Live From Miami Florida…
WORLD WIDE WRESTLING!
Part I: https://plus.google.com/114532354852541722890/posts/MSXDtd1sLTt
We played the second session of our wrestling franchise last night. Doc (The Prince) and Brendan (El Presidente) were out for the night, but we also had a new player, Amelia, giving us a nice four players.
Amelia chose the Wasted, and created Sharknado. Originally he was the Shark, a Face, but retired, and has come back as a Heel. His ex-girlfriend Miami Annabelle is the current Freestyle Wrestling Champion.
We had the revised Gimmick sheets Nathan used at origins, so everyone copied their stats over. This week, nobody needed to change any moves. Shari checked off an Injury box for Nikki.
I gave everyone the option to ask their new 4th Heat question, or save it for next week when everyone was here. We established that Nikki was once injured by Sharknado, Sharknado has gotten beat up backstage by Bright Twilight, and Sharknado is afraid of Gryla.
We started with a backstage segment of Johnny Saturn introducing Bright Twilight to her new manager, Mindy Perkins, as the result of her totally failed Break Kayfabe move last session. Mindy cheerfully chewed out Twilight for a while, and reminded her that she needs to lose when told to, which is going to happen a lot from now on.
We then went to a talk show style interview between Johnny Saturn and Nikki, where she unveiled her new look, as Nikki the Tricky, a magician themed wrestler, ending with her saying “Live from Miami Florida, it’s World Wide Wrestling!” in a cheesy rip off of SNL.
(That was preplanned- I told her ahead of time, whenever you’re ready for the interview to end, say this line.)
Our first match was Nikki the Tricky vs. the Dark Diva, for Nikki to show off her new moves and style. We were all much more comfortable with the wrestling narration this time around, willing to try things, make up moves, and the announcer players got into it more. As a whole, this session seemed to run much smoother. Nikki tossed glitter into Dark Diva’s eyes, and when she was blinded, went in for the body slam. Shari had an easy time narrating flashy moves to play off her Looks score.
Next we had a pretaped promo re-introducing Sharknado, which I had Amelia narrate. She cut a promo and added a stipulation to her next match- it would be in two feet of water!
So we had the SURF VS TURF SHOWDOWN, with Sharknado and Rock Lobster against Gryla and Bright Twilight. WWW fans will know that being in a tag-team with Rock Lobster is the kiss of death, whereas the Gryla/Bright Twilight tag team is highly celebrated.
We had a lot of fun narrating splashes and other water effects- even if a stipulation doesn’t have any custom moves, the possibilities for narration and mixing up the visuals are very fun. We started with Gryla throwing Twilight into the ring with a splash, and her facing off against Sharknado. Once Twilight tagged Gryla in, things started to go bad for Sharknado- he wanted to tag in Rock Lobster to take the beating, but couldn’t reach him! Gryla picked up and threw Sharknado, specifically aiming for the corner of the ring Rock Lobster was nearby. Based on his narration, I gave Sharknado a free tag to get Rock Lobster in the match.
Rock Lobster took a beating from Gryla, climbed up on his back- and then Gryla jumped and did a backwards body slam on the Lobster! The Lobster was able to tag in Sharknado, who decided it was time to use his Heel move and do a chair slam, but with a Surfboard.
Like last time, I had Amelia pay 1 momentum per opponent to win the match (I don’t want someone cheaply winning a Regal Wrangle with the Heel move). She rolled to Break Kayfabe, since Gryla and Twilight were booked to win, and got a 7-9 result. Sharknado didn’t put his job on the line, but further pissed off Johnny Saturn and will soon be looking at a penalty match. Gryla also went up to 4 heat with Sharknado and went up to 4 audience as well!
Amelia then had to leave because of cat allergies. The penalty match will have to wait until next week.
My next match had Sharknado booked to win against Nikki, so instead I booked Nikki to win against Bright Twilight. Nikki was given an opportunity to cut promo and champion the cause of good clean wrestling, but chose not to talk trash against Bright Twilight, saying she agrees with her motives but not her actions. (I should have asked her if she wanted to use her Face move! Whoops!)
This one had a lot of control changes on 7-9 results, with the players passing control of the match back and forth, making for a really exciting conversation. I don’t remember any other specifics of the match.
We had a backstage vignette of Draco and Dark Diva discussing their plans to capture and magically enslave Gryla.
Next we had a CHAIN MATCH between Gryla and Draco, the objective to wrap the opponent up in a chain and pin them. Draco started to wrap up Gryla, but was thrown bodily out of the ring into the front rows. It doesn’t look like he’ll be able to recover. What’s this… DARK DIVA IS ENTERING THE RING… WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
Dark Diva gets Gryla wrapped up in chains, but soon he wraps her as well and pins her. Their devious plot is foiled… for now.
Finally we had a FREE FOR ALL TITLE QUALIFIER MATCH- the winner will get to go on to face Miami Annabelle next week in a Championship Match! We featured our talent, plus Kombat King, Draco, and Dark Diva. We started with Bright Twilight and Kombat King in the ring, and soon Kombat King was out, and lots more talent were in.
Tim may have found an exploit- he botched his Finisher against one of the Draco, losing an audience… but at the end of the match he gained one, putting him back at 4 audience for another advance.
Tim then narrated the three ladies teaming up to take him down. I decided no roll needed, he did it, he was out!
Bright Twilight and Nikki the Tricky teamed up to take out Dark Diva, leading out two leading ladies left standing. After a few exchanges, I revealed that Nikki was booked to win… and she botched her finisher as well! Looking over her options, she decided that with her injury, she’d be unable to do a flashy finisher move, so management would have to call an audible and give the win to Bright Twilight. With much gnashing of teeth, Bright Twilight got the win and will go on to face Miami Annabelle. Johnny Saturn made it clear that on no account is she to win that match… but will Bright Twilight play by those rules, or her own?
One rules hack we did- I moved lowering Heat to the end of the episode, so it’s fresh in everyone’s minds who you interacted with and who you didn’t.
Tim is pondering a Face/Heel turn for Gryla next session. What are the rules for this?
Sounds pretty awesome, overall! One of the things you need to do as Creative that I’m going to be writing explicitly about is make judgement calls during the game about things like “should this be a roll” or “how to these two moves results interact” or “what does this fictional condition actually mean”, and those calls are always going to be in the context of your games emergent style – and it sounds like you’re doing that really well!
Another thing to make explicit is that match stipulations can be pure color, for sure. That’s how I tend to play it, especially for stips suddenly added during the Episode.
That’s a smart idea for Heat. It should probably just work like that.
Face/Heel turn is narrative-driven, as in when Gryla takes the action that demonstrates the turn, that’s when it happens. You immediately add +1 Heat with the opposing Role, as well.
Would you lose Heat with your original opposing role?
No, though maybe you should? I’ve been playing it as you don’t, since by the time people start making face/heel turns the numbers have already moved away from those starting positions. But that could be a place to drain some Heat out of the system pretty naturally.