Pro wrestling is about hyper-stylized and niche-protected performers collaborating/competing to make an awesome and crowd-pleasing match while being subject to the whims of third-party writers.

It’s ridiculously natural subject matter for a tabletop roleplaying game.

That’s not a very pbta-specific answer, tho.

pbta-wise, World Wide Wrestling adds an explicit initiative/narrative authority mechanic (“momentum”) that very vividly models the ebb-and-flow of a wrestling match.  It works a lot like Montsegur 1244 — you say what happens for awhile, then I spend a resource, claim momentum, and I get to say what happens.  This resource has an economy and is generated via moves, and I haven’t played enough to know what happens if bad rolls starve a player of momentum.

The momentum mechanic means that the stuff in your head flows directly into the fiction of the game when you do have momentum, and the people without momentum are like your backup singers, putting little flourishes and embellishments in the action, making you look more awesome. Then someone else takes momentum and you switch back to backing. It’s the same kind of thing you’ll see in a hot bluegrass jam when players trade the solo around.

The game also has economies that address every layer of the metafiction of wrestling — it models the audience popularity of the performers (and the risk of losing one’s career), the audience investment in the rivalries between performers, the risk of actual injury, etc. The “breaking kayfabe” move allows a wrestler to bleed their real-life issues into their matches and promos, which feels super fresh and pertinent and #indieAF in a world where we’re all talking about larpy bleed. 

It’s got great participationism — one GM (“Creative”) schedules the matches and decides match outcomes, though those outcomes can be subverted by certain moves.  The Heel can spend resources to impose their own outcome on the match, for instance.  The other GM (the “Commentator”) gets to chatter about the match and occasionally bestow bonuses on the wrestlers.  Thanks to MvM, I love audience mode play, so I really dig games that include explicit audience mode roles.

Like any good pbta game, it also teaches its subject matters — I started our game having only the haziest notion of how wrestling worked, and by the end I was ready to appreciate it on a much higher level. 

For example, playbooks are based on your wrestlers’ gimmick, so it’s very natural to switch playbooks — that just means your performer is being repackaged by Creative.

This is all based on a single play with a high-powered table, tho. Lots of limerance in this post!

Maybe Tomer Gurantz​​​ wants to kick in here (if he’s physically able to type after the beatdown I put on him during the Fall Fracas.)  He was at the table too before he left the learned discussion to play some non-pbta game.  (I know, right?)