Audience/ratings question.
Obviously there’s a way to determine how the entire show gains audience/ratings. But how would one determine how they might lose audience/ratings?
I.e. going from a national tv deal, back down to just a local access program?
That is a good question. It ups the danger level a little and the responsibility characters feel. You could set a low threshold on audience I suppose. Though I think it introduces two other concerns. Narratively speaking, it requires the introduction of some form of competing promotion. Otherwise, where are the marks getting their fix? Mechanically speaking their is a question of incentivization. Normally growing the company does not actually help anyone mechanically, Creative just describes a bigger arena. Actually it technically hurts people, since wrestlers who have been building their audience slowly get knocked back down to their base. Should it have an effect either way?
After having written this whole thing and staring at it for a moment, I think my impulse is to say that it works best without any mechanics at all. Just have it happen or not happen, and use the narrative effects to determine how characters are interacting backstage. Honestly, I don’t love this game for its resource management strategies, so I would stick to my beloved storytelling techniques. That is just me though.
I would probably make it a GM hard move if a much-hyped match (like a Regal Wrangle or a title match) goes bad.
I have my own feelings on it, and it basically goes down to the simplest of maxims: If it makes sense and it’s fun, do it.
This is mechanically a harder one to pull off, because what is that lower threshold? Is it only for the PCWs, or should you include the stats for the NPWs that Creative has created and booked? How does Audience apply to Jobbers, who have what amounts to immunity to Audience? What about how big you’ve decided your promotion is before the drop in marketability? Are there outside factors that effect your Audience, like stories about steroids or, god forbid, a Benoit-like event? How does one account for all of this?
It can all be solved with that simple maxim. Make it fun for your players, and it’ll make sense to them, no matter what.
Yeah, hard move/fictional outcomes, I think. If you pitch a big idea for a storyline and the big match flops, maybe it drives away some of your audience!
(Fun fact: the expanding audience justification exists in order for the Audience resetting mechanics to have some fictional meaning, since that reset needs to exist for longterm play. You could just as easily set some other fictional thing, like whenever there’s a lot of audience a competing territory steals one of your stars and everyone resets because you need to figure out new storylines and get audience back from the competition, or whatever)
Oooh! Behind the scenes info! I think our changing stable has kept us from resetting for an extended period, which is one reason Professor Atomo has gained so many advances. Not that I am complaining.
The way I tend to play him, his goal (specifically backstage) is always to boost everyone’s audience to help the business as a whole. That’s one reason why he sells the heels for everything he can. If the narrative adjusts so that sometimes his proteges, and people he worked hard to put over, abandon the promotion… man. That is some Jason Morningstar stuff there.
I figured it would work best as a hard move. Espescially if there’s quite a few botches in a given show.
It will mostly serve as a narrative tool for my plans…my glorious glorious plans.
How many sessions on average does it take to hit the reset? My group is 4 sessions in and unless they really mess up (or we get a new player) they should hit after next episode.
I’ve also been toying around with the idea of giving everyone an advance when the reset occurs. Am I being too nice?
Regarding losing ratings; perhaps if the total audience at the end of an episode is less than (or equal to) the total at the beginning of the episode, then Ratings Decrease; everyone takes a Hard Move
This is more likely to happen the closer the group is to reset as at that point players are passing the over move around and total audience is only growing from the bottom.
4-5 sounds about right
If you want to do additional bookkeeping for losing Audience, that sounds good! I like how it means there’s some danger as the moment approaches – either you make it and raise, or you don’t make it and disappoint your audience right when you’re the hottest.