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When I first heard about the OGL WWE RPG, I chuckled and wrote it off. I stumbled onto a few actual play threads right here at RPG.net (wait for cheap pop). Sure enough, the threads felt like the old e-feds. I knew that soon, Johnny Dice (my heel) and Freight Train (my face) would live again and be OGL compliant! The game intrigued me enough to buy a copy to peruse and review. What I found was definitely a niche game, but a game that fits its niche very well.
Time to Play the Game: The first chapter is an introduction to the game. It lays out a few basic concepts and then moves directly into how a match might flow. I learn much better by example and the match helped a lot. It also lays out two of the intriguing concepts of the game. The first is the suggestion that players play multiple characters. This keeps the players in the game rather than forcing the GM to come up with and maintain all the opposing wrestlers of the league. The second idea is the basics of narrative combat. The game isn’t meant to be a tactical, blow-by-blow simulator of a wrestling match. A good match tells a story; and the story of the match is more important than how many times you get hit with a dropkick. This allows players to follow some of the Dramatic Rules of Pro Wrestling which, in turn, enhances the feel of the game.
Know Your Role: Creating a WWE RPG character is very similar to any other D20 OGL game. You generate stats, spend skill points, pick levels in classes, and choose feats. But the game has tailored the process to fit the wrestling experience better. Levels are similar to Power Levels in Mutants and Masterminds. The more levels a character has, the higher up on the card he or she is. The classics are very basic frameworks that have talent trees within them that can be customized to fit your character better. Each class alternates between gaining a feat and gaining a talent each level. This chapter also gets into skills, and while the skills are pared down to ones that wrestlers need to worry about, the rules for them still seem a bit too attached to regular OGL.
Just Bring It: Here’s where the game really shines. This is the combat/mechanics chapter. The basic premise is deceptively simple; each player chooses a maneuver that applied a modifier to a d20 roll. More complex and damaging maneuvers apply bigger modifiers. Everyone makes a combat roll applying either their attack bonus (if attacking) or their skill mod (if doing something else). Whoever rolls the highest gets control of the narration and pulls off their maneuver. The mechanics encourage embellishment beyond the successful maneuver but still protect the character because it only takes the damage from the maneuver that landed. The winner can talk about delivering a flurry of punches and smashing your head into the turnbuckle, but you only feel it when they finish it off with that leg drop.
What A Maneuver: Of course, a game like this requires a big list of maneuvers to players to cherry-pick how they want to mangle their opponent and the game delivers a good selection. The game also delivers an easy-to-use table that lets you build your own maneuvers or modify existing ones. You can add extra oomph to your piledrivers by doing them on steel chairs with simple addition and subtraction. This is one of the big breakthroughs of the game. Unlike wrestling video games, your wrestlers have unlimited movesets and can add in variant versions of the same old move as needed. This is a melee combat that feels more like a televised fight than the boring “I hit him/he hits me” repeats that fights often become.
Anything Can Happen in the WWE: This section talks about the entertainment part of the WWE: the show. Wrestling matches are all well and good but what about the interviews, backstage skits, and soap opera elements that happen outside the ring? This is where another important element of the WWE RPG comes in. This element is called Heat, and it works as both a drama dice mechanic as well as a limit to how often your wrestler can stick his or her nose in someone’s business. You gain Heat by winning matches, cutting killer promos, and holding onto championships. Heat can be used to finish a match early, interfere with other matches, as well as keep the camera on you. One of my favorite bits of eFeds was reading everyone’s promos. Some people blather on and on, some are succinct and to the point. Some are hilarious and some are intense. Players very rarely get a chance to play out these types of confrontations with each other and they are blast to watch. Even the players that weren’t part of the sketches got into the game as the commentators of the show.
Desire: This chapter talks about experience and the effects of championships on a character. The rules started to lose a bit of steam here. I would have preferred something a bit more simplified for character advancement but I got a vanilla OGL XP system.
In the Interest of Fairness: This is the game advice chapter. It’s tough to call it a GM advice chapter because of the troupe play style that the game encourages. It talks about the basics of the wrestling genre and how to use them in game. It’s a serviceable chapter about how to run a wrestling show compared to a regular RPG experience and is otherwise serviceable.
The Most Electrifying Roster in Sports Entertainment: The rulebook ends with a variety of stats from the current WWE roster. While I know this isn’t the designer’s fault, the roster was already somewhat out of date at printing and everyday grows more and more away from the current WWE product. This is just the nature of the beast. Wrestlers get hurt, retire, get cut, move onto Hollywood, or jump to other federations. The good news is that there are plenty of WWE players on the net that have already written up wrestlers not covered by the book. I think I would have preferred a few ‘generic’ wrestlers for use in homebrew feds or templates to use for such characters. I suspect most people buying this game will do something similar, rather than make/play characters from the ‘real’ WWE.
Pros:
Match of the Year: The basic fight engine matches narrative combat with tactical options in a manner that fits pro wrestling very well. Rather than get bogged down in the details of a match, the system concentrates on the dramatic momentum shifts that make a wrestling match fun.
Four Horsemen: This game fits the idea of troupe/rotating GM play very well. Since the fights are handled by the players controlling the wrestlers, a GM may not even be truly necessary.
Electrifying Fans: The fan output is impressive. Check out the Actual Play threads on RPG.net to get a good idea how the game works. The WWERPGFan Yahoo Group also does a great job of statting up the starts of wrestling past, present, and future so you don’t have to.
Cons: Wristlock from a Wristwatch: Knowing the difference between a DDT, a suplex, and a powerslam helps the narrative flow of the game. I’d much rather play it with novice gamers that were wrestling geeks than the other way around.
Hollywood Writer Monkeys: While the emphasis of the cool system bits is rightfully so on the in-ring action, the skill system outside the basic mechanics feels like OGL welded onto a much more freeform system.
Everybody’s Got a Price: The $40 dollar price tag feels a bit high for the content. If you can find it cheaper, but it.
The Bottom Line: This niche game is perfect for a anyone that’s both a gamer and a mark.
Great for: Pro wrestling fans, indy wrestlers, Feng Shui players
