Joe Zantek Brendan Conway and I had a conversation about what Heat means from a player perspective, especially coming in fairly new to wrestling.
It struck me in course of the conversation that its net effect is far more of a tool for GMs to use to track where players want storylines to occur, rather than having to go into detailed notes. I think this may be one of those things where the abstraction of Heat is really obvious to people who are wrestling fans and understand what it’s meant to represent, but when I re-read the rules on Heat with this in mind, I think it’s kind of opaque to those GMs and Players both who are not so far down the rabbit hole. Might be something to think about for an update of Quickstart rules or cheat sheets.
I was initially confused because “having heat with someone backstage” meant being pissed, not necessarily being in a “hot” feud
The shorthand I probably would use is that Heat is the chemistry between wrestlers – the higher it is, the more you into it you feel with your opponent, which bleeds into your own performance. When the Heat’s high,
everyonecan feel it, and they can really believe that you want to beat the heck out of each other.Nothing about technical skill or how they feel about each other personally, mostly…passion on a professional level.
I see Heat existing as both of those things, actually. Storylines for the players are not just storylines for the wrestler — they’re also for the actor, which seems to me to be one of the things that makes this confusing. Heat is both Rusev vs. Cena working together to put on a spectacular match, as well as Jeff Hardy/Edge hating each other’s guts. They both become storylines from the player perspective.
It doesn’t help that it’s a word that’s used all the time for all sorts of things, both good and bad. Heat from the crowd is good, Heat from the back is bad, Heat from your opponent is probably bad, but could be good if he’s giving it to you.
I view the various definitions of Heat as a feature, not a bug, but yeah. What it represents is fluid and contextual, and I went more game-referencey with it than wrestling-lingo-y.
Probably worth addressing at some point!