RPG & Wrestling

[DonaldDuck]

I'm trying to figure out how I would translate professional wrestling, such as what is done in WWE, NJPW, ROH, Lucha Underground, to that of an RPG. I have tons of ideas swirling in my head, like an action command turn based system, a limb based damage system, an audience cheer/ boo meter, field movement to set up various attacks, etc. Not only am I having trouble locking down on a single core thing to show from a wrestling perspective, I'm having trouble figuring out how it'll fit into the mode of rpg combat routine of field > battle > field > story > etc. Pro wrestling is about entertainment in the end, entertaining the audience, so maybe that should be the concept to build the mechanics around.

Can use some advice.

 

[IguanaGuy]

How do you want your wrestler to be situated? Is he free to go about his life when not in the ring or is he a captive fighting for his life and freedom? If the latter then maybe he goes on training/supply runs to beef up his skills or get money for special equipment. If the former then maybe he does side quests when not in the ring to boost his fame/happiness/money so he can have better chances at the Title Match? So maybe he is something like the A Team off the clock doing good about town. ( Wasn't there a Nacho Libra movie or something like that? he was helping an orphanage with the winnings?)

By the way - your profile pic looks nothing like the Donald Duck I'm familiar with!

 

[OnslaughtSupply]

You can maybe show all the before fight antics. Like smack talking, monologueing to the crowd/camera, ambushing your opponent with a chair, fake beating up a celebrity. And completely non wrestling related stuff like working out, going to a movie premiere, dating, struggling with steroid addiction...

 

[lianderson]

This is actually a unique idea. I hope you pull it off.

 

[Wavelength]

If you can figure out good mechanics to encourage using a wide variety of tactics and moves, and getting creative, then it could be worthwhile to make the end goal of battles to please the fans as much as possible, rather than to literally kill/defeat your opponent (or, alternatively, you could still make the end goal defeating your opponent, but crowd-pleasing during a battle is what gives you access to the really nice moves).

The more spectacular, flashy, and effective the attack, the more the crowd loves you. You could throw all kinds of random objects into the battle that the competitors could use, and make them parts of combos - that could encourage the use of different stuff each time, not to mention "stale moves" penalties that trigger if you use the same moves too often.

Might be a bit like the Mettaton battle from Undertale. Not necessarily the same action/dodge system, but the same idea with the Ratings being influenced by your choices combined with what happens in battle, and with the same kind of personality. I think that could be really cool.

 

[DonaldDuck]

Thanks for the feedback so far. All of it makes sense in displaying the thrill and life of wrestling. Battle wise, for Wavelength, that description reminds me of games like Valkyrie and Chrono Cross as far as action based combat in a turn based fashion is concerned. Could be the route I could go with it.

And yes, I have no Donald Duck avatar. Yet.

 

[NinjaKittyProductions]

Wrestling is more about show than about content. Your characters need to be unique, have catch phrases, be either heel or face, signature moves. etc.
Most bouts are decided before the match even begins. Maybe have a hype meter of 0-100. Each wrestler comes out. The one you control goes into a small rant/crowd pleasing. You get to pick dialog and have it setup through random and variables how much the crowd likes it. Once the fight starts, each wrestler has a hype meter. Who ever did best during the fight prologue gets a small boost to their hype meter before the fight even starts. During the match, certain moves gain/lose you hype. The first wrestler to receive 100 hype wins the match. All of this only has to do with battling though. As for out of the ring, you could have mini-games revolved around the gym, giving your character a chance to get extra bonus points that they can put in stats or traits.

I used to be in the National Wrestling Coalition Independent League. This concept really interest me and I wish you luck with its production .

 

[Vox Novus]

Interesting, I think others have already captured the essence of what I was going to say and I think you had the right type of idea from the start. Pro wrestling isn't about the competition because there is no real competition; its about the illusion of that and the entertainment it provides. Chances are you've already thought of this but if you look at wwe's recent game 2k18 one interesting thing they have is a match quality indicator for every match you participate in. They rank matches 1-5 stars and you build up the quality of the match by your actions, however endlessly repeating the same moves lowers the quality by a little. You need big moments and variety to raise the match quality to the highest of levels.

In terms of something rpg maker-ish, I'd look to build battles where the goals are to reach a certain match quality with the skills available to the player. Moves can raise match quality by a certain amount and you can incorporate states to alter how the match quality raise of the moves is effected, etc...You wouldn't even really need to use a special gauge or anything, you could probably just use a tp bar/mp bar or something unless you really wanted to not do that or had a reason to use those gauges for other things. I'd also probably consider having branching options for battle results based on the match quality you obtained within a number of turns or by the time the opponent is ko'ed; you could even have battles where the goal isn't to actually win.

 

[Guanto]

Thanks for the feedback so far. All of it makes sense in displaying the thrill and life of wrestling. Battle wise, for Wavelength, that description reminds me of games like Valkyrie and Chrono Cross as far as action based combat in a turn based fashion is concerned. Could be the route I could go with it.

And yes, I have no Donald Duck avatar. Yet.

Hey any updates on this?

It's very rare a concept stands out as fresh to me round these parts, but you had me at "Wooooooooo!"

 

[jonthefox]

i like the idea of your moves (and the enemy's moves) generating cheers/boos, which would raise or lower your TP (renamed something else). Your TP level could then affect either what skills you can use next turn, or how effective they are, or both.

 

[M.I.A.]

This type of idea is very intriguing to me. There could be a focus on Prep before a match to increase skills.. such as training, charisma, audience allure, etc., and the battle mechanics would be interesting too. I don't recall the name, but Driftwood Gaming did a First Impression video on YouTube about a RMMV game that was based on Swimming, and the "battles" were races. I liked the creativity in that.

-MIA

 

[Eschaton]

How could grappling work mechanically?

 

[XIIIthHarbinger]

How could grappling work mechanically?

I actually experimented with creating a grappling system, in one of "lab projects".

What I found to work best, was to have have various states applied by skills, & those states would seal certain skill types, while opening others; as well as indicating aggressor & defender. I also had common event evals based on those states being detected, flip switches, in the troop tab. & then on the enemy tab entries, had skills with trigger requirements have much higher priority, to ensure that the enemy would use them.

This allowed my to create grapple chains.

If you have the art skill to draw the position shifts, you could have the images change to reflect those positions shifts, based on troop event evals of the states.

I honestly wasn't interested in taking the time to try & draw the accompanying sprites, so I scraped the "lab project" as an idea to implement in a future game,

 

[Lonewulf123]

@Wavelength mentioned the mettaton fight, which is an excellent one. Also take a look at battles from Paper Mario: The Thousand year door.


Those battles take place on a stage and the crowd actually plays a role in battle. If the crowd likes you, it affects how fast your star points grow, and they can even throw beneficial items to you in combat.

Hecklers can come and throw bad items at you, but you also have the ability to go in the crowd and beat them up.

Could add another layer to combat!

 

[LaFlibuste]

Well I think such a game would have more focus on the actual battles and less exploration, probably. When reading you post, for some reason, the first game that came to my mind was Square's Live a Live on SNES. A grid-based battle system helps deepen it just enough that battles start becoming interesting enough and varied enough to maybe fill somewhat like wrestling. Plus wasn't there a chapter about a wrestler or something like that in there? If you've never played it, I think it could be a great inspiration to help get you along.

 

[Lonewulf123]

Well I think such a game would have more focus on the actual battles and less exploration, probably. When reading you post, for some reason, the first game that came to my mind was Square's Live a Live on SNES. A grid-based battle system helps deepen it just enough that battles start becoming interesting enough and varied enough to maybe fill somewhat like wrestling. Plus wasn't there a chapter about a wrestler or something like that in there? If you've never played it, I think it could be a great inspiration to help get you along.

Yup, the whole present day chapter was about martial artist who wants to be the best in the world.
There’s not a lot of story in that chapter.