Kayfabed By the Apocalypse

World Wide Wrestling by Nathan D. Paoletta is a tabletop RPG with a publishing history and overall place in the field that’s in some ways similar to Legacy: Life Among the Ruins. Both games had their first editions funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign that ran in 2014; both games have been reissued in second editions (also Kickstarter-funded) which incorporate into the core book the best materials from the supplement line; both games use the Powered By the Apocalypse system that debuted in Apocalypse World, but take it in genuinely interesting directions which I think play to the strengths of the system.

As the title implies, World Wide Wrestling is a professional wrestling-themed RPG. Players take on the role of the major wrestlers in a televised promotion, with the non-player character wrestlers, backstage admin figures, bookers, camera operators, interviewers and whatnot being played by the referee (dubbed “Creative” here). By default, each session of the game revolves around one episode of the promotion’s regular show (though it would require little effort to base it around a major event like a pay-per-view, or an untelevised event like a house show, and support is also provided for running material based around the trials and tribulations of touring and the like).

Like many tabletop RPGs, that means that the session is going to play out as a series of combats. Unlike more traditional RPGs, the combats aren’t really about who can legitimately beat the other up – unless the match turns from a work (a simulated combat) into a shoot (a legit fight). Instead, it’s about building up the audience’s investment in the match. If you end the match with the audience heavily invested in your character, you benefit – and it isn’t necessarily a zero-sum game, since all the participants in a match can ultimately benefit if the audience gets into both of them equally.

Between this and vignettes in which wrestlers can do on-camera promos (or indulge in off-camera backstage politics), the game embraces both in-ring action and the behind-the-scenes gossip which many modern fans love as much as the actual performances, which means it immediately is a step up from Know Your Role, the officially sanctioned WWE RPG, which clunkily used the D20 system to implement a game in which kayfabe (the illusion that the simulated matches are genuinely competitive) was maintained and the game was about actually fighting each other in the ring to see who’d win, rather than fighting a worked match to try and get over with the crowd.