Category: World Wide Wrestling RPG: Discussion

I forgot to mention this on my AP thread, but we used poker chips to keep track of momentum, and it worked wonderfully.  You can move them around, give them to different people, and don’t have to erase and rewrite frequently on your character sheet.

From the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin… WORLD WIDE WRESTLING!

Last night we sat down to playtest Nathan Paoletta’s WWW. It was me and five players: Shari, Tim, Doc, Brendan, and Rebecca.

Doc was probably the most familiar with wrestling, and he brought a lot of enthusiasm and knowledge to the game. Tim, Shari, and Brendan had some basic familiarity. I have pretty much the bare minimum cultural awareness. Rebecca was pretty much lost, and also had never played an AW game before.

I explained the basics, then we picked characters.

Shari played Nick the Stick, the Golden Boy, with charming good looks and a baseball theme.

(She floated the idea of playing the Ring Babe, but I’m not sure if she was joking or not. I’ll have to ask her if she was serious. Maybe the Manager fills that role, or maybe that will be a custom gimmick that she and I write…)

Tim played Gryla, the Monster, a 7’6” tower of meat from Iceland who carries his trademark boulder into the ring.

Rebecca, a woman after my own heart, played Bright Twilight the Anti-Hero, with a purple mohawk and a neon outfit. Her schtick is that she’s small, but nimble and skilled, and one of the few women wrestlers to be able to compete with the guys.

Brendan played El Presidente, the Veteran, our only heel. El Presidente has been heeling it up for decades, acting as a stand-in for Castro.

Doc played The Prince (of Mexico), the High-Flyer, and natural kayfabe rival to El Presidente.

Pretty much everyone wished there were some sample lists, for real names, wrestler names, and looks.

Some notes on Starting Moves:

Nick took +1 work, I am the Future, Always Learning, and for his advance took +1 Work.

Gryla took +1 work, Not of this World (Lucky Boulder), and for his advance took +1 Real. Tim had trouble coming up with a unique stipulation since there’s only one example, and I think pretty much took the hardcore one by default. I’m going to work with him to see if we can make up a custom one.

Bright Twilight took +1 Work, Anything You Need to Do to Win, and Twitch the Curtain.

El Presidente took +1 Power and Put Over, and for his advance took +1 Real

The Prince took +1 Work, Respected and Human Highlight Reel, and for his advance took Put Over from the Veteran playbook.

Our starting heat had us a little confused- I didn’t realize that the Monster and Veteran both start everyone at 1 heat instead of 0.

As it happened, almost everyone had a question that nobody else was willing to answer, so I stepped up and created a NTC to fill that void.

Nick the Stick has been taken under the wing of the Prince- they’re now frequent Tag Team partners. El Presidente is jealous of Nick the Stick’s rapid rise. The Stick originally debuted with Rock Lobster, a guy in a padded lobster suit.

Gryla was rescued from his underground prison by The Prince in one of his international journeys. Bright Twilight made him look weak when she debuted. The Stick is willing to stand up to Gryla in the ring.

Bright Twilight had to kick the shit out of El Presidente before anyone would take her seriously as a wrestler. She has a reluctant alliance with Gryla- their tag team theme is ‘big and little.’ Nobody wanted to be seen as a slave to management, so I created the Dark Diva.

El Presidente had to step over Johnny Saturn, 80s and 90s wrestler turned current owner of WWW, to get where he is today. The Prince is his protege. He feels that Nick the Stick is undercutting him.

The Prince feels that Nick the Stick always has his back. El Presidente mentored him when he first started. NTC Kombat King is ripping off his style.

Our first match of the night was a tag team Gryla and Bright Twilight vs. The Dark Diva and NTC Draco. The Faces were booked to win. We started with Twilight thrown into the ring by Gryla (a nice idea on Rebecca’s part) vs. the Dark Diva. I wanted to start by giving Rebecca some spotlight, but I think she felt put on the spot. She fumbled a bit, but found the wrestling chart handy- “okay, I want to put her in a figure four.”

As creative, I felt like I didn’t want to call the match until everyone had a chance to fight. Rebecca kept on retaining control, and didn’t want to tag out. Eventually I said something OOC, and Gryla got a chance to fight.

Shari was the Announcer, and we used the suggested Announcer revision, where she can upgrade one roll and then hand the mic off. She added a lot of fun color to the game, and upgraded one of Rebeccas rolls. Over the session we had some confusion over what moves the announcer should and should not be able to upgrade- can they upgrade the Golden Boy’s Always Learning, for example?

As creative, this fight really felt like it dragged. I’ll talk more about that later.

Interviewers stuck mics in Twilight and Grylas faces afterwards, offering them Promo opportunities, but neither of them really took the bait. Twilight said she was going to go get dinner.

Next up we had a tagteam match of Nick the Stick and the Prince vs. El Presidente and Kombat King. I think Tim started with the mic here, and he was much less passionate about being the announcer than Shari. When it got handed off to Rebecca, I think she had some fun, but trouble with it.

Nick the Stick made an entrance, swinging his bat and blowing kisses to the ladies- I had him roll to Work the Audience. Then El Presidente and Kombat King made one hell of an entrance riding in El Presidente’s motorcycle, and driving around the ring a few times, and then El Presidente went for some Cheap Heat by condescendingly talking to the “little people” in the audience.

This match had some better back and forth, with the partners tagging out. Highlight was Nick the Stick being beaten with bats by El Presidente and Kombat King, the ref breaking it up, and then the two of them taking out the Prince for the win while the ref wasn’t looking.

After that, Nick the Stick gave an ultimatum to El Presidente “If you ever take my bat again, I’ll break you in half” (he thought about using his I am the Future move, but decided to Cut Promo instead.) Creative booked the two of them in a Bat Match. El Presidente had Nick’s old wodden baseball bat, and Nick had a shiny aluminum one. I had Nick the Stick booked to win, since he’s management’s favorite.

This match was probably the high point of the night for me- it had the most reversals, and came about through play.

Doc was the announcer for most of this match and was just great. One announcer would give great commentary, and then in another voice, he would say something like, “that’s right Bob, when you take a bat to the face, it hurts.”)

Nick started with control, but botched his Hardcore move, playing it way too safe and giving El Presidente control. El Presidente pressed his advantage, but stopped to admire the aluminum bat, turning his back to the Stick and dropping the trusty wooden bat just in his reach. He framed this as a Put Over move.

Nick got the bat and went in to take control of the match, doing a cute maneuver where he tapped El Presidente on the shoulder and then ‘hit’ him with the bat. This one, and most of the other bat-based moves were rolled with Looks. While El Presidente was down, he started throwing baseballs to the crowd, but botched the Work the Audience roll, and went down to zero audience! They weren’t buying it, they came to see wrestling!

The Presidente got Nick in another great hold, and then Creative called an audible- they were reversing the booking, and clearing El Presidente to go for the pin! El Presidente pinned Nick the Stick with a literal heel to the face- but as his finisher choice he had Nick the Stick gain the point of audience.

We had an off camera scene where Johnny Saturn chewed out Nick the Stick. It turns out that despite being a Kayfabe Face, he’s more of a legit heel.

Around this time, Shari decided to retcon Nick the Stick as Nicole the Stick, another female wrestler, since she was having some cognitive dissonance.

Last, we had the big event, a Last Man Standing event, featuring all the Talent and the Rock Lobster. Nikki the Stick started in the ring against Rock Lobster, and her luck turned around- she had a rapid string of 10+s, which she used to bounce Rock Lobster around the ring (good thing he has that padded suit!), and determine who was entering the ring next, building up her heat.

When Gryla entered the ring, he threw his Lucky Boulder at Nikki the Stick, and got a 7-9 on the hardcore move. Nikki was legit injured! She still managed to get a finishing opportunity and pin the Rock Lobster with Gryla’s boulder. Shari said she wasn’t actually strong enough to lift the boulder, so Rock Lobster actually had to lift it to pin himself, and didn’t sell it. (I think this was the result of Doc getting a 7-9 and opening up an opportunity for someone else to get a pin.) Nikki then also pinned the Prince.

By this point, the Ref had noticed that Nikki was legit injured, and got in the ring and made the X sign. Nikki wanted to lose to Bright Twilight, and I was going to give her a chance (though I wasn’t sure what to make her roll if she did)- but she said “No, I have to stand up for what I believe in, and that means leaving the ring.” She hadn’t even read the Face move, so I pointed her to that, and she spent her last momentum to get some Heat with Twilight.

It was now down to Gryla, El Presidente, and Bright Twilight. I gave Twilight control of the match. She went for a trip against Gryla, and got a 10+.

I told her- Gryla’s booked to win. Do you still want to go for the finisher and mess with the booking?

She said screw it, I Do Whatever It Takes to Win. She used 2 momentum and the Heel move to take out both Gryla AND El Preisdente in one tumble. (I ruled on the spot it was 1 momentum/opponent to take them out) Rebecca had some trouble figuring out a sufficiently underhanded tactic- I told her overriding my booking wasn’t underhanded enough, she had to describe her dirty fighting. She ended up deciding on doing a reversal on Gryla when he thought he was going in for his finisher on her.

During all of this, the Mic was just sitting there. I wanted to add additional announcer narration. Is it okay for me to do that? I know I can’t put people over, but I feel maybe the narration privilege should pass to Creative.

She rolled to Break Kayfabe, and botch. Johnny Saturn is going to be PISSED, but I haven’t decided yet what the exact fallout is going to be.

A question that came up is when exactly you get +1 Audience for facing a wrestler you have 4 heat with. I ruled it all happened simultaneously at the end of the match, and it was just 1, no matter how many wrestlers you had 4 heat with. But maybe it should have been immediately when you face off against them, and it can happen any number of times in a big match?

Order of operations matters, especially when people are at 3 and 4 audience.

Everyone seemed to have a really good time, and there were some really good high points. I felt like most of the wrestling was repetitive though, and that control of the match should shift more often. The few times I had control with an NTC, I felt like I played it pretty weak. (Draco is doing a surpise kick against you, what do you do?) Next time I’ll spell out the action, include a reversal, and give back control.

I have lots of great ideas for ongoing storylines and beefs, so I think the next session is going to be a lot stronger!