Cut Your Wins

Time to ramble about losing, again.

So, we lost our first Frosthaven scenario.  I don’t read the scenarios ahead of time, so I keep screwing up the special rules.  But, it was just not all that pleasant to play.  I think on replay it will seem really easy.  I knew the big issue for me was going to be running out of cards …  Well, okay, every scenario is an issue if you run out of cards.  But, it was a 12 round scenario that was explicit about that up front, and I’m not proficient enough on how to manage rests to really maximize staying power.

As much as it wasn’t all that appealing in the specific, I still think it’s enjoyable from the standpoint of seeing different things occur.

So, I have more going on in life in 2024 than in recent years, so I’m not as mentally invested in VTD as I used to be.

VTD 23 was last weekend.

Did three runs.

Friday night was team run.  With fewer players and given recent history, decided to do Nightmare.  It was easy.  Well, NM is always easy, so *shrug*.  I played polydruid and wasn’t able to do different elemental every room.  Cheesed Trollform only in rm6.  We got all of the puzzles with zero puzzle damage.

Saturday morning was Epic Double Down.  This was easy …  I only took damage in rm7 and never bothered to get healed.  Okay, the dungeon was just sad.  I ran monk and did my two attacks a round for 60+ when they hit.

Sunday morning was Anti-Cabal.  We chose Epic for obvious reason.  Not only was the dungeon easy, but the monster ACs were really low.

I died in rm5.  Then, I died again from push damage as we were only halfway through monster.  Rm7 monster killed three of our five party members around round four.  Fighter was only one still alive when time ran out.

Yes, they tweak dungeons over the weekend.  This was not like the others.

One of our players got mad, though maybe less at the difficulty and more at *how* the room was changed.  They changed rm5 so that the two biggest damage sources against monster were autonegated.  Besides that not scaling for smaller parties – consider the solo player who can’t deal any damage at all.  This sort of mechanic has been used in the past and continues to annoy players because it works against what is actually fun in the game.

Crits are fun, even I think so and I’m a sardonic, jaded cynic.  So, monk keeps hitting for 60 multiple times a round and someone else does something unusual and does zero.  It undermines rogue’s only good combat feature – Sneak Attacking for a lot.  It punishes barbarian disproportionately as barbarian has highest base damage.

I enjoyed the last run.  I got to see the failure video!  I would have preferred and even explicitly stated “I wish this was what Epic was like yesterday [earlier in weekend].”

It was a weird weekend where Saturday’s run was pretty much the least enjoyable as there was no good metagaming to do, no metagaming actually mattered due to sadness of dungeon, and it wasn’t really satisfying.  Yet, I still enjoyed it as a game experience.  There is a reason I still try to do at least three VTD runs every weekend.

Trying to relate to topic, I’m probably happier to fail a third of my runs because then dungeons feel like a challenge *and* it gets me thinking about how to metabreak the dungeon.  If just win all of the time, who cares what one’s build is, in which case why have I spent so many thousands of dollars on tokens?

What else am I excited by failing at?

Gamingwise?

Have had a couple RPG experiences recently.  One, I didn’t fail and saved the poisoned dude.  Had second John Carter session.  Unlike the first session, the pace of play here and the flailing about not accomplishing simple things was much more akin to my typical home play in recent years.  Did I fail at anything?  Well, not really in a mechanical sense as made die rolls, including die roll I wanted to make.  I suppose narratively failed to uncover useful information while tagging along on an investigation and failed to advance plot in a meaningful way and failed to interact with NPCs in any meaningful way.  That wasn’t a good thing.

But, this post is all about how awesome failure is.  So, at other times, while a feel bad in the moment, failing leads to interesting story inflections.  I’ve said as much before, though I don’t think I’ve used “story inflections” in this blog in the last 15 years.  I keep looking for failure in our supers play – something that hasn’t happened recently – because supers failing is important to making the bad guys seems impressive.  Not personal failure, so much.  Party failure.

Anyway, failure in RPGs I’ve brought up before, so it’s more that failure in other game types can lead to more interesting results, can lead to being enthused to try to do better the next time.

So, I don’t pay for pro wrestling except the one time I went to Wrestlemania.  I read reviews of Wrestlemania’s two nights and watched various highlights plus I still follow AEW.  One of my frustrations, which may be more of an AEW thing as I don’t watch WWE regularly, is that failure is so boring.  I tune out of a number of matches now not just because I know who will win but know it won’t be interesting in how the match resolves.  We need the disqualifications, the count outs, the non-title matches, and whatever else so that the loser doesn’t just have all of their heat killed.  The way AEW works these days, losers lose square if not always fair.  Then, they make a big deal about people’s win-loss records.

80s NWA, I expected heel champ to lose by disqualification a lot to hold on to the title but put over the face.  Now, you just see losers as losers and wonder why the other stars who aren’t allowed to lose outside of a PPV don’t get title shots for all of the various belts.

It’s just so extreme, when the value in success and failure is that there’s a slim margin between the two.  You know, like how sports is entertaining because upsets happen but not all of the time.

I don’t want to lose Frosthaven scenarios because they are stupidly hard – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose TD runs because I don’t have every token in existence – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose CCG matches because only five archetypes are viable – I want to lose when I don’t play as well as I could have.

I don’t want to lose in RPGS … hardly ever because real life is so good for losing, and it’s not a competitive game type, and being an expert in RPG play is not something I really aspire to.  But, it loses impact to succeed all of the time.  My understanding of modern D&D is that every encounter is supposed to be won, just a matter of how many resources used to win it.  That just sounds so hollow … that I have to mention this for a second time in this blog.

Swerve

So, I’ve watched a lot of wrasslin’, pro wrestling, and sports entertainment in my life.

Why?

Well, they say it’s soap opera for men.  I’ve also watched a lot of soap operas, used to watch All My Children, One Life to Live, and General Hospital when I was not at school or whatever.

Both can be rough at times.  Ha, rough.

Pro wrestling has some significant hurdles.  Sure, I could predict match results for televised episodes with 99% accuracy before kayfabe was utterly annihilated.  But, the amount of emphasis on breaking kayfabe makes it so hard to just allow for the illusion that these folks feel the way they are supposed to.  I’m sure I could watch TV shows that emphasize how actors are acting in their soap operas and how shouldn’t feel anything for their storylines either.

I watched NWA, AWA, WCCW, WCW, WWF, WWE, ECW, TNA, and some other stuff.  I’m now watching AEW regularly.  It’s … comforting.

And, of course, it’s flawed.  Old school was mostly matches of names vs jobbers, where on rare occasion jobber gets some win by disqualification or whatever because disqualifications were ubiquitous.  Then, there were also count outs, double disqualifications, double count outs, and whatever else to prevent clean finishes.  New school has the problem that so many matches involve names vs names.

How do you push everyone?  Obviously, you can’t.  So, some of the names just end up being jobbers for a while.  So, that’s one problem.

The other problem with new school is that it’s so much about spots.  Because no selling of finishers happened in big matches in the past, to level up, have no selling of finishers all of the time when names fight names.

It’s boring.  Watching some jobber get destroyed is usually boring.  Watching finishers not finish anything is usually boring.  It’s amazing what moves these gymnasts can perform, especially some of the high flyer stuff, but there’s so much repetition.  Old school or new school – repetition.

But, then, soap operas are all about repetition, too.  Actually, most entertainment is highly repetitive.

Usually boring.  When a jobber got to hit some cool move on a name, that wasn’t boring.  On the rare occasion where a name would face a name on weekly episode and there was a clean win (or mostly clean win) or when a title would change outside a PPV back in the day, that wasn’t boring.

AEW has been doing a pretty good job with trying to find some middle ground between what WWE had become and old school.  I sort of mark out at someone doing an ordinary body slam because it’s not just yet another hurricanrana or no sell of a DDT.  I haven’t seen a lot of MJF matches, but the recent ones I’ve seen were visually engaging for having such things as the common body slam by someone who isn’t a giant.

So, the gaming relevance of this post has to do with storytelling … obviously.  How too much of the same thing is bad.  How fake drama is bad.

What inspired this post is the Continental Classic match between Swerve Strickland and Switchblade Jay White.  That was just a great match.  It didn’t underplay or overplay anything.  Switchblade hitting the Blade Runner without Swerve having to no sell it was the correct way to use finishers in matches.  I don’t know if they hit all of their usual repertoire of moves as I haven’t seen that many of their matches, but it didn’t feel like “And, now, it’s time for me to hit move number six.  Then, we go to picture in picture, and I will hit move number seven when we come back.”

There’s so much criticism of the storytelling in pro wrestling, well, at least by Bleacher Report reviewer … and by me.  So many matches feel more like gymnastic competitions where only those with awesome mic skills manage to have feuds pay off.  BR reviewer isn’t liking this tournament much as it lacks subplots, but I perceive a different feel to these tournament matches.  So many feuds are dull, anyway, as they tend to drag on or they don’t feel organic.

Organic.  That’s an important word for storytelling.  Whatever the feud, individual matches are so routinely inorganic.  And, now, I will hit move number nine from my required list of moves.

Patterns matter.  Working the arm or the leg or the back or the neck to tie into one’s finisher is all part of the pattern building.  Destroying tag team dudes in singles matches or jobbers is part of the pattern building.  Having matches end with finishers is pattern building.

But, you got to break those patterns.  Not by no selling.  Name using other name’s moves breaks the pattern.  Name or jobber pulling out some move you don’t usually see is pattern breaking.  Varying a move, like Claudio Castagnoli using the Giant Swing into the barricade, is pattern breaking.  Not having a Dusty Finish once upon a time was pattern breaking.  Having more disqualifications now would be pattern breaking.  Not using one of the best known moves within the name’s repertoire and winning would be pattern breaking.

My favorite moments in soap operas involved humor.  Soap opera storylines are so absurd and taken so seriously that when humor would come in it broke the pattern.

So, you want to build player engagement in a RPG session or series of sessions.  It should be organic.  It should have the pattern breaking twists, though not necessarily plot twists.  Just having an element of play go in a different direction can be more impactful.

The early HoR2 mod where you help determine which hottie some dude marries is so memorable to me because it wasn’t just a lack of combat but a lack of any real conflict as PCs tried to help their candidate.  I don’t see plot twist there, I see breaking the pattern of how PCs engaged with the world.

Sure, what I watch on TV is weird.  Maybe there’s a reason for that.  I could watch better shows than I do.  It’s not that hard for me to stop watching sports entertainment when I just grow weary of the predictability of it all.  But, there are storytelling concepts within these sorts of shows that can be adapted for RPG play.  And, ones that can be eschewed.

Please save me from tedious knife-edge chop back-and-forths.  Who thought that pritnear everyone has to do this just because Flair popularized chops for generations that came after the Wahoo McDaniels of the world?

It’s akin to how PCs constantly use the same attacks all of the time or cast the same spells.  And, how their opponents just do the same things over and over as well, which is how we end up with Monster Manuals where you can vary combat by throwing different monsters at parties … until that becomes tedious as well as you realize it’s all so …

Inorganic.

The Best of … 2015

The thrill of the drill.

I don’t often comment on how the year went.  I did a couple of years ago because two unusual and major events happened, neither of which had anything to do with the election.

Maybe I’ll comment upon 2018 at the end.

January

Building L5R Characters – Origins

January 2015 seemed like a flopping heavy time, what with my reporting on Shadowfist sessions multiple times and V:TES tournaments.  While not great literature, if you want to see what playing V:TES is like for me as opposed to virtually anyone else in the history of the game {question mark, frowny face, birthday cake}, can read the tournament report post.

Meanwhile, in terms of “this is worth mentioning again after three years” posts, we finally get to this post.  Even as I was writing this post, I was getting off of what I wanted to write about.  However, intermixed with talking too much about mechanics, there’s a point made about finding the right character, even if that right character may be related to the right character sheet.

I know that HoR has been a problem for me because I’ve spent too much time on the character sheet and not enough on the character.  Nightmare War was actually better because I didn’t obsess with how the numbers would look, plus it was just more interesting than HoR3 was or HoR4 has been.

Sure, there’s a lot of stating the obvious, but, I guess, I feel like the obvious needs to be stated because people make questionable decisions constantly even when they have experience.  People.  People with blogs.  People with blogs who have written the best analysis of L5R 4e mechanics in the history of creation.

One hook is probably not sufficient to give a character enough to work with.  See my upcoming post on the dual hook-wielding build methodology for creating the most fun and most approaching absolute zero PCs ever.

February

Building L5R Characters – Traits

What happens when you get old is that you remember fewer details of your life.  Now, some of the reason for that makes logical sense – the older you are, the more details you have, thus any given detail is less of the memory pie.

I am shocked, shocked I say, that I wrote Origins before these other posts.  I think of Origins as something I did after hitting basics, though, to be fair, The Elemental Party was a prior run on talking about 4e Traits.

Does Void suck?  Well, I do find that my perspective does vary by metagame.  As mentioned somewhere, having a clearly defined role where you have Reflexes 5 is very different from playing with a bunch of strangers in a mod where nobody bothered to be a brain or a talker or a perceiver or whatever.  Still, Void would come after Awareness, Reflexes, Perception at a minimum and Earth-3 could be a higher priority.  I guess that’s not suck territory.

Kayfabeulous

People with blogs are not any one thing.  They may flop.  They may chuck.  They may criticize poetry from the early 20th Century and still may have watched like tons, one might even have said oodles, of “reaching back for something extra”, “what intestinal fortitude”, “Super-Crazy”.

’80s pro wrestling was often frustrating becomes it was so repetitive.  Modernistic sports entertainment has the … exact same problem.  Just changed from crushing jobbers to … whatever.

Somewhere, there is a great story to be had.  Of course, it’s all in the execution, which is why you favor mic gods like The Rock over … whoever.

DunDraCon 2015

I rarely call out convention reports.  I believe that I don’t feel that stating facts is as compelling as stating my perfecto o-pinions.

But, I feel like local cons and I are moving away from each other.  I just don’t feel the experience as I did a decade prior.  How mysterious and totally impossible in any way to figure out why.

So, here’s to 2015, when I reported a lot on Shadowfist casual play but also kept up with the scene in the ‘hood.

Better. Stronger. Faster.

Does anyone even get the joke of this post?  I don’t know that I do, anymore.  Old.  Let’s just say I’m superclever when I’m not on the spot to be clever – wait, isn’t that just a different word?

This is not that profound.  I just feel like calling it out.

Building L5R Characters – Advantages

Apparently, I ruled the blogosphere in February of 2015.  Because, obviously, nothing else matters more than L5R 4e mechanics analysis.

Formatting on this was kind of (nope), which I fixed to a degree later in my Disads post by using the power of bolding words.

Geez, Marie-Louise, I kind of see why my blog has gotten less popular in 2018.  I used to write useful stuff.

March

More Gooder Deck

Not a more gooder post, so why bother?  It’s long.  It mentions my “24” deck building methodology.

But, you know what?  I don’t do it as often I could, but I have posted deck lists.  Not tournament winning deck lists or here’s how to be furrier than the average bear deck lists, but sheer, unbridled insanity … to make a point.  No, to prove a point.  A thousand points.  A thousand points of CCG light.

It’s easy to have fun with CCGs.  Well, CCGs that don’t have Fate.  Build decks.  Identify other players who are fun to play with.  Play.

Building L5R Characters – Disadvantages

Yup, brilliant formatting makes this as easy to read as the make and model on Wonder Woman’s jet.

Sadly, I still follow my own advice.  I gravitate towards the cheese.  Not that I build a ton of PCs these days, so maybe I’ll learn to go back to when I liked my PCs.

[Classic] TR Vampire Ratings [6/1/2008]

This used to be my thing.  Arguing about stars for cards is fun like getting to ride in Wonder Woman’s jet.

It’s not just that fewer cards come out for CCGs I play.  It’s that I’m much more interested in just getting to play some daft Punks rather than worrying about if something is less gooder.

L5R Party Combat Guide

The original combat guide was more profound for bringing up common mistakes players make.  Neither is the definitive work on the subject.  In my upcoming post, I will …

Actually, it was a discouraging revelation to me that controlling a Unicorn Riding Horse in combat is much harder than I thought.  I don’t know why I got different rolls mixed up.

Anyway, I used examples.  Therefore, most goodest.

Flash VS Arrow

I no longer read comic books.  So, here’s my comicing outlet.  Besides knowing more than the substandard chipmunk, I happen to be the most entertaining reviewer of all things Arrowverse this side of Paradise Island.

Faster than a speeding locomotive, on to the next month …

April

Same Phat Channel, Same Phat Time …

Oh, the bronze-knees.

I was looking at our session tracker for Rokugan 1600.

Do you, wait, do I realize that each season has only been three main sessions long?  Well, yes, blog writer, I do realize that each season has been only three main sessions long.  It just doesn’t feel remotely like that.  I feel like I’m running a campaign that jumps around but still keeps building on what has transpired before (or introduces new stuff that makes the foundation of the campaign a mess).

I was trying to do three session story arcs to get more of an episodic feel with the ability to pivot faster.  Let’s see if I can wrap up season 4 in a way that doesn’t irritate the players and we can pivot for season 5 into something weird, like non-time travel, non-romance war stories.

May

Building L5R Characters – Skills

If it wasn’t for the fact that some people actually are playing FFG’s L5R, maybe I could spread out my geniusness over a longer stretch to not get everyone’s hopes up and, then, give them 2018’s travelogue.

Remember the single most important thing about this post:  I own the rights to factotumness, the rights of righteousosity.

June

July

Princess Police – Episode Guide

I’m used to short campaigns that don’t end as much as they cease to exist.  I’m fighting to try to avoid having me be the GM for such campaigns, while I haven’t played in anything for quite a while that wasn’t HoR.

What made The Princess Police interesting was how much the campaign took off long after it started.  I mean, sure, campaigns just seem to get richer as they go along until they stop, but this campaign survived long enough to have the depth of play that I hope for.

I think you can see how events became more meaningful to me later in the campaign.  This and HoR2 were the two L5R campaigns that I played that really satisfied in terms of L5R play.

August

Gen Con 2015

You know how I constantly call out convention reports.  Well, here’s another mundane, ho hum, hum drum convention report where I get into everyone’s favorite topic – food reviews.

September

Babylon 5 Request

Looking back is not so easy for the old.  There are so many B5 thoughts that I can probably only access by looking at old emails.  I don’t remember cards off the top of my head, anymore.

The B5 era was a hugely important era for me.  I became a playtester.  I became a designer.  I crusaded (but rarely Crusaded) for a game hard.  I played in the first Worlds.  I volunteered at major cons rather than just playing RPGs the whole time.

I got a foundation in CCGing that just being a V:TES player or UC! player or Magic judge didn’t.

I do realize that certain types of posts are more likely to get likes, it’s kind of interesting that this one didn’t, but, maybe, talking B5 long after the game died wasn’t a way to rapturize the masses.

RPG Yarn

I like some things.  Because I don’t really enjoy activities unless other people enjoy them, I subordinate my interests a great deal to enable groups to enjoy playing stuff.  Sure, meetup.com exists, etc., so I could find other people with more similar interests, but that requires a level of effort I’ve avoided.

I could probably write ten, twenty more words about what sort of RPGs I like.  Occurs to me that style of play isn’t something I talked much about in this post.  In my upcoming blog post on style of play I prefer, I will …  But, here’s what gets me looking for that Ring of Three Wishes so that I can blow a wish on the important stuff.

L5R Questions

I know.  It’s hard to provide commentary when everything the writer writes is pure, unadulterated geniusness.

Actually, I have an extremely reactive personality, which is why it can be challenging for me to get inspired to blog or to write more for Traveller.  So, if you want more geniusness spewed rather than the week’s latest ramble, maybe better to actually ask for what you want to hear about.

And, then, you will know everything there is to know about core book shugenjahood.  Every little thing.

October

Double-Striking, Swampwalking Squirrel Pumpers

This was a surprising hit to me.  I played a lot of Type P.  I built a lot more Type P then goldfished those builds.

Most of my Magic play, in the entire history of the cosmos, was, I’m sure, Type P.

Why don’t I talk about Type P more?  Well, I don’t play anymore and more recent efforts to play didn’t capture the Magic.

One hopes that blogging since 2009 would give readers a bit of insight into how my mind works.  This post should be one that gives pretty goodier insight.

If you ever want good sigs, like how I used to use good sigs on a regular basis, can take some quotes from this post.

Want: Land destruction, good way to blow up my own critters over multiple turns, maybe zombies

November

Brought By The Number 7

When gaming is a way of life, and I’d argue that it is for someone who has only ever been to England because of card tournaments in Germany, life is the shapemeister, baron von shape of gaming.  Sure, fiction is not quite so experiencey as, er, doing things that require physically moving more than the eyes and hands.

If staleness is a frequent problem with so many things, more posts like these might be the antistale needed.

Goat Droppings

Need more of this, somehow.

Ratings were too high on average.

This post actually take a lot of time to write, so I’m not that motivated to point out where I changed my mind, but I’d be happy to argue the rating of a card.

Book ’em Danaan

Ah, elitism, superiority complexion.  I can’t seem to escape pointing out that D&D is not remotely high fantasy.  While shopping for Christmas presents, I looked at possibilities of books I could get myself.  I’m sure no one else in the history of the multiverse has ever done that, ere now.  I didn’t shoot the wallaby.  Again, pretty much got myself a reference book for Aztec/Mayan society, which I still haven’t gotten anything out of.

December

A Mouse’s Donkey

Some things matter more to me than others.  Plus, I included an image.

Flaw Wars

Certain truths are self evident.  Btw, I don’t have high hopes that part three will redeem the problems of parts one and, especially, part two.

**  **  **  **  **

So, looking back on 2015, I can clearly see why 2015 had better stats than 2018.  I had the L5R character build posts and even more to say about 4e mechanics.  I had more original posts when it came to personal stuff or interests outside of gaming that I could pretend related to gaming.

Yup, 2015 looked mighty.  This was in the pre-True Dungeon period with lots of casual card play reports.  I even talked about Ultimate Combat!.  I wonder.  I wonder if because I changed jobs in 2015 and started traveling fairly often to Shanghai that I was more fired up even without the gaming five days a week thing I once had.

Leaving 2018 with what will inspire any and all to flood this blog with views, likes, and comments to prove that this blog has been made great again, here are some flavor texts from the best two-player CCG of them all:

• Learned early, soon perfected – always a lance of destruction.
• Denied the blood of life, first brain then body fail.
• A good sweep takes you down like a patch of ice – without warning.
• Draining speed and vitality, sand slows us all.
• With the speed of a cobra, this whip to the head strikes true.
• Flying enhances penetration.

Kayfabeulous

I will get to gaming eventually.  Need lots of arm drags first.

I don’t watch sports entertainment or those associations that still call themselves pro wrestling on a regular basis anymore, so I don’t feel like I can judge the specific product.  I did catch part of RAW last night and, when the storm hit the NE a few weeks back, ended up watching part of the Royal Rumble.  Did watch some TNA while living in China in 2007 because … the anime station kept repeating the same episodes, ESPN (Asia feed or whatever feed) provided so much snooker but it was really showing the same Red Sox/Yankees game three times in a week that caused me to only be a part time snooker watcher, and I couldn’t be bothered to watch other stations.

I also have tickets to Wrestlemania this year and need to figure out what to do with the second ticket.

Anyway, besides the fact that you can only watch so much of the same thing over and over again, there are some specific reasons I lost interest in keeping up with pro wrestling.  It just felt like the narratives grew insipid.  The matches just felt heatless.  The number of things to mark out to were minimal.  Sure, I used to predict 80’s NWA matches with 98% accuracy, including whether the match would end with a clean finish or not.  So, at some point, it did get more twisty.

Let’s start with kayfabe.  I understand the metaness and “whoa, this is a shoot” or “is this a shoot or is it a faux shoot?” of breaking kayfabe.  But, it wasn’t breaking, it was strangling it to death, burning its corpse, and urinating on the bones level of “heh heh heh, this isn’t real”.  Compare to soap operas, which pro wrestling often gets compared to.  Sure, not everyone is sleeping with their parents, grandparents, children, siblings for realsies, but you have to actually stop for a moment and think about the characters’ histories to realize just how closely blood related various couples are.  Thinking is not what we want to be doing when watching these sorts of shows.  We want to feel.

We want to feel animosity between stars.  We want to chant U-S-A whenever some guy ends up with a foreigner gimmick … and mean it.

Stars.  A huge problem is that everyone is a star.  Back in the day, jobbers were the puddle of grease to build stars.  Now, either you kill some star’s heat by having them job to someone else or it’s some new guy on some awful side show who jobs.  You need jobbers to get destroyed.  You need jobbers for those underdog moments when they dropkick and back body drop before getting destroyed.  You need jobbers to sell finishing moves (get to this in a moment).  What helps is when those jobbers are identifiable.  Sure, you can take tag team members and have them destroyed in singles bouts, which was done all of the time, but, if those are your only victims, well, there’s only so many of those guys (I should say something about tag team wrestling).

Finishing moves.  They don’t finish.  I watched Ziggler hit Wyatt with a finishing move and a follow up last night and he just kicked out.  Old timey pro wrestling gets credit for building better in ring stories.  You do your arm bar, arm drag, elbow to the arm for 4 minutes boring crap before you get into the suplexes before you get into the finishing move phase before someone gets disqualified or there’s a timeout because clean finishes between stars was reserved for pay per views where I just watched free TV.

I watched the I Quit match, for those that don’t know one of the more famous matches in history, recently for the first time.  I’ve kind of been checking out some Magnum TA matches because he was my fave to remind myself what his matches were actually like.  That match was awful from a move standpoint.  There were like three wrestling moves between Magnum and Tully for the whole match, along with lots of punches and kicks and head-pulling.  Another thing I noticed that didn’t register back in the ’80’s was that Magnum only punches with his right hand unless he does the both arms pumping punches with someone against the ropes.  Talk about redundant.  Sure, Flair does the same moves in every match, but they are more creative than right hand haymaker, right hand haymaker, right hand haymaker, especially the upside down into the turnbuckle thing with its two variations of either fall or run along the apron.

So, it’s not like old timey matches were brilliant showcases of athletic artistry.  Nevermind the rest holds.  But, when a finishing move is just something you do to hit the prescribed notes in a match and it doesn’t really mean anything to the result, then you lose a powerful storytelling tool.  In the olden days, a match was all about the finishing moves.  Building to them, threatening them, missing them, hitting them and having the ref distracted by the opponent’s manager/valet.  A lot of matches didn’t see the finishing move ever go off because … then, that guy would win.  Sure, superheroes would kick out of a finishing move in giant pay per view events.  Flair’s figure four was constantly escaped as were numerous submission moves.  On the other hand, Baron von Raschke actually Clawed his way to victory a lot.

Managers were all the rage for certain stars.  Partners or whatever also worked.  You needed lots of disqualifications and cheating to build long term stories.  The heel had to be heel-helped with cheats.  The heel had to retain titles for much of the time by disqualifications.

Titles.  Nothing has gotten worse, not even the “I hit you three times with my finishing move and still lose” nature of matches than how titles are treated.  Titles used to be a thing.  I used to know every wrestler who beat Flair for the NWA Heavyweight Title (I thought of it as the NWA title, the history of the NWA, WCW, Mid-Atlantic, et al, is horribly confusing).  You could hold on to a title for years.  Look at Hogan’s title reigns versus the “Dolph Ziggler is a two time world’s champion” announcing that we now suffer from.  Sure, Harley Race got that sort of announcing back in the day when he would job to younger wrestlers, but that was an exception.  Seriously, Cena “15-time” world’s champ?  Everyone under the Sun has been a champ of something and many have been some form of world’s champ.  The US Title means nothing.  The Intercontinental Title means nothing.

Back in the mid-80’s, you had the TV Title that changed hands frequently, though I associated it with Arn Anderson.  The US Title would change hands but rarely, with heels holding on to it for much longer stretches.  The World Championship rarely changed hands, with Flair almost always champ.  It mattered when someone won a title.  It mattered when they got stripped of a title.

Tag team wrestling was different, of course.  While the Rock and Roll Express were often champs, you had to give the Road Warriors the titles when they came visiting, and you needed to support a larger roster by having various wrestlers actually have success in tag team bouts when they would get destroyed against singles stars.  But, that’s the thing, you knew the teams.  Sure, superteams were always a thing.  Oh, look, Hogan teams with whoever.  But, there was continuity with teams.  I can’t follow tag teams at all, anymore.  They just seem to come and go and so many matches are singles matches or wrestlers who don’t want to team being forced to by authorities.

One of the big advantages of old timey wrestling was that you had stars move from association to association.  The Road Warriors were a great example.  They would appear and wreak havoc but eventually go away so that someone else had a chance to star.  So, you had your regular stable, but, then, you would have some star go somewhere else and people would go crazy when they’d appear in a different territory or when they’d return.  Ric Rude had an element of that, as a singles example, even though I think of him mostly as a WCCW star.  The Von Erichs, of course, would stay home because they owned that league.

Okay, let’s get into how all of this relates to gaming.  So, Bubba Ray Dudley was one of only about two things interesting about the time I spent watching the Royal Rumble.  Diamond Dallas Page was something else I recall.

Bubba had heat, unlike a lot of the match.  Why?  I didn’t care that they were in Philly and the ECW crowd went wild.  I cared about what he did in the ring.  He did signature moves.  I always appreciate the Dusty Rhodes elbow homages that certain wrestlers, like Dustin, do.  He talked during his time out there, where others just brawled.  He worked with another wrestler for a shout out to the Dudley Boyz that people outside of Philly can recognize.  There was energy to his story.  Then, he lost because he had to lose.

See, RPGs are about storytelling.  You can play them as tactical wargamey as you want or whatever other way, but there’s still a story, even if that story is “I got hit by acid and it melted my +2 Chainmail, but I killed the black dragon with my +2 longsword.”  The story doesn’t have to be coherent, though I like it to be.  What the story should have, though, is energy.

Bubba Ray and DDP gave that match some energy that many others didn’t.  The RPG adventure should consider how it’s going to get the players to mark out.  What events are going to create excitement?

While different people care about different things, some things are likely to cater to a variety of players.

Familiarity

It’s not a good thing when everything is new all of the time.  While I find certain jokes in movies or whatever to be unclever and a waste, like one of the Star Wars movies doing some joke on the ratlike robot running around as a callback to I believe A New Hope, a campaign should have the breadth to enable callouts to prior events.

I am a bit amazed at how much more I care about NPCs than people I play with or run for, to where I throw out a name and players have no idea who I’m talking about, though might have some inkling if I start describing aspects of the character.  But, in theory, this is why recurring NPCs are important.  They don’t just flesh out part of a world they anchor it.

Epicness

The I Quit match might have not been all that if it were just a “let’s throw two guys in a ring and have them bleed” match.  It was the culmination of a feud (not that Tully and Magnum didn’t continue to feud) storyline.  Actually, better example for me was the best of seven series with The Russian Nightmare, Nikita Koloff.  (Btw, look up what that totally not Russian guy did to stay in character – mad props for his investment.)  Now, I watched some of those matches, but I also remember Magnum’s feud with Nikita better than the numerous battles with Tully and the Four Horsemen.

One thing I find with campaign play is that so often there’s a lack of drama, of epicness, to events.  Maybe it’s because you know that there’s going to be another episode next week that adventures often don’t get structured with “time to save the world”.  A lot of TV episodes don’t have major climaxes.  But, you know what, it isn’t always about street brawls in Starling City or whatever.  An epic moment can be much more personal.  Find a long lost sibling.  Get married.  Master the Western Long Bite Technique.

I realize games and fiction are two different things, but there must be better ways to write into sessions the possibilities for someone to have a special achievement.  Whereas, instead, I find that players often speak of mechanical advancement achievements after sessions.  There’s nothing wrong with going up in levels, spending XP to improve your awesomeness, learning a new Discipline, or whatever.  It’s just that those shouldn’t be the only things going on and they shouldn’t be “oh, by the way, I just gained an extra attack” moments.

PC Impact

Another angle to focus on – the achievement needs to feel like an achievement.  Something I’m guilty of is structuring sessions towards inevitability.  HoR modules have this, as well, where you expect to be successful.  I certainly like feeling like I earned a result through decisions and character sheet ability, though probably more so the former.  I have the sense that others like to feel they earned something, though they may care more about character sheet ability than player decisions.

It’s not good enough to set up cut scenes.  Sure, pro wrestling is scripted, so you tend to know what is going to happen, where one hopes that the RPG experience doesn’t feel like you can predict results.  I’m also guilty of pushing things too much in a particular direction and not having enough flexibility to see things go in other directions.

Though, I would say that I have certain expectations because I see the point of games I run to be to do heroic things.  That does cut down dramatically on what are reasonable actions to take.

Nonepicness

Jobbers have a very important role.  They promote the stars.  Mooks are often considered to have this role in RPG play, but I just don’t feel it much of the time.  However, there needs to be those moments when the players feel like the PCs are special because someone else isn’t.  This is one of the reasons, I think, that rescue missions feel so good.  Some NPC, group, or locale gets trashed because they couldn’t protect themselves.  Well, we hero types are better than you are and will totally fix this for you.

What I want to avoid is the situation where PCs feel like they are just some dudes.  You should never feel like the jobbers.  When you get thrown out of the ring at the half hour mark, you should still have hit your finishing moves on a few guys and made people laugh with your schtick or your borrowed schtick – “wooooooo”.

Differentness

Where the section above was all about reminding players about the world and where they fit in it, the PCs can’t just be doing the same thing over and over.  They need to have a variety of achievements to differentiate.  One of the reasons I don’t have much enthusiasm for the idea of playing D&D or similar dungeon crawl style RPGs is that I think there’s more to life than just hitting the next dungeon and killing some monsters and finding some treasure.  The achievements don’t have a qualitative difference in feel.

Many of my PCs are not all that good at combat because I don’t really find combat that engrossing.  Even so, almost all of my campaigns have a significant combat aspect, so having them achieve at some point combatwise does have that specialness of achievement that we mark out for.  Hak might have been our Conan group’s combat god, but we all remember Ty’s “shot in the dark”.

The NPCs can’t be videogame NPCs who always have the same dialogue and always serve the same function, either.  The locations can’t always be “I go to Pete’s Funky Herbs Shoppe to see what he’s got on tap” every time the party hits town.

Story

The point of a story is that it moves.  Something needs to change.  If every wrestler came into the Royal Rumble and did the same stuff, what would be the point?  That’s the way I feel about so many matches – they lack any sort of narrative to where it is just the same guy coming into the ring and doing the same stuff and having the same catchphrases (waving “their” country’s flag, etc.) and there’s no progression from beginning to end.  Titles change hands willy-nilly to where they don’t feel like part of the story anymore.  So, sports entertainment, what is the story and why should I care?