Finally, finally finished reading this last night. I bought a copy off Nathan Paoletta at NewMexicon a few weeks back and it’s been languishing on my shelf since then. :-/
I think my favorite bit of the book is all the essays. There’s one that’s kind of an overview of professional wrestling, starting in the 1970s and going forward. Then there’s one about RPGs. Those two essays basically set up a reader who’s familiar with one zone to get familiar with the other zone. Then there are some neat personal essays talking about wrestling fandom, including what feels like a pretty deep dive by Ian Williams.
I think the game would be a ton of fun to play with fans of professional wrestling. I’ve heard nothing but good stories about how the game really really speaks to existing fans, and that non-fans can have fun with the game as well. But I gotta say — and this is not a criticism of the game at all — as a non-fan of wrestling, hooking into the game feels really hard — without the enthusiasm of a fan to drag me along, at least.
This is all going to be Wrestling 101 for the in-deep fans and I don’t know that I need further selling from/by those people. I’m just going to talk about my impressions of the thing. Again, please, for the love of God, nobody get all offended.
The thing I’m having trouble hooking into is the second-order meta-ness, the uh self awareness required to play the game. It is a game about telling the story of storytellers whose only tool is violence. You play a character who plays a character, with this super-weird vagueness about the reality/contrivance of the feuds being played out.
My relationship with wrestling is tenuous at best. I got lassoed into watching it in the late ’80s in college with my gaming buddies (who were telling me the exact same thing nearly 30 years ago: this is exactly the same as an RPG!). I couldn’t really connect with what was going on, because I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy the action and athleticism. I’d ask “so these guys are performers, right? So we’re basically watching a TV show with the narrative pared down to the fights?” Which is right-ish but also completely misses the point, I suspect.
Then I got interested in the backstories of extreme sports people, not just in wrestling but across all kinds of athletics. The Wrestler was exciting for me to watch because the stakes seemed more emotionally real. I think that part of the story was interesting to me because my own grandfather was a luchador in southern Arizona in the early 1950s, and his stories about everything happening outside the ring were always more interesting to me than whatever happened inside the ring.
But World Wide Wrestling does not tackle that at all. Or rather it does, but it never breaks the kayfabe, the fiction of the sport/show. There are literally no rules for dealing with conflicts outside the ring. Some moves inject back-stage actions but the fallback is that you talk it out without rolling or, if you want a system to mediate the conflict, you go into the ring and fight it out. It is a perfect implementation of the “real world beefs are played out in front of an audience” aesthetic of the game.
The place my head just cannot get me is that I can’t figure out how real-world stakes get any kind of resolution in the make-believe land of the ring. That’s so weird to me, but that’s because I’m trying my damnedest to jam The Wrestler into the game, and it does not belong there. Different story and it would take different tools. It’s entirely on me.
Which is why I say I’d love to play with fans of professional wrestling. I’ll bet the excitement is infectious and it would become completely clear to me. It also makes me wistful for my college buddies, nearly all of whom have moved on and away (but one of whom is one of my very best friends).
Other notes and thoughts:
* Now I see why Nathan says PbtA-style Fronts are Bangs. They totally aren’t but at least I understand where he’s coming from. Between sessions in WWW, each player puts a feud or issue “on deck” to be resolved in an upcoming session. It’s a terrific way for the players to drive the action and take most of the planning load off the GM/MC. Buuut that’s just jamming Bangs into PbtA; they’re not a direct replacement for Fronts. The front is there to drive forward the big-picture narrative, which might or might not directly challenge a character with a right-now problem. In fact they mostly don’t.
* I’m super curious to see the Kickstarter-only Season One gimmicks (playbooks). The game itself comes with a really nice array of styles, including a non-wrestler, The Manager, who apparently can get sucked into the ring because that’s a thing that happens in pro wrestling?
* I would have been interested in seeing more talk about outside-the-ring personalities and how they can impact the storyline. Everyone’s called a NPW, a non-player wrestler, with the implication I suppose that literally anyone and everyone can end up in the ring.
* One of the players whose character is not currently wrestling is designated as The Announcer. I like that! I’m not totally sure what I’d do with a mike if it was handed to me. This is actually the thing where having pro wrestling fans at the table would probably be the most awesome. Same with the “cut a promo” move, where your character grabs a mike and rants at The Audience about whatever. It’s there to reinforce the roles (good/bad guy) and gimmicks (playbooks) while juicing the various economies at work in the game (momentum and audience).
* I really like the competition for Audience. That feels like where the stakes of the game actually lie. Everyone’s incentivized to juice their Heat (the kayfabe conflict between wrestlers) so that they improve the odds of gaining Audience. Neat. Also very meta!
Anyway, interesting game and I’m glad I have it. $20 is a steal, too. Learn more: http://ndpdesign.com/wwwrpg/
I played with Nathan at ValorCon in Chicago. It was way more fun that I expected, despite not being good at the quick witted shit talk.
I dragged a friend with who was complaining about how stupid he thought wrestling was. Then he played the game and wants to run it all the time now.
Edit: Have you read/played Contenders? If you want out-of-the-ring stuff, that’d be what I’d point at.
/sub
I used to take part in a PbP wrestling site right out of high school and the smack talk and the artistry of the promo were the best thing. I’d only watched bits and pieces of the WWF growing up, so the showmanship and the moves were all I knew. I quickly took to the fantastic moments created by all the posturing that took place before the weekly match-ups (run by the site’s coordinator). There’s so much fun to be had there.
Some of my favorite non-meat-space roleplaying I’ve ever done. I totally recommend grabbing a pro-wrestling fan or two and playing this, Paul. It’s incredibly infectious, as you suspect. Even if you don’t care a wit about the WWE and it’s ilk.
I’m not a wrestling fan. Nathan ran this at Origins and I played with like 8 folks..another thing I’m not a fan of.
The session was high energy and outrageously fun. Beat the pants off my expectations.
I’d play the shit out of this game, but I don’t think I could deliver on running it. I snagged a copy too, but I’m hoping to get Jeremiah Frye to run it!
So far it’s sounding like the book needs a Nathan Not Included warning label.
takes the mic
No, Beakley. Nathan is included. And he’s coming.
FOR
YOU!
Edit: Alternative: “Nathan is included. IN YOUR NIGHTMARES”
I think I can take him.
(And yeah, I’d definitely sign up for a game he was running.)
Sounds like I need Thomas Demkey to purchase and run this game for me.
I was actually pretty glad that I’d seen media (notably, shounen anime, but more specifically JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure ) that let me draw some parallels in terms of the in-the-world narrative. That whole “solving problems through punching things/physical confrontation” is totally shounen anime.
You see it in a lot of superhero stories as well, if that helps. Slamming the bad guy through a brick wall doesn’t really make sense in a normal context, but in an old-school superhero story, that’s just how it works. You fight it out to resolve your issue.
Actually, that’s kinda like Greek epics, too, most particularly the Iliad.
Yes I get all that! But WWW also emphasizes the fact that there is a real world beyond the ring. In those other media, there isn’t. In WWW, that tension is dramatically and mechanically important.
This is also related to why Contenders I think doesn’t get at what I was looking for, either: There’s no kayfabe in Contenders, is there? Aren’t the fighters actual athletes, without an external storyline to play out?
Yeah, that makes sense. I love weird concepts, so even if it doesn’t make any sense, I love the idea of playing out people who treat a story as something which has real-world repercussions. It’s like the ultimate LARP or something. Really weird. So to a mind like mine, I dig that a lot.
I also get the sense that none of this matters at all once you’ve bought into the fundamental draw of pro wrestling. Or are sitting there surrounded by people who are all-in.
Paul Beakley Contenders has external connections as well as Training and “Free play” scenes meant for out-of-the-ring roleplay.
Edit: Direct from the Contenders book – https://i.imgur.com/ZWybgL1.png
Aaron Griffin understood!
Paul Beakley oh, There’s no kayfabe – you’re right. The story in the ring is not different from the story out of it. There’s no roleplaying of the match, unless you’re supposed to take a dive, or something. I see what you’re going for – roleplaying actors who have a persona outside of the characters they play on stage. Can you do that in PTA?
Oh probably.
Again I have no beef at all with how WWW executes its thing. It does what it does very well! My issues are entirely my own.
As another non-fan of wrestling, I was able to contextualize the game by thinking about it as a comic book story:
” It is a game about telling the story of storytellers whose only tool is violence. You play a character who plays a character, with this super-weird vagueness about the reality/contrivance of the feuds being played out.”
That could just as easily be used to describe comic book characters and storylines, and the “everything is settled in the ring” idea matches one to one with nearly all of my experiences playing Champions as a teen.
Will Peter Parker finally ask Mary Jane out? Who knows! The Rhino just literally knocked over a bank and called Spider-man out, so it’s time to throw down!
A Marvel Comics promotion would be awesomesauce.
Like you, I am not a pro wrestling fan; however, I dig Nathan Paoletta enthusiasm for the game and the sport. I do have one WWE fan in my mix, I’ve thought of running this for him with hope that his enthusiasm would infect others.
Jelly that you got to meet him.
Side note, Paul Beakley, if you enjoyed The Wrestler, I do as well, seek out the documentary Beyond the Mat. From my understanding, much of The Wrestler was based upon the life of Jake the Snake, who figures prominently in BtM.
I am happy to continue saying nice things about Nathan Paoletta, especially if it’ll make you even more jealous!
No, nice things, my kryptonite!
At the risk of tanking this thread: the non-mechanics for off-camera interactions is 100% intentional and intentionally provocative for gamers specifically. That said, I’m begrudgingly adding a framework for handling it in the supplement since people keep getting hung up on it (and I found a way to keep it wrestle-y).
And, overall, yeah, having a wrestling fan run the game is probably 90% of “understanding” how it works if you’re not already into it. I’m not so full of hubris that I think I can transmit why someone should be excited about wrestling in a book, of all things, past providing examples of why I like it, you know?
Nah man, thread not tanked! I’m glad you’re adding some of that. I got what you were doing with it — you definitely force the action back into the ring — but I guess I’m glad to hear I’m not totally alone in struggling to bridge that gap.