins and Dusty Finishes are used to keep feuds going and make the crowd anxious for a decisive end to it, usually of the babyface getting a clean win over the heel.
Sorry, I can go on about wrestling at length.
Also: the shmoz, where a bunch of wrestlers all run in and start fighting with both the competitors and it devolves into a brawl (with no actual winner declared)
Neat, thanks guys!
I’d really like to see a custom move for the schmoz, like for the Regal Wrangle et al.
You are missing one win condition: submissions. If you can either make you’re opponent give up to an excruciating hold, or make him go unconscious, then you win by submitting your opponent. This is easily as prestigious as cleanly pinning your opponent.
I assumed Bret had submissions on his list, whoops! And a finishing move can be a wrestling move (like Hulk Hogans leg drop) or a submission hold (like Ric Flairs Figure Four leglock).
Yah, pins and submissions are the most common finishes, generally, followed by walkout/intentionally taking the loss (chickenshit heel tactic) and run-in or other interference resulting in a DQ.