Did Gangrel ever play Vampire?

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...