Random bored Google and Wikipedia trawling turned up something very strange: tabletop wrestling roleplaying games, both card games and pen and paper.
I vaguely remember the old WWE card game, Raw Deal, WWE's attempt to cash in on the booming (circa-2000) collectible card game industry. In fairness I never actually played it, and maybe it's really good. Maybe it's the best wrestling-based card game ever, in the crowded field of two. Legends of Wrestling comes in full boxed sets, has quite charming black and white ink drawings as opposed to Raw Deal's glossy full photos and, like the terrible GameCube game of the same name, isn't tied to one particular period or promotion so the biggest hook is in putting together dream matches - Antonio Inoki vs. Steve Corino? King Kong Bundy vs. Tiger Mask? The Missing Link vs. The Mountie? Sherri Martel vs. Bobby Heenan? The Valentine Brothers vs. The Voodoo Kin Mafia? If only I knew anyone who was into both card gaming and wrestling, I'd get this and try it out, especially given that the transatlantic handling and shipping charges are less than five bucks.
I might end up getting it anyway since the company who publish the game, Filsinger Games, also publish a pen-and-paper wrestling roleplaying game - in space! For such is the utterly insane but surprisingly well-reviewed Champions of the Galaxy, which looks to be a mixture of WWF's late eighties/early nineties "We'll make a gimmick of out of anything!" bombast with a kind of spacefaring fantasy superhero galactic civil war saga that would bring George Lucas out in envious hives. This looks so legendarily insane I just have to try it. There's also an online version which looks kinda like a cross between a traditional online card game such as Pox Nora, Magic: the Gathering Online or Armageddon Empires, with Adam Ryland's wrestling management sims. I might try investigating further, if I do I'll post back with my thoughts.
Also well-received was Errant Knight Games' Kayfabe, an altogether more grounded simulation which seems to focus less on in-ring competition and more on backstage relationships and politics. Again I'd love to try it out at some point, but I'm lacking wrestling fans to play with in my area. I'm also aware of a more combat-oriented game called Wrestling Warriors by one Walt Spafford, and a White Wolf release entitled Streetfighter RPG, but more information is eluding me on both of them at present. Supposedly Streetfighter is about shoot fighting but I suspect the source I read might be a little confused, as I'm positive White Wolf had the license to the Street Fighter beat-em-up series for a while...
Of course as with the Raw Deal card game, where there's money to be had WWE will jump on it. The WWF Adventure Game was an early nineties attempt to let people be their favourite superstars in the comfort of their own living rooms - y'know, before wrestling videogames were any good. It was moderately well received by critics of the era but has not aged well apparently, not least because most of the biggest stars in it have long since moved on. Might be worth a try if I ever see a cheap copy somewhere - I can't see it being a collector's item somehow.
That all this stuff exists shouldn't really surprise me as much as it does. For one thing, people will make a game out of anything, and for another I'm still waiting on trying out some of the stuff in XWF, the almost-shoot wrestling supplement for White Wolf's dark superheroes setting, Aberrant - the first game since Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door to have me truly excited about the prospect of playing a jobber...
Thursday 27 November 2008
Saturday 15 November 2008
Who's The Beatdown?
Bear with me. Game strategist and theorist Mike Flores once wrote a seminal article on high-level play of the card game Magic: The Gathering entitled Who's The Beatdown? (link, for those who know the game) in which he defined the two roles in a 1-versus-1 match of that game: beatdown and control. In a nutshell, the beatdown player wants to be as aggressive as possible, with the intent of winning the game as quickly as possible. The control player, meanwhile, wants to stem the assault of the beatdown player through more defensive tactics, and win once the beatdown player's resources are depleted. The most common mistake ("yet subtle, yet disastrous" according to Flores) in competitive Magic is failure to understand your role. Think that you're the beatdown when you'd be better suited to control, or vice-versa, and you've more-than-likely lost.
The theory is pretty detailed in relation Magic, but the basic idea - the importance of recognising the dichotomy between aggressive and defensive play, and which one you're better suited to in a given situation - is applicable to many games, from real-time strategy (building walls and defensive turrets versus early tank rushes) to online shooters (sneaky, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare versus frontal assaults) to even backgammon (pushing to get all of your counters to your home board versus denying your opponent the ability to do the same). And guess what? I'm fairly certain the same thing can be applied to wrestling. When commentators talk about grounding or slowing down an opponent, they're talking about one competitor taking over the role of the control player.
One of the most common mistakes I see in match writing is a failure to take the participants' fighting styles into account. Even people with a good understanding of storytelling, ring positioning and psychology can often end up writing every match as if it was Triple H versus Edge, all strikes and clotheslines and brawling. Part of this, I'm sure, is simple unfamiliarity with fighting styles not common on WWE or TNA programming, which is fair enough. But it's definitely something worth learning if you want your matches to be as good as the can be. Watch different promotions from around the world and find out how people with different backgrounds fight. Learn whether luchadors favour kicks or punches, how a small high-flier sets up for their big moves, or how a British technician and a Canadian technician will differ in how they escape a hold.
More than just moveset, one's fighting style affects one's approach to combat. Another key term in Magic: The Gathering theory which I'm going to borrow is tempo, or the pace of the contest. It's difficult to define easily, but at heart, a beatdown player wants to speed up the pace of the game and the control player wants to slow it down. Translated to wrestling, the beatdown wrestler wants to speed up the pace of the match and the control wrestler wants to slow it down. Fliers with a lot of high-damage, high-risk diving or jumping attacks are looking to speed up the pace of a match, keeping the opponent out of breath and unable to catch up with the assault. By contrast, a technician with good conditioning wants to slow down the match, letting the opponent wear themselves out, before taking control.
A key attribute of many great wrestlers from Ric Flair to Triple H to Eddie Guerrero is the ability to change their pace to suit the match. Against large, slow, physically dominant people like Big Show or Kevin Nash, guys like this would speed up their assault, understanding that their role here is the aggressor - the beatdown. Against fast, tricky opponents like Jeff Hardy or
Shelton Benjamin, they'll become much slower and more defensive - the control - understanding that their role is to weather the assault and let the match run to a point when they can take over safely.
Extend this concept and in each match, one competitor becomes the beatdown and the other, the control. Think about the characters' movesets, country of origin, background and fighting styles, and try to work out who wants to be the early aggressor and who wants to be the defender taking the match to the long game. Please not this doesn't just mean one wrestler gets all the early offence in and the other turns round and dominates later on - individual exchanges can (and should) go either way. What I mean is to pay attention to what each participant's overall strategy ought to be. Get it right, and your match will flow much more smoothly as a believable contest.
The theory is pretty detailed in relation Magic, but the basic idea - the importance of recognising the dichotomy between aggressive and defensive play, and which one you're better suited to in a given situation - is applicable to many games, from real-time strategy (building walls and defensive turrets versus early tank rushes) to online shooters (sneaky, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare versus frontal assaults) to even backgammon (pushing to get all of your counters to your home board versus denying your opponent the ability to do the same). And guess what? I'm fairly certain the same thing can be applied to wrestling. When commentators talk about grounding or slowing down an opponent, they're talking about one competitor taking over the role of the control player.
One of the most common mistakes I see in match writing is a failure to take the participants' fighting styles into account. Even people with a good understanding of storytelling, ring positioning and psychology can often end up writing every match as if it was Triple H versus Edge, all strikes and clotheslines and brawling. Part of this, I'm sure, is simple unfamiliarity with fighting styles not common on WWE or TNA programming, which is fair enough. But it's definitely something worth learning if you want your matches to be as good as the can be. Watch different promotions from around the world and find out how people with different backgrounds fight. Learn whether luchadors favour kicks or punches, how a small high-flier sets up for their big moves, or how a British technician and a Canadian technician will differ in how they escape a hold.
More than just moveset, one's fighting style affects one's approach to combat. Another key term in Magic: The Gathering theory which I'm going to borrow is tempo, or the pace of the contest. It's difficult to define easily, but at heart, a beatdown player wants to speed up the pace of the game and the control player wants to slow it down. Translated to wrestling, the beatdown wrestler wants to speed up the pace of the match and the control wrestler wants to slow it down. Fliers with a lot of high-damage, high-risk diving or jumping attacks are looking to speed up the pace of a match, keeping the opponent out of breath and unable to catch up with the assault. By contrast, a technician with good conditioning wants to slow down the match, letting the opponent wear themselves out, before taking control.
A key attribute of many great wrestlers from Ric Flair to Triple H to Eddie Guerrero is the ability to change their pace to suit the match. Against large, slow, physically dominant people like Big Show or Kevin Nash, guys like this would speed up their assault, understanding that their role here is the aggressor - the beatdown. Against fast, tricky opponents like Jeff Hardy or
Shelton Benjamin, they'll become much slower and more defensive - the control - understanding that their role is to weather the assault and let the match run to a point when they can take over safely.
Extend this concept and in each match, one competitor becomes the beatdown and the other, the control. Think about the characters' movesets, country of origin, background and fighting styles, and try to work out who wants to be the early aggressor and who wants to be the defender taking the match to the long game. Please not this doesn't just mean one wrestler gets all the early offence in and the other turns round and dominates later on - individual exchanges can (and should) go either way. What I mean is to pay attention to what each participant's overall strategy ought to be. Get it right, and your match will flow much more smoothly as a believable contest.
Wednesday 22 October 2008
The Size Advantage
A big barometer of success in running an e-fedding seems to be the size of your fed - the number of weekly shows you produce, the number of members you have. The larger the better. RoughKut definitely works on this principle. Something occurred to me about that recently - it's bullshit. I've been on feds with 200+ members and you know something? I hated them. They're impersonal and cliquey. More members means you're less likely to go under but it also means that newer or less active members are more likely to be marginalised.
I can see the counter-argument to that; newer and less active members ought to have an incentive to become an active part of the community and get further up the card. The larger a roster is, the tougher the field is, the harder the glass ceiling is to break, and that stimulates members to work harder. Those who aren't interested in pushing themselves that hard shouldn't have joined in the first place.
This makes the mistake of assuming everyone wants the same thing, that everyone wants to be the most successful wrestler, and every fed ought to want to be the most successful - what about those who just want to hang out and have fun? It's a chicken/egg situation - on large feds, very often, only established veterans become big players - but only big players become established veterans. Furthermore, I for one have always found storytelling less involved in any fed of about 100+ members; there's so much going on you're expected to keep track of and so few people are interested in anyone else's storylines.
Now, I'm not saying that all large feds ought to keel over and die. Promotions like Pro Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. have their place, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with being competitive. But there's also nothing wrong with NOT being so competitive. But personally when I want to get to know a bunch of people, kick back and have a laugh, and more than anything really roleplay with others rather than just compete for championships, I'm going to go to a smaller and more intimate place.
I'm stopping now before this devolves into ludology versus narratology - don't worry, I'm sure that one will come too at some point. :P
I can see the counter-argument to that; newer and less active members ought to have an incentive to become an active part of the community and get further up the card. The larger a roster is, the tougher the field is, the harder the glass ceiling is to break, and that stimulates members to work harder. Those who aren't interested in pushing themselves that hard shouldn't have joined in the first place.
This makes the mistake of assuming everyone wants the same thing, that everyone wants to be the most successful wrestler, and every fed ought to want to be the most successful - what about those who just want to hang out and have fun? It's a chicken/egg situation - on large feds, very often, only established veterans become big players - but only big players become established veterans. Furthermore, I for one have always found storytelling less involved in any fed of about 100+ members; there's so much going on you're expected to keep track of and so few people are interested in anyone else's storylines.
Now, I'm not saying that all large feds ought to keel over and die. Promotions like Pro Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. have their place, no doubt, and there's nothing wrong with being competitive. But there's also nothing wrong with NOT being so competitive. But personally when I want to get to know a bunch of people, kick back and have a laugh, and more than anything really roleplay with others rather than just compete for championships, I'm going to go to a smaller and more intimate place.
I'm stopping now before this devolves into ludology versus narratology - don't worry, I'm sure that one will come too at some point. :P
Saturday 11 October 2008
Indie Grand Scheme Of Things
The question of whether fedding can or should have a larger unified canon is a long, complex and often tedious one. I'm not aware of any groups of feds bigger than about 5 or 6 that fully recognise each other as part of the same single wrestling world with no contradictory canon between them.
Personally, I'd like to see it. CAWS only - otherwise you get twenty Undertakers and CM Punks running around - but a decent-sized group of feds with a proper structure and relationship, so you have a couple of global-sized ones at the top, then a handful of national sized ones, and then a whole load of niche and regional companies. This would open up the potential for transfers, interpromotional events and make being 'world champion' really mean something.
What I really, really mainly want to see out of something like that most is a proper indie circuit. I'd like to take my character into occasional matches in, say, Wrestling Asylum and Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise without her actually being a full-time member of either promotion's roster. What would be really, really cool is if for example she had a big feud in PWE and once it was done disappear for a while - during which time she puts in more appearances with WA, maybe goes for a title run say.
But then, I try to keep my characters' canons the same between feds, and I know not everyone does. Baby Dogg's home is Global Extreme Wrestling (which I see as RoH in terms of popularity and mainstream recognition) but her day job is Championship Wrestling Federation (TNA-ish level - or would be if it wasn't on hiatus right now) and between the two, where is she meant to find the time for a third, if it has to be full time by default? John Waylon's Psychotic Championship Wrestling had its flaws but in hindsight, the one-show-a-month approach it had actually made a lot of sense.
As it stands, to be in a few promotions at once and thus really feel like a part of a broader wrestling world, here's both the OC problem of having the time to do 5 or 6 matches a week (been there, done that, bought the brain meltdown) and the IC problem of, how the hell is she meant to work four matches a night in different states or even countries? It's stretching it with just two frankly.
If anyone has any thoughts on this subject please let me know.
Personally, I'd like to see it. CAWS only - otherwise you get twenty Undertakers and CM Punks running around - but a decent-sized group of feds with a proper structure and relationship, so you have a couple of global-sized ones at the top, then a handful of national sized ones, and then a whole load of niche and regional companies. This would open up the potential for transfers, interpromotional events and make being 'world champion' really mean something.
What I really, really mainly want to see out of something like that most is a proper indie circuit. I'd like to take my character into occasional matches in, say, Wrestling Asylum and Phoenix Wrestling Enterprise without her actually being a full-time member of either promotion's roster. What would be really, really cool is if for example she had a big feud in PWE and once it was done disappear for a while - during which time she puts in more appearances with WA, maybe goes for a title run say.
But then, I try to keep my characters' canons the same between feds, and I know not everyone does. Baby Dogg's home is Global Extreme Wrestling (which I see as RoH in terms of popularity and mainstream recognition) but her day job is Championship Wrestling Federation (TNA-ish level - or would be if it wasn't on hiatus right now) and between the two, where is she meant to find the time for a third, if it has to be full time by default? John Waylon's Psychotic Championship Wrestling had its flaws but in hindsight, the one-show-a-month approach it had actually made a lot of sense.
As it stands, to be in a few promotions at once and thus really feel like a part of a broader wrestling world, here's both the OC problem of having the time to do 5 or 6 matches a week (been there, done that, bought the brain meltdown) and the IC problem of, how the hell is she meant to work four matches a night in different states or even countries? It's stretching it with just two frankly.
If anyone has any thoughts on this subject please let me know.
Thursday 9 October 2008
E-fedding In 100 Words
A blog about the crazy world of online text-based roleplaying revolving around professional wrestling - e-fedding.
In e-fedding, each involved player (sometimes called a 'handler') takes on the role of a pro wrestler or mixed martial artist and, together with other handlers, collaboratively creates the ongoing story of a promotion. It can be somewhat difficult for those not into both roleplaying and wrestling to understand, exacerbated by the fact there's an almost endless combination of approaches to the hobby.
I’ll explore these over the course of this blog and hopefully this will serve as a forum for discussion on the world of e-fedding and its modes, customs and inhabitants.
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