World Wide Wrestling - Second Edition

Professional Wrestling RPG of Narrative Action

This award-winning game of professional wrestling action enables you to create your own professional wrestling franchise through play, showcasing satisfying and surprising storylines. It’s about feuds, championships, betrayal, and righteous victory. It’s about the clash of good and evil on the grandest stage. It’s about whether you’ve got what it takes. And, in the end, it’s about what the audience thinks of your efforts. 

How It Works

Creative (the Game Master role) books the shows, introduces antagonists and comes up with basic storylines that they want to see play out. The other players take on pro wrestling archetypes, called Gimmicks, and play their wrestlers through feuds, partnerships and betrayals. Everyone at the table is competing for that "top spot," but they're also working together to entertain their viewing audience!

Creative books each Episode of play, deciding in advance who's on screen when, who's in what match and, most importantly, who's going to win. The players play out their wrestlers in pursuit of personal goals though these segments, always with agency to go off-script and swerve what Creative has in mind. Creative has to roll with the punches and make it look like that’s what they had in mind all along!

The Squared Circle

Wrestling matches are played out through a system of dramatic action. The fall of the dice and character abilities shape who has narrative control, guiding the competitors through back-and-forth narration building up to big moves and maneuvers that shape the story of the match. Plus, there’s always the possibility of a dramatic run-in or career-defining spot! Whether a quick squash or an epic full-roster Battle Royal, wrestling matches are exciting affairs that build character and drive ongoing storylines.

Moving Up the Card

World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition combines all of the material from the original World Wide Wrestling RPG and the International Incident supplement into one streamlined, updated game that supports both quickly getting to the action and long-term dynamic exploration of the promotion around the wrestlers.

If you enjoyed the first edition, this is an evolution of everything you're already familiar with. If you're new to the game, this edition focuses on onboarding new players and supporting the wrestling-curious to discover what makes professional wrestling such an enduring art form.

GAME FEATURES

World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition stuffs everything you need to explore the world of professional wrestling in one action-packed volume!

• Supports in-ring action, backstage drama and the development of pro wrestling storylines that tie them together.
• Rules that create classic pro wrestling storylines while also allowing you room to subvert and invent your own.
• Provides all the tools for players unfamiliar with the genre to participate, while supporting fans in playing out their favorite wrestling tropes.
• Episodic play that accommodates irregular attendance and fluctuating group sizes.

The rules contain:

• 15 archetypal Gimmicks representing a diverse roster of wrestling archetypes.
• Support for in-ring storytelling, from Match Stipulations to visual play aids to focused deep dives into wrestling psychology and how to bring that into your games.
• Living Promotions add the Promotion as a character in your game, growing and changing along with the wrestlers.
• 12 example Living Promotions, giving pick-up-play settings from the bar-room to the international jet-set, along with over 60 wrestlers and staff to use for your own games.
• Going on the road, an optional ruleset for playing out scenes between arena shows to explore the people behind the masks.
• 2 brand new essays, along with 7 revised essays from game designers and wrestling aficionados about wrestling, roleplaying and how the two work together.
• ... and more!

The optional Move Deck is a 52-card deck to aid in quick reference for the most commonly-used rules.

World Wide Wrestling is Powered by the Apocalypse. It shared the Indie RPG Awards Indie Game of the Year 2015 award with Night Witches. It also won the Best Support 2015 award. 

260 page, 6.625 x 10.25 inch, full color, perfect-bound softcover book

Includes instant access to digital bundle with 260-page screen-ready PDF, epub version, plaintext version for low vision accessibility, and printable Gimmick and reference sheets.