In December 2024 we presented World Wide Wrestling Second Edition, the Apocalypse Engine game of pro wrestling action. World Wide Wrestling lets you create your own professional wrestling franchise with satisfying and surprising storylines. It’s about the clash of good and evil on the grandest stage. It’s about whether you’ve got what it takes. It’s about feuds, championships, betrayal, and righteous victory. And, in the end, it’s about what the audience thinks of your efforts.
You don’t need to know anything about pro wrestling to enjoy World Wide Wrestling. All you need is a desire to play out big stories with bigger characters vying for success. You can generate a wrestler quickly using one of the many Gimmicks (archetypes). Play a single wrestling show in two hours, and then link shows together into an ongoing Season of play. The game supports large and small groups, irregular attendance, drop-in guest stars, and one-shot play.
Creative (the Game Master) books the shows, introduces antagonists and comes up with basic storylines that they want to see play out. The other players take on Gimmicks and play their wrestlers through feuds, partnerships, and betrayals. Everyone is competing for that “top spot,” but they’re also working together to entertain their viewing audience.
Creative books each Episode of play, deciding in advance who’s on screen when, who’s in what match and, most important, who’s going to win. The players play their wrestlers in pursuit of personal goals, always with agency to go off-script. Creative has to roll with the punches and make it look like that’s what they had in mind all along.
Wrestling matches are played out through a system of dramatic action. The fall of the dice and character abilities shape who has narrative control, guiding the competitors through back-and-forth narration building up to big moves and maneuvers that shape the story of the match. There’s always the possibility of a dramatic run-in or career-defining spot. Whether a quick squash or an epic full-roster Battle Royal, wrestling matches are exciting affairs that build character and drive ongoing storylines.
The most popular work by Nathan D. Paoletta (Imp of the Perverse, Annalise, One More Thing) at ndp design, World Wide Wrestling has earned a stadium-full of terrific reviews:
“World Wide Wrestling‘s greatest triumph as a game is that not only does it resoundingly succeed in teaching you how to play, it puts you in a gentle, nurturing headlock that forces the appeal of wrestling deep into your eye sockets like a screwdriver during a hardcore match.” – Jon Bolding, Shut Up and Sit Down (08 Sept 2016)
“Literally everything you need is built into the game’s mechanics. The process of making your wrestler builds in delicious rivalries and plot hooks, the individual moves are colorful and fun, and the actual wrestling events play out like a badass, character-driven minigame. As a player you have really interesting choices throughout. It is just a bathtub full of fun and I highly recommend it.” – Jason Morningstar (Fiasco)
“By the end of the game’s opening hour, we had all the makings of a primetime soap opera, and enough bitter rivalries to last an entire campaign. At one point my character, an aging 40-something veteran who wrestled under the name ‘The Director of IT,’ had vanquished his arch-rival, a twenty-something YouTube personality called DJ Bitcoin, with the help of a monstrous heel called The Heavy Fog. It was glorious, and made all the better by television-style commentary from the other players and a live audience holding up signs around the table. It was a magical night.” – Charlie Hall, Polygon (18 Jan 2018)
“My experience running World Wide Wrestling has been fantastic. I’ve turned RPG fans into wrestling fans and wrestling fans into RPG fans with this game. The new edition goes deeper into the experience but still remains accessible to anyone with an interest in running a pro wrestling game.” – Rob Wieland, EN World (10 May 2021)
This World Wide Wrestling Quick Deal offered everything you need for a Season of Apocalypse Engine wrestling action. There were four titles in our Wrestling Collection (retail value $37) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete World Wide Wrestling Second Edition core rulebook (previously in the November 2023 Cornucopia offer), the recent occult supplement Warlock Pro Wrestling, the holiday one-shot New Year’s Fray, and a semi-related con-artist game, The Big Store.
