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othernaut · 9 days ago

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Character Creation Challenge, Day 27: World Wide Wrestling

"Haley? We need you. Dan's on the roof again."

The woman in the doorway was twice her size. Half her makeup was off, the other half smeared under a deluge of fresh, red blood. Still, she managed to look sheepish. This wasn't what Haley was here for. Most people knew that by now. Or maybe it was - when things got intense, her brother tended to forget every face but the most familiar. "Are you not your brother's keeper?" her parents would say, hovering over her, expectant. Everyone knew what he was like these days. And everyone knew they could call her to bring him back. Until it killed her, or she killed him first.

"How long've we got?" she asked. The woman in the doorway leaned out, listening, filtering the essential backstage soundscape through a more expert ear. "Ten minutes?" she said. "We can push it to fifteen if he's bad. Just... give Misha a call, if he's, you know..."

"Really bad."

"Yeah."

Haley closed up her homework, suppressed a sigh, and slid out into the hallway. Out there, the noise of a wrestling show in full swing roared and echoed. The crowd, voices rising and falling like a static wave, muffled everything else to bass notes and intimation. The thud of bodies hitting the mat; the announcer's keen radio voice splattering the air with disconnected syllables - unmistakeable and untranslateable. The tall woman - Skorpetta, she remembered, there was a scorpion painted on her buttcheek, that helped - clicked the door shut and hovered nervously at the end of the hall, watching Haley hurry to the stairs. Everything backstage seemed to run on rubber time, either immediately important or too far ahead to worry about. This was a situation that had been building all afternoon, she was sure, but it was only now that it was an actual problem.

She hurried.

The arena wasn't supposed to have its roof open in the winter, but functionally, every time she'd been here, there had been a milk crate propping open the access door. Haley crunched her way outside, toeing past broken folding chairs and decades of cigarette butts. Her breath started fogging two paces from the halo of escaping heat. At least it wasn't hard to tell where Dan had gone off to. There he was, toes over the edge with his arms open wide, stiff-backed and steaming with sweat, staring into the rolling, overcast evening. She could see, in the parking lot, at least three distinct groups of people bunched on the asphalt, filming on their phones.

"Hey, Dan?"

He didn't turn. "It's okay," he said, "I'm gathering my energy." His voice sounded like it was set to .75 speed. He turned his head, caught in profile against the oncoming night. The one pupil Haley could see was as black and wide as a hunting cat's.

"Fuck," she said, "I'm calling Misha."

"No, don't," he squeaked. He stepped back from the edge, somehow stiff and wobbly at the same time, legs bowed like he was riding an invisible horse. He'd sweat through his makeup: the six-fingered alien handprint that was supposed to be the mark of whatever horseshit wrestler lore he'd made up was well on its way to finger number seven. He staggered forward, gripped Haley's shoulder tight, and straightened, as if he was trying to vampire away her poise.

"Dude, you're supposed to fight a guy," she said. She was already walking him back inside, out of the cold. Kicking the milk crate out of the door, easing him down the concrete stairs. "Like, fuck, you're supposed to be on camera."

"Are you worried about me?" he asked. She kept struggling, kept descending, kept wondering. He was six inches taller than her and a hundred pounds heavier, but he was wound so tight, clenched so tense that he felt almost weightless against her. His eyes were locked on the back of her head. She could almost feel his focus. She nodded and concentrated on walking.

He pushed off of her, stood upright, took the stairs on his own. First haltingly, like all the world was made out of gelatin, and then with increasing confidence. She could see a bit of that shit-eating daredevil smile that she remembered from when they were kids, usually seen right before he dive-bombed off the garage or something. "You've got nothing to worry about," he said. "I'm back. This body once again contains me." She smiled, too. Stood nearby while he made it to backstage and zigzagged his way to the front.

She didn't know why she kept doing this, why she kept lying to herself that it fucking mattered. She was only supposed to drive him here and back. None of this shit meant anything to her, but... Dan was walking tall now, almost radiating. Slipping back into the role. After everything she'd seen him go through, all that shit in high school, if this was the thing that brought him back? Out of his room, out into the world, out into somewhere, something that made him smile? Sure. It was worth a couple of hours a week. Until it killed her, or she killed him first.

Skorpetta was leaning by the doors, forehead taped, radiating visible relief when she saw them. "We had to cut to a pre-taped promo," she said to somewhere between the both of them. "You're going right out into the ring." Dan whooped, punched his chest, shouldered through the doors; Skorpetta had to hold him back until his theme song started. Then he burst through, wheeling through the curtains in a laughing spiral, arms swept wide. The backstage corridor filled with raging neon and the roar and clamor of the crowd, like a Garden of Earthly Delights painted with ever-burning fireworks. They introduced him - "Now making his way to the ring, hailing from the Energy Plane, ambassador for the Cyber Mind and breaker of cosmic chains!" - and he ran, leapt, dove under the ropes. Picked up a rolling microphone, started rambling about aliens and ghosts, and they listened. Shouted, cheered, and listened.

Haley should have been getting back to her homework, but then Skorpetta's heavy hand fell on her shoulder, and she stayed. "Hey, thanks for always being there," she said. Haley smirked, dismissive, but stayed in the doorway and watched, even when Skorpetta let her go. This wasn't anything good for him, wasn't what her parents would call a "healthy coping mechanism", but fuck it, right? What's the alternative? He trips balls alone in his dorm room or he does it here.

Some people don't get to have the same experiences as everybody else. Some people have to scrounge for catharsis while the rest of the world achieves purpose. And wrestling's a transitory state, anyway. Ask anyone and they'll tell you no one can be in the game forever. You exorcise the demons you came with until there's nothing left for you to do.

Was she encouraging him?

Would he do it anyway?

Doesn't everyone deserve somebody to stay with them, even through all the dumb shit they do to themselves?

What dumb shit would she be doing, if someone would have been there for her?

*****

Now Making His Way To The Ring: Robo Weapon Hailing From: The Energy Plane Entrance: Trippy & Surreal Stats: Body -2, Look +1, Real +1, Work -1 Role: Heel (less vindictive, more chaotic) Want: Bring An Opponent Into My World! Audience Resets To: +2 Momentum/Heat: ???

Moves: Finishing Move: Roll 2d6. On a 10+, I hit my finisher clean. On a 7-9, choose: I win through guile instead (gaining +1 Heat) or they help me play up my unique approach (we both gain +1 Momentum). On a botch, choose: I still win but it looks terrible (-1 Momentum), or my opponent saves by covering me (booking themselves the win and they gain +1 Audience). Showstopper: Once per Episode, I can just show up in an otherwise unaffiliated segment. I declare my agenda, gain +1 Momentum, and if a wrestler tries to donk it up, they break kayfabe. Play to the Crowd: When I use my gimmick to highlight a real issue, roll +Real. On a 10+, I nail it, gaining +1 Audience. On a 7-9, it's either a hit backstage (+2 Momentum) or someone comes out to take me to task (I gain +1 Heat with them). On a botch, I mishandle it, losing -1 Audience and being booked into a punitive match.

*****

I am mad that this game is good.

It fuses together two things that I don't really like on their own, Powered by the Apocalypse and professional wrestling. Moreover, both unliked halves of World Wide Wrestling are celebratory in their presence, keenly loved by the designers and expertly blended together into a unified whole. The changes, additions, and structure of World Wide Wrestling flow with the structure of PbtA rather than fight against it, making this so far the only PbtA game I've liked that wouldn't have been better suited just making up a whole other bespoke system. The alloy that it uses to weld the disparate, unliked halves together is pure arm-waving enthusiasm and, ruefully, that's where the magic is made.

World Wide Wrestling is clearly written by people with a deep passion for both wrestling and roleplay, people for whom this wasn't a project to bang out but something ruminating in the back of the mind for a long time, and passion is an unmistakeable draw. That's the only real click inherent in wrestling as a whole for me - not the show itself, but being in the crowd with a bunch of people who have all eagerly bought in. The fact that the passion itself is the throughline is what tips the game over from "eh, not for me" into "god damn it, I have to at least have a look at this thing".

This is also why I'm mad. The actually clever role-playing game bits, like the unique player-versus-GM-versus-player system, are so intrinsically also a part of professional wrestling that I don't know how I would excise and transplant them. Player elimination and PVP, both things I try desperately to avoid when running any tabletop of any sort, are accounted for and expected here - moreso, it's handled with the kind of back-and-forth camaraderie that is, again, intrinsic to the medium of professional wrestling and its pre-scripted pageantry. It even manages to suck a little bit of the tedium out of being the GM - more than anything else, you wind the players up and let them go, as if they were screaming, muscley Beyblades, and the little mini-game of making it seem like their shenanigans are what you planned all along makes hilariously explicit an open secret of GMing. World Wide Wrestling isn't a wrestling game that happens to be good, it's good because it's a wrestling game.

The worst thing? The worst thing of all? I might have to play this with actual people. Through what I can only assume is a curse upon my very destiny, I've somehow manage to surround myself with friends and loved ones who are very fucking into combat sports. Like, my best friend in all this world puts out an ongoing and infuriatingly well-written weekly UFC report. I have known this man for decades, I'm officiating his wedding, and I feel his dark spirit hovering over me, watching me write about wrestling. His wife is into combat sports. So's my boyfriend. There is a very good chance that any human being I grow emotionally close to will be a wrestle-liker. And I, the obsessive RPG weirdo, must tell them of World Wide Wrestling, because I love them and want them to be happy, even if the source of their happiness is alien and bewildering to me.

Also, yeah, this character was influenced by the one element of professional wrestling I still remember with clarity - the unhinged, cocaine-fueled promos from back in the 90's.

Next up: Sigmar says its my turn with the soul.

#character creation challenge #new year new character #ttrpg #world wide wrestling #also legitimately if you have any interest in combat sports whatsoever you should check out my buddy's substack #he's got an existential world-weariness to his writing that springs from being a non-chud in such a chud-filled fanbase as the UFC #also it's just good

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