RPGs, Collaberation and Kayfabe

by hamish1024 Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:22 pm

Anyone ever played an actual wrestling RPG - ie with dice rolls and all that?

I have no true RPG experience (Dungeons and Dragons did not exist at my school) but I wanted to see how stats-based gaming would compare to the type of pure narrative roleplaying going on in AFW. Most RPGS seem to treat wrestling strictly as turn-based combat, with lots of complex rules for damage and stamina and so on, and seemed way too fiddly.

However I found one from about 10 years back called [url=http://realms.co.uk/blog/articles/review-kayfabe-the-inside-wrestling-rpg/:39hgo0vs]Kayfabe[/url:39hgo0vs] which looked interesting for two reasons - Firstly, it was focused on narrative, and instead of treating bouts as one-on-one stat battles, it had all the wrestlers working together to â€˜sellâ€

the matches to the fans, to earn points for the promotion (which I suppose is a good way of restoring the classic RPG theme of a party of players on a single adventure).

Second interesting point is that it RPâ€

d kayfabe as fake - I.e. everyoneâ€

s character was in on the scripted matches. Which made me wonder - do you think it would be possible to effectively RP characters where kayfabe was fake? Would it take away a lot of the tension of â€˜realâ€

wrestling, or would it add an interesting new dynamic (roleplaying a character who was roleplaying a characterâ€¦and youâ€˜d have to pity/admire the hentai jobber who knew they were about to get humiliatedâ€¦)?

Iâ€

m not trying to alter AFWâ€

s current form, I just wanted any thoughts on how dice rolls and levelling up would interact with wrestling RPâ€

s.

by Harrier Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:41 pm

The closest in D&D to staged combat are gladiatoral arenas, and they fail horribly most of the time. You just can't recreate for example Gladiator the movie with a set of rules without ignoring gaps in your plot or suffer through horrible drawn out battles with monsters and other gladiators. Rules are also sketchy at best for this. As far as I know, wrestling is a side note in D&D 2nd Edition at best, a horrible abdomination in 3rd Edition and a side note again in 4th Edition.

by kerflubble Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:42 pm

Adrian would totally be the coked out politicker. Ala HBK circa 1996

by hamish1024 Mon Mar 18, 2013 10:17 pm

[quote="kerflubble":36b5mwee]Adrian would totally be the coked out politicker. Ala HBK circa 1996

Friends in High Places: +1 Backstage Clout
Drug Problem: -2 Wrestling rolls

by Kitten Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:41 pm

Does anyone has that game?

by XSirenX Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:58 pm

Dice talk on AFW? :S gahhhhh, the least I think of the "Dice rolls for attacks etc blah blah blah shma" idea, the better.

by hamish1024 Wed Mar 20, 2013 6:42 pm

[quote="Kitten":2yl5tjca]Does anyone has that game?

I think the Kayfabe rules PDF is available on some download sites, though obviously I would not do anything so illegal as to download copyrighted materialâ€¦

Itâ€

s actually got some pretty interesting mechanics - play is split into a series of TV shows, with a PPV at the end, so itâ€

s all about the long-term story arcs, angles and feuds, and there are regular writersâ€

meetings built into the gameplay. Of course Iâ€

ve not played it, but it does seem to have good ideas on getting players to work together (as well as stab each other in the back), and the dice rolls look quite streamlined (certainly no intense calculation of exact hit points or anything like that) - a single roll will determine around a minute of match narrative, so you wonâ€

t have too many.

The approach of RPâ€

ing outside of kayfabe, I.e. having the match outcomes predetermined, but still having lots of other variables you can alter and compete for, is certainly a different way of playing your RPG. I think itâ€

s definitely worth a look.

by Kitten Thu Mar 21, 2013 1:56 pm

OH... it is copyrighted. I thought it was free

by Tatyina Sun Mar 24, 2013 3:09 am

if it's SRD then it could be found somewhere. generally open source material is free and plentiful even if you could buy the books somewhere. I dunno how GURPy it is though, so <img src=

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by hamish1024 Sun Mar 24, 2013 4:21 pm

I think the original version of the rules was free, they started charging $10 for the updated versions. Anyway, you can get a pdf here
[url:skppk6yh]http://www.4shared.com/office/vVawHjKm/kayfabe_-_the_inside_wrestling.html[/url:skppk6yh]

Mechanics-wise, it is based off D6 rolls, but relies heavily on narrative input and is pretty light on actual stats/calcs.

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