Author: Isaac Sher

Okay, fellow wrestling fans, I have a question for you.

I have a friend who is asking to be introduced to wrestling.  What shows/PPVs/episodes would you suggest showing this person, to give them an idea of Wrestling at its best?

And in particular, if you had to pick one or two Royal Rumbles in particular, which ones would you select?

Also — anyone know any good sites that stream this stuff?  They don’t have Bittorrent, and aren’t ready to drop money on the WWE network just yet.

I take serious issue with the “Factions” episode of WWE COUNTDOWN.

#5 was Evolution, okay, fine.  I can dig that.  But the FOUR HORSEMEN were only #4?  NWO at #3 I can accept, and it seemed almost a given that they’d put DeGeneration X as the #1, although I still insist that the Four Horsemen should be on top.

But by all that is unholy, how in the world did The Brood land the #2 slot???

Some more random setting-building ideas for World Wide Wrestling RPG, possible campaigns to set a game in:

– Queen City Combat: A small indy federation based out of Cincinnati, Ohio, taking place during the late 90’s, with the Monday Night Wars as a backdrop.  QCC is attempting something similar to what ECW did — take a local promotion, and elevate it by virtue of hard work, talent, and innovation.  In particular, QCC is trying to elevate the status of women’s wrestling, being an all-women fed, and also incorporating more of a martial-arts feel to its matches.  

– National Grappling Council:  In the early 80’s, when Kayfabe was still strictly enforced, the NGC was something of an odd duck.  The wrestling was pretty straighforward, with the occasional top-rope move and some fairly solid mat-wrestling going on, but the conceit of the fed is that the wrestlers were governed by the shadowy “Council”, who pit the wrestlers against each other and made various decrees.  At times, their angles could get pretty odd, with the implication that these wrestlers were actually in some sort of purgatory, and that they were struggling for the future of their immortal souls, although the show never made this explicit, dealing instead with subtext rather than pushing the idea outright.  Considered a little too weird for some, the ones who liked it REALLY liked it, ranging from hardcore wrestling fans looking for something new, to devout Christians who found the morality plays compelling, to people attracted to the almost train-wreck level of production values.

– Masters of the Arena:  In the fantasy world of Eretz, full of elves, dwarves, and a wide variety of other fantastical peoples, the unsually progressive and multi-ethnic nation called The Free Caliphate of Andujar is host to an odd form of entertainment that is slowly making inroads across the world.  Based out of the metropolis of NorthTower, Arena-Combat is almost identical to Pro Wrestling as we know it, and considering that Eretz is a known dimensional nexus, it’s entirely possible that someone from our world came to Andujar and gave someone the idea, or set it up themselves if they stuck around.  Regardless, the Masters of the Arena have become a strange sort of cultural ambassadors for their country, as people from all species and nations have found common ground in the thrill of these matches, and watching drama play out on stage.  With the advent of Crystal-Recordings, or “Sparkles” as some call them, the video-recorded exploits of the Masters of the Arena have been getting significant play in taverns, inns, and play-houses across the world, as people thrill to the strange combinations of species finding new and creative ways to duke it out.

– Ultimate Armor Wrestling:  The year is 2059, and the advent of EveryCAD, 3-D superprinting, and the “penguin” micro-powercells have put previously unthinkable technological options in the hands of average citizens.  One of the ways that this new tech has been used is the proliferation of “iron-man” style powered armor, although there are strict regulations on what sort of armaments and systems can be incorporated into the average citizen’s suits.  As armor became fashion, the UAW was formed to show matches between high-end armor-athletes, who were given special dispensation to incorporate near-military-grade tech into their suits, for combat within special enclosed rings where stray rocket-fire can be safely nullified by the protective force-fields surrounding the match.  Combat includes classical wrestling holds and throws, combined with spectacle-inducing armor-weaponry, with one fan famously quipping, “Until you’ve seen a thruster assisted German Suplex transitioned into a throw fifteen feet up and then into a spinning electro-piledriver… you haven’t LIVED, man!”  With the wrestlers thoroughly protected by armor plating and micro-force-bubbles around sensitive joints and vital areas, the level of simulated violence has escalated considerably, enabling wrestlers to dream up new moves that would literally pulverize someone not wearing armor.

More as I think of them.  🙂

So, I’m thinking aloud about how I’d run a campaign in Nathan Paoletta’s “World Wide Wrestling RPG” game, if I was able to find enough interested players.   (By the by, I’m cross-posting this both in public and in the “World Wide Wrestling RPG” group)  Maybe these are questions that are discussed in the actual book that Nathan’s about to release, but in case they’re not, here are some thrown-against-the-wall things to ponder.

Do you focus on one federation that all the players are in, or do you present rival federations as existing?  

What level of fame is your federation operating at?  Something with international scope and resources like the modern WWE?  A national fed that’s beloved in one country but unknown in others, like many of the Japanese feds?  A “training” fed that feeds into something larger, like NXT?  A hungry up-and-coming fed that’s going places, like mid-90’s ECW?  Or your typical “high school gymnasium” fed with shoestring budgets?

Do you set your fed in a world where WWE and other real-life feds exist, or maybe existed in the past?  Being able to draw upon existing legacies can be fun, but might also be limiting for some.  Or do you posit a world where the USA is still divided into local territories, where the WWE never skyrocketed up to gain a near-monopoly?

If you do reference actual real-world wrestlers or events, what would you want to include?  “This takes place in 2002.  The monday night wars are over, the Attitude Era is ending, and a whole slew of new feds are popping up to try and fill the void left by WCW and ECW…”

These are the things I think about.  Heck, I’ve even pondered the idea of using these rules in a completely fantastical setting, where the characters are all pro-wrestler equivalents in my homebrew D&D world of Andujar.

What would you do with your campaign?

Yay, I’m in the WWWRPG community!

So… what we do here?  🙂     I played one of Nathan Paoletta’s demos, LOVED IT, but haven’t yet had a chance to play it again, much to my chagrin.  I had a blast playing “Brimstone”, my high-flyer with an occult/geek gimmick, but would love to try other concepts as well!