I was wondering if this system can work without the rules about deciding a match before hand. I’m building a game as if all the craziness from the world of wrestling was in fact real, undead wizards , gods , vampires etc etc….
and I want combat and matches to progress with a realistic feel.
I love pbta and was wondering if I need to just remove that aspect of the system or perhaps adjust or rewrite it. any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
What do you mean by “realistic feel”? Do you want to explore the horrors of battlefield wounds and emergency room trauma, or just the D&D-style tracking of hit points?
I remember someone posting about doing a Dungeon World of Wrestling crossover to do fantasy gladatorial combat; maybe over on the Dungeon World Tavern but I can’t find the post.
I believe some of the match options in the International Incident supplement allow for matches without a predetermined finish.
My New Years Fray game is built to do competitive matches using as much of the existing system as possible, if you want a touchpoint for that!
At a high level, once you remove booking matches, you need to decide how to handle determining who wins without giving natural advantage to a particular Stat (unless that’s what you want to do, of course) – like, it shouldn’t come down to whoever has a better +Power stat or whatever. In New Years Fray I make it about using Momentum to power your Finishing Move, which is always risky because a botch will give the victory to your opponent. But there’s other ways!
Thank you very much, I’ll defenetily check out those resources, its very appreciated thank you.
OneShot podcast does “Dungeon Dome” – you should check it out!