I’m working on a new small thing for the game. I have a question for you:
What’s the most difficult thing for you about running or playing World Wide Wrestling?
alternately
What do you wish you’d known when you started running or playing that you know now?
I’m interested in pain points, missing steps or other issues in actual “how am I supposed to X” that have come up in your games.
Thanks!
I found it hard to keep momentum going as Creative. With the same four players at each game session, I found it a huge challenge to keep the rivalries front-and-centre, and to give the players opportunities to create new rivalries. Once we’d been through everyone’s moves a few times, we felt like we had seen everything the mechanics had to offer, and so it just became about describing crazy wrestling moves. By the time I got around to reading about the Promotion campaign ideas in International Incident, the “magic fizz” was already out of the bottle and our game flopped.
We also found it difficult to focus on anything in the backstage, given the lack of backstage moves. Other than just talking about our wrestlers’ out-of-ring lives, it was a big hurdle to try to give the wrestlers any motivation to do anything except live their gimmick 24-7.
Lastly, it was basically impossible not to recreate real-life pro-wrestling’s worst indulgences, ie, racism and misogyny in gimmicks. We did our best to limit it, and played some of it for really broad irony (one of our audience-favourite Babyfaces was the Social Justice Warrior). I’m not sure if that’s a universal problem, or just a problem with a group of players who have basically avoided real-life wrestling specifically because of these very bad things. Maybe a deeper knowledge of wrestling would have given us more vocabulary to detail our gimmicks with, without resorting to some of these tropes.
I wish there were a more player facing move for resolving a match with a NPW. I have had great, great sessions with NPW matches, but it always feels a little awkward and hand wavy for me to describe something and pass control back without any mechanics, when I wish it were it’s own move.
I loved the squash match move that you outlined in the community when I asked about it, but I wish we had both the squash match move, and a move that allowed the PCs to do more of a “gambling” thing, where they are making all of the rolls, and if it goes well, they can attempt to get more heat or audience or whatever, but each time they make that move and push for a great match instead of a good match, it opens them up for that 6- move to hit them.
Hope that’s in line with what you are asking here.
I feel like the game gets too easy once your stats get to +2 or +3. When I ran, there was never this tension of the players botching once they got that high, so games ended up feeling a bit boring because we knew that they would put on a flawless match. It also made building up a mean NPW hard because when they’d have their match, it ends up being a squash instead of something exciting and tense. I think adding some kind of difficult penalty for certain moves would make things less predictable and more tense.
The wrestling botch move has very few consequences, compared to any out of ring botch.
I’m with Ed Ortiz that momentum & +2s make it hard to fail anything really, which leads to a cycle of rolling a 9, then spending a momentum to get a momentum w/o consequences.
Most difficult, though I understand the logic behind them, is booking heel moves. They seem a tad overpowered, especially for people not familiar with wrestling or particularly for power gamers who just want to win. Maybe an essay on the logic behind them, or an alternative.
I’ll say, I’ve always had some questions about Break Kayfabe,. especially as it applies to swerving the booking. Something that lays that out clearly might be a great help.
This is all helpful stuff, thank you (and keep it up!)
I understand that NPWs are there as a narrative tool, but i’d like to see them as something more than a cheap way for a player to gain heat/momentum and a vessel for creatives swerves and moves.
Heel move seems very powerful and certainly is open to abuse. I’d like to see some guidance on what happens when somebody tries to swerve the finish if multiple people do it (via break kayfabe, run ins, heel move, ect)
I’m getting ready to run the game for the first time so this thread came at the perfect time
I would love a framework of some kind for championships, moves that come with them, and after they’ve been lost. There are plently of great fan made ideas but I’d love to see that get expanded on possibly?