Last year when I ran The Crucible (Solid Steel Wrestling’s version of the Royal Rumble) it was pretty fun, but the…

Last year when I ran The Crucible (Solid Steel Wrestling’s version of the Royal Rumble) it was pretty fun, but the usual tactic of “wait for momentum to run down before revealing the winner” didn’t work. My guys were working the system hard to gain momentum to keep themselves in the ring, because they didn’t know who was scheduled to win.

So this year, when we ran The Foundry (Solid Steel’s Elimination Chamber), I decided to try something different. While the characters knew who was scheduled to win, I wanted to preserve some mystery for the players. Here’s what I did:

Everyone got a tri-folded index card with their name on the front.

Opening the first fold revealed the order that their unbreakable iron portcullis would rise and they would be allowed into the cage. Some of them also included helpful hints or swerves.

The wrestling worked as normal, except that rolling a 10+ on your Wrestling move had an additional option: try for a Finisher. Someone choosing that option would get to roll their Finisher and apply the effects, but (just like the Indy/Spotfest matches from WWW:II) the victim would be able to pay Momentum to interrupt and kick out.

However, the first time someone got hit by a finisher, they opened up the second fold in their card, which revealed a set of circumstances that would prevent them from spending momentum to save themselves.

So, for example, the first fold on the Monster’s card said that he would be entering 4th, but also reminded him that breaking the “unbreakable” iron portcullis was a feat of strength.

The second fold revealed that he could spend Momentum to avoid being eliminated until everyone active in the ring had hit him with a Finisher. (The idea here was to do the spot where the big guy enters and wrecks face and everyone has to work together to take him down.)

Other conditions were things like “after one last double-team with your old partner” (for a tag team that was ending) and “when the Monster puts you down”.

In testing, it seemed to work pretty well! The players all appeared to get into it, and it was fun watching them hit finishers, study each other’s reactions, and slowly start to figure out how the match was booked.

If anyone else is inspired to try this or something similar, I’d love to hear how it goes.

(Thanks to JohnManfried Hill, Edward Burke, Wayne Wyant, T.J. Tague, and Jason Blankenship who tested this out for me.)