The World Wide Wrestling RPG is a game that creates professional wrestling pageantry and action. You don't need to know much about real–world wrestling in order to play this game well! All you need is an idea for an entertaining character. Wrestling is the drama of personal conflict, exaggerated until it becomes mythic. The game plunges your wrestler into these conflicts, guiding you through the drama as it escalates in more and more crowd–pleasing ways.
In World Wide Wrestling, "Creative" (the GM role) sets up the show, orders the cards, and books the matches ahead of time. The players choose archtypical pro wrestling Gimmicks - like the Monster, the Veteran, the High Flyer, and so on - as the base for their character. Wrestlers play through what Creative has planned, but they have the ability and autonomy to pursue their own feuds, set up their own matches and swerve Creative's booking. Meanwhile, Creative's job is to make it look like that was the plan all along!
Creative Moves are divided into "Soft" and "Hard" Moves. Soft Moves are the things you say whenever the players look at you expectantly, waiting for you to move the action along.
Soft Moves:
- Put a microphone in their face (a scheduled interview, an interruption, a request for an opinion, an accusation of wrongdoing).
- Take the next step for a storyline (as your dramatic sense dictates).
- Book them in a match (challenged by an inferior, scheduled by management, showcase a weakness or a strength).
- Bring in something On Deck (prep this in between sessions).
- Put something they value at risk (a championship, a partner, a friend, a mask).
- Announce kayfabe badness (a bad guy is underhanded, a good guy makes a mistake, management punishes someone).
- Give them a difficult decision to make (a choice between two things they want to keep or save).
- Swerve the storyline (as circumstances dictate).
- Create backstage intrigue (a plot, a betrayal, an affair, a poor decision, a rumor, a mistake).
Hard Moves are the things you say when players Botch (by rolling a 6 or lower) or position themselves such that they're really just asking for it.
Hard Moves:
- Turn the audience on them (they lose -1 Audience).
- Turn a wrestler on them (they lose -1 Heat with the character).
- Announce legit badness (someone is injured, someone is in trouble, someone has disappeared, something important is broken, something important is missing).
- Give them a no"“win situation (a choice between their career and their integrity).
- Hire or fire someone important (hire someone they hate, fire someone they love).
- Push an NPW ahead of them (because of their failure).
- Steal their victory (preferably via their worst enemy).