New playsheet and play reference files have been uploaded to my website.

New playsheet and play reference files have been uploaded to my website.

New playsheet and play reference files have been uploaded to my website. I’ll reconcile the rules PDF with them at some point, but the play materials are the more important thing to keep current!

Anyhow, check ’em out if you have a chance! For you patrons, these are new since the ones I sent out before Origins.

http://ndpdesign.com/playtest/

In the context of the fiction, what exactly is “Number One Contender” status, and how is it gained and lost?

In the context of the fiction, what exactly is “Number One Contender” status, and how is it gained and lost?

In the context of the fiction, what exactly is “Number One Contender” status, and how is it gained and lost?

Questions and observations from last night’s game:

Questions and observations from last night’s game:

Questions and observations from last night’s game:

What does it mean that a gimmick starts “and resets” at a certain audience level?  When does this Reset occur?  Is it supposed to be part of the Over move?

I care for the advancement mechanism hitting at 4 audience, because some of my players are really looking for ways to game that and make sure audience slingshots between 3 and 4 as much as possible.  I’d prefer a simple Gain an Advance at the end of the episode, when you resolve a feud, or gain a championship, and add a different incentive to be at 4 Audience (the Over move might be enough, or perhaps gaining 2 momentum whenever you hit the top spot.

My players don’t have any problems building up Heat.  Scorpio built all the way up to 4 heat with Prince in one session easily, and I think ended up scoring 2 audience off of that.  Heat isn’t really degrading between the talent.

When should a move that overrides or changes my booking be retconned into the scripted storyline  (Run-In, the Heel move specifically, a player calling an audible, certain botched finishers, a champion using Champion’s Advantage if you have them booked to win), and when should it count as breaking Kayfabe?

LIVE FROM EL PASO, TEXAS, IT’S WORLD WIDE WRESTLING!

Our third session of World Wide Wrestling. This session Amelia (Sharknado) and Rebecca (Bright Twilight) couldn’t make it, so some of our pending grudge and/or championship matches were put on hold, but we had a new player James, and a lot of craziness went down. James has an amazing level of wrestling knowledge, and was very excited about the level of detail in the rules.

James is playing Scorpio, the Technician, a highly skilled wrestler with a very mercenary-for-hire aesthetic. Scorpio comes from an “amateur” wrestling background, and seems to have nothing but legit scorn for all these posing over-produced strongmen.

I was planning to structure the episode around the Bright Twilight v. Miami Annabelle championship match, so I had to rearrange things. I also scripted a lot of plot Vignettes, which I’m not sure how well it worked- it seemed a little railroady, but as we will see, things ended up getting switched up quite a bit.

We had Gryla, El Presidente, and Prince Roy ALL making the Over move. The Prince picked up momentum, El Presidente confronted Roy (we never actually ended up playing this out- it was ‘banked’ and never came up, but he got the heat), and Gryla scheduled a match vs. El Presidente. This actually caused me frantically rewriting the whole first half of my booking to rearrange things to play up the various storylines.

(El Presidente and Roy weren’t there last week, and I didn’t want to penalize them for missing, so they kept their 4 Audience, even though Gryla hit 4 Audience during that time.)

We started with a close up on Johnny Saturn selling how awesome tonight’s episode was going to be, zooming out to reveal the King of the Hill stage. Gryla then grabbed the mic and challenged El Presidente, which transitioned into our first match. El Presidente went up against Gryla for a while, and then tried to hit him with his own boulder, and failed miserably, setting up Gryla for his finisher.

We then had our first vignette: El Presidente “hiring” Scorpio to take out Gryla. I gave Brendan and James the basic premise of the scene and told them to play it out. Brendan added the detail that he wanted Scorpio to steal Gryla’s boulder so he could smash it into rubble.

El Presidente: “That price can’t be right!”

Scorpio: “You’re right, I left off a couple of zeroes.”

After El Presidente left, Dark Diva showed up and stuffed a wad of cash into Scorpio’s trunks for him to get a lock of Gryla’s beard hair. Scorpio asked Diva to help him steal the boulder.

We went right to our Scorpio vs. Gryla match. Scorpio had and kept control of the match for a while early, doing a barrage of attacks against Gryla. Dark Diva and Draco showed up to roll the boulder out of the arena- Gryla jumped out of the ring, did a quick move to take out Draco and get his boulder back- all before the count of 20, according to announcer Shari. However, not long after, Scorpio put Gryla in a mighty submission hold (and actually went to do some real harm, Working Real Stiff, but Gryla sucked it up). During all of this, Gryla also botched a Work the Audience move, and ended up going from 4 audience to 1 in the course of the match. Scorpio nailed his finisher, making a strong impression, stealing some of Gryla’s beard hair, and leaving the arena with Dark Diva, Draco, and the boulder.

We had another scripted Vignette where El Presidente broke into the INS offices to steal Prince Roy’s immigration paperwork.

Brendan: “Why am I doing this?”

Creative: “It’s part of your cunning plan.”

Brendan had a good time narrating the shabbiness of the set, and playing up the dastardliness of his plan.

My notes were to have both Prince and Tricky Nikki have matches against NTCs before the big King of the Hill match, but that’s not exactly what happened next…

Prince Roy had a match against Kombat King that was over pretty quickly. Roy called out Kombat King on his rip-off of his style. They had a match where Roy did some high-flying moves, and had fun describing the maneuvers. He proposed a custom move where he can use Work instead of Look to do his crazy high-flying maneuvers, and I told him sure, he can take that. With Human Highlight Reel and Put Over, Prince Roy is an audience generating machine, easily able to get up to 4 Audience frequently repeatedly. (Later he would do twice multiple times in one match, losing an audience with Put Over only to regain it.)

Soon Kombat King was defeated, and Roy was about to do his finisher… but Scorpio did a Run In! Roy won by DQ, and the enraged Kombat King had a quick match against Scorpio, which he also lost. We saw Roy help his rival Kombat King out of the ring… could a Face turn for Kombat King be in the future?

Roy and Nikki BOTH cut promos against Scorpio, setting up a “Clean and Fair” tag team match against him and El Presidente that ended up being anything but. Nikki started in the ring and was working the crowd, but when she used Always Learning she botched and made a Rookie Mistake- turning her back on Scorpio, who went right for a cheap shot. I gave him control of the match and he went in to Work Real Stiff, giving Nikki her second injury box! During this she went down to 0 audience and took an advance… but choose to keep both injury boxes on her sheet!

Nikki tapped out and Prince fought against Scorpio, and then El Presidente. El Presidente and Scorpio did a few brutal maneuvers (with Nikki complaining to the ref about- there’s two guys in the ring! But by the time the ref turned back, Scorpio was safely out of the ring). He then tapped back in Scorpio, who went to do a real “amateur style” scrum, rolling with Heat… but it turned out Prince couldn’t keep up, which seemed to legit anger Scorpio.

Prince tapped back in Nikki, who was cleared to do her finisher, and she took out Scorpio!

But wait! El Presidente reveals to the ref that he has the Prince’s immigration files, and there’s some irregularities there- The Prince can’t legally wrestle in the states! Furthermore, El Presidente has purchased the island of Paradisio, the Prince’s homeland! Johnny Saturn shows up and says that El Presidente has gone too far, and his Diplomatic Immunity has been revoked. There’s only one way to settle this… in the ring. That’s right, we’ve got a DEPORTATION MATCH on deck.

Next we had the King of the Hill match. The custom moves worked pretty well. 10 seemed like a little low for a countdown, but that seems pretty easy to tweak. We had a huge roster of talent and NTC talent in the ring, actually having to make up 2 new NTCs to fill the roster.

Gryla is entering the arena… flanked by Dark Diva and Draco as ominous music plays! What is happening? Why are they working together? Gryla has done a Face/Heel turn, resolving his Feud (“for now” Tim says. It’s always For Now.)

Gryla picks up Draco, who’s already holding Dark Diva, and they launch her up the mountain to dethrone Miami Annabelle. The Prince, instead of going for the Hill, goes to throw El Presidente out of the Ring! I called an audible to have him do the Wregal Rangle move to model that. He got a 9, and spent momentum to make it a 10, throwing out El Presidente. “Oh, I don’t think I wanted to do that. I got excited.” But he didn’t take it back- El Presidente is out of the ring in the first two minutes of the match.

Scorpio comes up on Prince from behind, and heels it up, leaving him lying helpless on the floor. Scorpio dethrones Dark Diva, and gets dethroned by Nikki.

On count 1, I called for Nikki to make her finisher. (I originally had Roy booked to win, but swapped it out when he was taken out by Scorpio.) She botched, and didn’t have enough momentum to make it up! She choose for creative to call an audible, so Dark Diva and Draco TOGETHER took her off the hill and claimed a joint victory- and then Gryla joined them on the hill. Dark Diva announced that Gryla was under her spell, and no one could defeat the new Unholy Alliance!

(Featured tweet: “Wait, did Dark Diva just legit ensorcell Gryla? #WorldWideWrestling”)

At this point it was 9 o’clock. I was going to wrap the session with the Deportation Match, but the Prince’s player had to legit go home, so we wrapped the session. We’ve got three people at 4 Audience again, and several grudge matches standing. Next week is going to be even bigger. BE THERE!

Custom stipulation for tonight’s game:

Custom stipulation for tonight’s game:

Custom stipulation for tonight’s game:

KING OF THE HILL MATCH

A King of the Hill match features multiple wrestlers in a single ring, with a raised platform in the middle. At the end of a five minute timer, whoever stands on the platform is King of the Hill! Any wrestler knocked out of the ring is eliminated.

Set the timer to 10. After any Wrestling move (and possibily other moves, Creative’s call), reduce the timer by 1. When the timer becomes 0, whoever is currently King of the Hill wins; they gain +1 Audience.

Creative chooses who starts as King of the Hill and who starts with control (default is most Audience and most Momentum, respectively..)

Whenever you make the Wrestling move, use this for the result:

If you are King of the Hill:

On a 10+, you hit it clean, choose one. You retain control of the match.

*You gain +2 momentum.

*You gain +1 Heat with someone challenging you for the hill.

*You knock a challenger out of the ring, they are eliminated!

On a 7-9, you hit it okay, choose one:

*You keep control of the hill, but at a cost. Lose one momentum and choose a different challenger to gain control of the match.

*You are dumped off the hill! Choose who dethrones you and give them control of the match, and gain +1 Heat with them.

On a Miss, you get dumped off the Hill. Whoever dethroned you gains control of the match and becomes King of the Hill. Choose one:

*Give one Momentum to the new King of the Hill and stay in the match.

*You’re thrown out of the ring and eliminated! Gain +1 Heat with whoever took you out.

If you are challenging for the Hill:

On a 10+, you hit it clean, choose one. You retain control of the match.

*You become King of the Hill

*You gain +2 momentum

*You gain +1 Heat with the King of the Hill.

On a 7-9, you hit it okay, choose one

*You make a valiant effort but you don’t make it up the hill, lose one momentum and choose another challenger to gain control of the match.

*You need to work with someone else- choose someone else to become King of the Hill and give them control of the match.

On a Miss, you get dumped off the Hill. Whoever is King of the Hill gains control of the match. Choose one:

*Give one Momentum to the King of the Hill and stay in the match.

*You’re thrown out of the ring and eliminated! Gain +1 Heat with the King of the Hill.

Is there any restriction on two players having the same gimmick?

Is there any restriction on two players having the same gimmick?

Is there any restriction on two players having the same gimmick? I’m adding player number 7 to my game tomorrow, and I want him to have the full range of options. I figure if players double up on a gimmick, they should at least look for another way to differentiate themselves.