A Wrestler concept that’s been rolling around in my head. A popular wrestler that was dropped from the promotion due to addiction issues, reckless behaviour in the ring, etc. He’s finally cleaned up and is trying to get back into the promotion. After some time in the Indie Circuit he’s sort of proven himself for a probationary period. As long as he keeps clean, of course it’s very likely that he’ll fall off the wagon again. He’s popular, though it’s more for his notoriety from his earlier days in the ring. Rather than any particular skill at wrestling (though he has been training to improve as part of his trying to turn over a new leaf). Of course the fans don’t want to see him for his wrestling, they want to see him for the crazy stunts he used to pull. Which puts pressure on him to do dangerous stuff once again (sober or not).
My question is, would the Wasted Playbook work for this or would I have to come up with custom Playbook?
I think the Time Bomb may be a good choice. It has a lot of the one last shot at redemption feel you seem to be going for.
Tyler Lominack I took at look at the Time Bomb gimmick and it appears to largely be in line with what I pictured.
My original idea was something similar to the Foreigner gimmick. In his particular case being an Irish stereotype. Though when I actually took a look at the Foreigner Gimmick it didn’t really fit. I wanted a more dangerous character, whereas the Foreigner feels very much like a Saturday Morning Cartoon villain. So I made some compromises, and moved onto the Wasted as an option. The problem with that was largely that the Wasted depends too much on being high in the ring. Which kind of went against my idea of being a recovering addict. If I wanted him to be effective I couldn’t do the recovering addict angle.
The character honestly isn’t as old and hasn’t been the business as long as the Gimmick’s illustration would indicate. He’s in his mid to late thirties at the most. A combination of hard-drugs, alcoholism and in-ring injuries has all but ruined him. I imagine him being kind of a rising star in his youth that burned too brightly. This comeback is his last chance to salvage his career as a wrestler
Ask your Manager if you can just sub one of the Veteran or Technical’s skills with a high flier’s skill?
This may sound weird, but what about Anti-Hero? It sounds like you want a +Real centered gimmick, and I think the struggle with the past could be reflected by taking the Twitch The Curtain move (doing or refusing to do a big dumb stunt, playing with the audiences expectations, that kind of stuff).
Nathan Paoletta thanks for the suggestion, I had considered the Anti-Hero a few times. The main reason I didn’t pick it is because the character is very much at Creative’s mercy. I feel like off-screen he’s trying his best to not get thrown out on his ear. Though I could definitely see him maybe using the Twitch the Curtain to voice his grievances about Creative not believing he’s turned over a new leaf.