Character Creation

Herein lies the real meat of the book. After a rundown of wrestling terminology, the chapter introduces a new character type: unsurprisingly, the Professional Wrestler. These guys get 20 points for Attributes, 10 for Qualities (and up to 10 for Drawbacks), 35 for Skills, and 10 for Metaphysics.

Yup, I said Metaphysics. More on that in just a moment.

Next up, new Qualities and Drawbacks. All of these either deal with the wrestler’s prowess – his ability to break holds or pins, apply certain moves especially well, or even resort to dirty tricks – or his role in the ring. The latter include Baby Face, Face, Heel, and Mega-Heel, in order from most heroic to most villainous. Mechanically, these in turn relate to the character’s ability to apply the one new supernatural Quality introduced in the supplement: Heat Channeling, the Professional Wrestler’s specialized form of the Essence Channeling Quality found in other Unisystem games.

Wrestling Moves

You know the debate over whether strength or dexterity or agility or whatever ought to control hand-to-hand attack skills? Well, given the number of wrestling styles that rely on everything from finesse to pure down-and-dirty muscle, a wrestling RPG just brings that debate into sharper focus. How does Zombie Smackdown handle the issue? Simple: it covers all the bases, and covers them brilliantly.

Like other standard Unisystem games, characters can choose Brawling or Martial Arts for hand-to-hand combat, with Zombie Smackdown adding hand-to-hand applications of the Acrobatics skill as well. Also as in other Unisystem games, Acrobatics and Martial Arts are “Special” skills, costing more per level than do standard skills like Brawling; however, that’s just the start of the clever and stylish balancing act the supplement plays with these three skills.

Like Martial Arts, Acrobatics attacks add +1 point of damage per level of skill. Acrobatics has the advantage over Martial Arts of serving double-duty as a replacement for the Dodge skill, but Brawling has the edge over the other two in the number of Signature Wrestling Moves characters can choose.

Signature Wrestling Moves work in basically the same manner as core martial arts maneuvers do in Enter the Zombie; i.e., the player chooses the move or moves that will always equal the level of the related skill. The wrestler also gains three more Move Points per skill level to spend on other moves associated with that skill, with the moves chosen subsequently acting as independent skills. In other words, if your character has a Martial Arts skill of 3, he’ll get to choose two Signature Moves that will start at 3 and rise along with the Martial Arts skill, as well as 9 points to apply to other Martial Arts-related moves that will increase independently of the Martial Arts skill itself.

The chapter divides the various moves into seven classes, with each class falling under one of the three wrestling skills:

• Acrobatics
• Aerial Moves
• Brawling
• Cheap Shot
• Driver
• Suplex
• Slam
• Martial Arts
• Hold
• Strike

All Acrobatics moves rely on Dexterity. All Martial Arts moves use Dexterity as well, but may require Strength to maintain. Brawling, by contrast, uses Dexterity for kicks, punches, drivers, and suplexes, Strength for takedowns and slams, and Intelligence for cheap shots.

Now throw in the fact that wrestlers can have levels in any of the three wrestling skills, and you have an insane amount of leeway to customize an individual wrestler’s style.

The wrestling moves themselves generally boil down to dishing out damage of somewhere between D4 (2) x Strength and D6 (3) x Strength, with some special effects thrown in here and there – many moves knock down the opponent, for example, and some may cause the attacker damage if improperly executed. All of these attacks are assumed to cause Endurance damage, for the obvious reason that wrestlers presumably aren’t trying to kill each other; however, in a clever twist, screw up a piledriver and you could end up causing lethal damage to your opponent!

“Heat”

Okay, now regarding Heat and Heat Channeling… Baby Faces, Faces, Heels, and Mega-Heels can all have levels of Heat Channeling, just as magicians and other metaphysical types have Essence Channeling, “Heat” referring to audience anticipation and excitement. The big, big difference is that while pro wrestlers can channel Essence equal to their Heat Channeling level per round, that amount doubles when the wrestler’s in front of a crowd. Furthermore, wrestlers can earn extra Essence by verbally cutting down his opponent (“working the mic”), pulling off signature moves, and defeating opponents. However, there’s some risk involved: failing to wow the crowd may cost the same amount of Essence that could have been gained, and Baby Faces and Mega Heels stand to gain and lose more than do Faces and Heels.

So what’s all this Heat used for? Heat Maneuvers, of course – abilities that simulate the over-the-top, almost-superhuman feats pro wrestlers pull off: improbable comebacks, devastating finishing moves, perfectly-timed interventions by allies from out of nowhere, and so on. These serve a function well beyond the wrestling ring, however: they’re the closest standard Unisystem has yet come to applying Essence in a way roughly equivalent to Cinematic Unisystem’s Drama Points. The rules for damage reduction and flurry attacks alone could be perfect to import into Pulp Zombies or Enter the Zombie, for example.

Ring Weaponry

But enough about all this sissy punching and kicking and choking. What about the weapons that everyone knows will end up in the ring sooner or later – especially if some of the combatants happen to be undead?

Oh, sweet turnbuckle, does this chapter have you covered.

I’m not just talking about ring implements pressed into weapon service, like bell hammers, microphones, and the ubiquitous metal folding chair.

I’m not just talking about mundane junk like 2x4s and axe handles and baseball bats (barbed wire optional).

I’m not even just talking about actual weapons, like swords, katanas and nunchaku.

No, I’m talking about bedpans. Cell phones. Cookie sheets. Forks. Golf clubs. Guitars. Hockey sticks. Mannequin heads. (You heard me.) Mysterious mists and powders and fireballs. Staple guns. Street signs. The Bible. (Yup, you can throw the Good Book at someone!) Think this list needs more cow bell? It’s already got it! Think this list has everything but the kitchen sink? Wrong! That’s in there, too! All of which serves to help ratchet up the glorious insanity of this supplement even further.

Wrestling Matches

Of course, none of these cool moves and abilities and weapons are going to do much good if you can’t actually run a wrestling match. Thankfully, the chapter includes not only the basic rules of the ring, but also more bout variations than I ever dreamed existed.

As if the insane maneuvers already detailed weren’t enough, the chapter continues with mechanics for “taking to the air” with graceful (or not-so-graceful) leaping attacks. Not content with a single set of modifiers, the chapter actually contains a table cross-referencing various takeoff and landing points in and around the ring, all with their own modifiers to difficulty and damage. It’s a mechanically simple way to simulate the “real” tactical choices of professional wrestling.

A Matter of Kayfabe

There is one key problem with all of these rules, however – not in the rules themselves, but rather how they relate to “kayfabe,” the façade of actual competition placed over pro wrestling’s fakery and pre-arranged storylines.

The problem resides in the fact that both the amazing abilities simulated by the rules and kayfabe coexist in both the “generic” wrestling setting suggested by the overall wrestling rules and in each of the settings included in the book. So, the players are playing characters who have the ability to draw power from audiences to pull off unbelievable stunts to help ensure their victories… except that the victories are prearranged, making the outcome of the stunts prearranged as well. So what are the players rolling the dice for, and why do the wrestlers even have those abilities in the first place?

In a way, the situation’s akin to the “rolepaying roleplayers” aspect of the Dream Park RPG, with a sidebar in the following chapter even suggesting a separate pool of points to purchase Qualities and Drawbacks for your wrestler’s in-the-ring persona. The big differences are that in this case, the players’ PCs actually have the abilities of the PCs’s PCs, and the outcomes of their competitions are predetermined. I suppose one could play it as the results of a combat in the ring retroactively becoming the outcome that had been scripted all along, except that doing so would nullify any “out-of-character” politicking to get a favorable script going in.

Zombie Wrestlers

That issue aside, we’re only a fraction of the way into the book and already have the makings of a complete Unisystem professional wrestling supplement. What about the zombie wrestlers?

Well, first of all, the chapter presents Skill Recall Aspect, allowing zombies to retain not just their skills from life, but their personalities as well – something fairly desirable for a zombie participant in a personality-driven field like pro wrestling. In addition, the chapter offers nasty wrestling-related aspects: the power to get out of holds by breaking your own bones or sloughing off your own skin, to gain Heat by messily devouring your opponent or just by being scary, and to have the ultimate tag-team by literally sharing one mind between two zombies. On the downside, an otherwise intelligent zombie can now take an Aspect turning him into a mindless killing machine when starving.

That might not seem like a whole lot of new zombie powers, and it isn’t. However, I don’t think a whole lot of new powers were really necessary; after all, we’re talking about the prospect of fighting zombies (mostly) unarmed. How freakishly tough do you want them to be? Besides, as the chapter points out, Enter the Zombie already includes more than enough really outlandish Kung Fu Theater-style zombie powers if you want to go that route… and if you do, you really ought to pick up Enter the Zombie anyway.

Archetypes

The chapter wraps up with four PC archetypes: two Norms (an announcer and a manager) and two Professional Wrestlers (a “garbage wrestler” and a “technical wrestler”). While I can’t imagine someone wanting to play a non-wrestler in a zombie wrestling game, I suppose the archetypes are nice to have just to cover all the bases.