I recently tried a oneshot RPG. It was something totally different form what I was used to, but it had some similarities.
The group I was playing with was trying out a WWE style wrestling RPG. It was one of the simplest styles I have ever played. We were using a Powered by the Apocalypse engine, which is just a modern universal RPG system.
We made our characters is less than a half hour, and were done in just under two hours. It was the weirdest thing to happen to me in an RPG. I’m used to high fantasy or gritty realism, not over the top showmanship.
When it was my turn to enter the ring I didn’t know what to do. Most if not all of the wrestling/grappling that I look into is combative. It’s a means to an end. Generally the quickest, most effective method of controlling someone or part of someone. And if possible crippling them.
Obviously this isn’t something you can do in a entertainment fight. It has to be flashy, and we were told to make it as ludicrous and over the top as possible. Almost everything I know the most about is the literal opposite of this.
So I had to embellish everything. Sometimes we’re given a situation where the rules we’ve been working with for so long don’t work. But we’re not at a loss, since we know what we should be doing has an opposite side. We have an entire data set from this. If what we’re doing isn’t working we can try the exact opposite. The things we were told never to do in X situation are tools we didn’t even know we picked up,
This duality of learning allows us to take into account the cost of showmanship. If we’re about efficiency, and we’ve focused on what to avoid to be efficient. We do the opposite. If the quickest way is a line, we do a loop-dee-loop back flip.
What it takes to make something look cool generally means sacrificing practicality. This gives us an idea of what we need to get rid of to make a spectacle of our project. Once we realize we need to make it a show, then we have an idea of what to do.
A show can take it out of us. But they are sometimes necessary for marketing or sales pitches. We need the “Oooo’s” and “Aaaa’s” of our audience rather than the grim efficiency of the machines. So we embellish and we polish it until it shines.
So think about what situations require the opposite of how you were trained.
Sincerely,
The Irreverent Gentleman
gentlemansuniversityofmanliness 