I’m listening to a bunch of old school wrestlers, bookers, & personalities talk about how wrestling was then vs now and all that good stuff – the type of stuff an IWC usually looks up every once in a while – and there’s been a few videos in a row that talk about the importance of consistency, patience and forethought in booking. Good booking is not booking for the moment, it’s booking for 6-9 months down the road, making sure the rising stars stay strong and the top dogs stay relevant. And it got me thinking about this game:
Do you think the focus on playing to find out & all that related stuff creates booking that favors swerves, shocks & short-term decisions over a longer-term, more consistent style? When you look at the games you’ve run in the big-picture view, does the “booking” look like it’d be satisfying? Do you put in effort to make these storylines consistent and logical before your players knock them over, or do you just book on the fly come hell or high water?
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that this is a game and not a predetermined product for consumption, that playability justifiably sacrifices a lot of of the baggage that just wouldn’t work in a game, and that the fun of it is not necessarily in making great wrestling but instead in playing the lives of great wrestlers, but I’m curious if any of this stuff has occurred to the wrestling nerd side of your brain and what your feelings are about it, if any.
I’ve sadly yet to play the game, but am also curious to find what players have learned.
I’ve found that in long-term games, folks can work together to deliver the longer-term satisfying booking, even if they have the mechanical tools at their disposal to swerve in the moment. Now, I’ve mostly played with wrestling nerds so that may be a bias – we like seeing the long-term stuff work out, so we are willing to abet that.
But I suspect it might be a second-order effect of committed play. After a couple sessions of everyone doing everything they can with every rule available, the chaos settles down and I think people want to see the longer-term plans emerge (and use their swerves more sparingly and meaningfully.