We love wrestling.

Why? The drama. Forget competition, backstage politics or fight simulations. Wrestling is a soap opera where muscles flare alongside tempers, threats loom beyond every false smile, fist or championship belt and the stakes can be as impossibly high as a woman or man’s hard won reputation or as humbling as a broken collarbone. Wrestling is like the finest parts of comic books made real: heart-stopping action, ruthless villains, awesome (well maybe just very tight) costumes and live action superheroes!

But, allow us to focus on what no other sport or performance can hold a candle to: Wrestling’s love affair between the fans and wrestlers. It’s passionate, sweaty and embraces like a standing-corkscrew-Irish-guillotine to an inverted-gutwrench-suicide-spinning-Japanese-scorpian-bear-hug. All great wrestlers are fans and die-hard fans wish (on some level) that they could be wrestlers. They’re reflections of one another and in turn nourish each other. Fans gather around the ring (or television) in anticipation of emotions dashed, then bashed, then risen again all within the safe confines of a 3-hour pay-per-view. The wrestler steps into the ring expecting an entirely different sort bashing, but the pain is only secondary to the surge of love (or hate) he or she is relying on to make their risks entirely worth it.

Can you think of any other instance comparable to that of the wrestler: performing potentially life-threatening stunts and practically naked–physically and emotionally–under the guise of playing a character for the entire crowd to see? They break their necks, cry their hearts out, and bleed themselves dry. And they get up to do it again for the chance to hear thousands of people screaming their name. It’s here, in the midst of battle, where the fans decide who is hated and who is loved. Within seconds of either cheering or jeering the wrestler learns what is boring or exciting or which feuds will live on or be forgotten. With enough passionate fan support even a 5 foot 150 pound jobber can topple a 7 foot, 500 pound monster! It’s not enough for the fans to like or dislike you…they must shout with love or rabidly, hissingly hate you!

The heroes are delivering to the fans what they need and at the same time making the villains look like credible threats. Villains are taking from fans what they hold most dear all while casting the heroes in a shining, sympathetic light. The villain does their job right when the fans want to punch them in the face. And since the fans can’t, the hero does it for them. Everyone gets revenge and both the hero and the fans reign supreme.

It may all sound like dramatics, but these brazen athletes are not actors. They are still just men and women in their underwear positioned to fight each other. Not to mention surrounded by thousands of eyes dissecting their every move and projecting their own hates and desires. As important as headlocks and pile-drivers, the wrestlers observe the crowds and react: they do everything they can, holding back nothing, willing to sacrifice their bodies, lives, families, and futures to enthrall their fans. Filtered through their gimmick, they forge parts of their personalities into exaggerated, extreme forces to be reckoned with. I would like to think that some push it to the next level and even take what they hate about themselves or who they wish they could be and boldly weave it into this fierce and fluid costume.

And what is this all for? It’s all about giving the fans something to care about beyond their ordinary lives and pressures. It may be make-believe, but it’s a conflict that demands to be taken seriously. Resolution is not option here. No loose ends allowed!

It’s drama stripped naked down to its core, served up steaming hot on a weekly basis.

There’s one other drama-cored love in our lives… role playing games! In the coming weeks we’ll be talking about why wrestling and role playing are two great tastes that go even better together. Till then, be sure to catch up on your weekly wrestling fix. Or get together your friends and break out the dice.

This is a formal invitation! If you can read this, then we (Terry and John) are talking to you! We personally invite you to join us. Join us? Yes! We need your help.

This blog is dedicated to the development of our non sexist, zero preparation, improv-theater-like, no GM, start playing in 15 minutes, play with 6, 10, 20 or more friends, play in multiple settings (superheroes vs. wizards vs. ninjas vs. pirates vs. unicorns vs. vegans vs. cowboys vs. robots vs. red pandas vs. regular pandas vs. punk rock vs. American Idol)… wrestling party game! A game capturing the drama of a live wrestling TV show from the audience’s perspective where the audience has as much control over what happens as the wrestlers themselves along with whatever crazy shit our imaginations throw into this sledgehammer-flavored stew.

Heat: Soap Opera Violence is our working title at the moment. Although that’s likely to change now that you’re here!

When we first sat down to play Heat: SOV, there were no rules. This was one of the first games where Jim, Eppy, and John playstormed before we knew what playstorming was! We imagined what the game could be like for an hour and then started playing, making up rules to match our imaginations. We wrote everything down and started again with new people. 14 different people in the last year and a half. Rules that came up again and again stayed, the rest went away. Gaming evolution at break neck speeds!

Don’t know anything about wrestling? No worries!

Hate wrestling? Even better!

Here is our ambitious plan: it’s a little bit like being admitted to virtual wrestling boot-camp, with no pain and all the gain. We aim to post once a week (sometimes more). Initially these posts will be purely background as in; What wrestling means to us, what is wrestling?, the nuts and bolts of how wrestling works. In addition to the sweaty, grappley stuff: what makes a soap opera, how it relates to episodal television and what makes drama dramatic. Lucky for us, there are also plenty of great video resources to school us (love that YouTube!). As we find ourselves increasingly on the same page then comes the gritty laying down of the structure and defining the rules. If we’ve done our job right, the guts of wrestling will be a cake-walk to you (and who knows, you may even end up loving wrestling). By then we’ll have some lean and mean rules grounded in bad-ass source material ready to hit the anything-can-happen arena of play-testing.

And that’s just the beginning.

Please ask questions. Offer diverging opinions. Offer support. Push these ideas to their limits. Don’t pull any punches: take to task any questionable material. Always feel free to ask why. And help make this game kick some serious ass! Just like in wrestling, it doesn’t matter if you hate or love us. The only thing that sucks is silence and indifference. So please comment away and get involved!

We want to play with you! At conventions, at parties, when you come visit us in NYC, when we come visit you on vacation. And this blog will help unify our expectations so that when we do meet up in person, we can dive right in, put the rules in a headlock, and make them tap out!

Next post: Why we love wrestling!