The Forge booth at Gencon (where everyone seemed to be incredibly aware and knowledgable about each other's games) drew me in. Matthew Gwinn, the writer of Kayfabe, asked me to do a demo. Wasn't too bad, I dug the game, I picked it up, and it impressed me enough to write this.
See, the main point of the game is this; wrestling's fake anyway, so why deal with hitpoints, move sets, and to-hit rolls when you can go right for the interesting part, the truly dramatic part, the backstage politics and gritty reality of it all.
Character creation is lots of fun. The book is CHOCK full of great advantages, flaws, and abilities to build any number of unique wrestlers. Such as? "Friends in High Places" (gives you better backstage clout), "No Good in Short Matches" (needs time to build up to a good match), "Old School Mentality" (adherant to the traditional school of wrestling). Yes, there are indeed rules for steroid use, from pyramiding doses to roid rage.
Matches certainly are the highlight. In the game, I was a burly japanese wreslter, going against the street-smart punk who kidnapped my daughter and seduced her. Now get this; but the whole point of the game is to work together, perform together, and make each other better. So, essentially, Kayfabe is a game about working with the other players; if one person goes for the glory, then everyone will fail. Unless of course, you want to run a storyline of squash. The rules involve rolling sixes on d6's to get successes, and can result in some 17 dice rolling pools, but nothing remotely complicated is found here.
After Matches come backstage politicking, booking, and organization. The Situation commences, and repeats. Crowd heat is gained, clout is pulled, gimmicks, storylines, and events are planned and presented.
Overall, the book is incredibly knowledgable. It is comfortable with the language, attitude and reputation of wrestling. Its just...fun to read; I partially got it because it has such a great feel for the industry.
So, the book has some negative points. First of all (and I understand this is small press), but for fifteen bucks, the book is pretty shoddy: bad inking, cheap page feel, shoddy binding. And its awfully short. Comprehensive, but I wanted more real-world examples, more background detail. And the game at times seems a bit trite.
Okay, listen.
Kayfabe rocks. Gwinn and crew have their stuff together. They love the subject, and it shows. They even put in an index. If you did wrestling, check it out.
