A few years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to send fan emails to artists whose work I enjoyed. I was on a steady clip for a while, but now the metaphorical treadmill is gathering cobwebs in the corner. It was always something I liked doing, so I’m bringing back the practice! I love when players reach out to tell me how much my work means to them. That’s exactly the kind of karma I want to put into the karmasphere.
Instead of a private correspondence, I’m going to make these open letters I post on this very newsletter, so artists get the benefit of potential new fans hearing about their work, and my readers get the benefit of learning about cool new stuff! Here’s my first in what I will try to make a recurring series. (No promises, though! No guilt! Also, no ICE! Throwing that last one in there because I live in LA and y’know.)
Dear Ian,
I was an enthusiastic Kickstarter backer for your game Five Star Match (which folks can purchase here), a solo tabletop pro wrestling simulator where you play the role of booker man, attempting to put on the best “card” (wrestling show) possible. It took a little longer than I thought it would to get the game in the mail, but like a highly anticipated “I Quit” match between two blood rivals, Five Star Match was worth the wait.
The genius of the game is how it turns creativity into a puzzle. I like how the player is given limited resources to create a stable of talent, so there are a lot of decisions to be made about the kind of talent you need in your roster. For example, I started a “Monster Mash” inspired promotion called Transylvania Wrestling Asylum, which takes place in a spooky castle the monsters cannot escape. They are forced to fight by the insidious Dr. Madman. The game gave me unlimited creative freedom in terms of premise and wrestler gimmicks, but I only had so many talent points to go around. I decided to use most of my resources to create a full-blown star to anchor the promotion (a Frankenstein-like powerhouse heel called The Behemoth), and a cadre of jobbers who always lose with high “selling” stats (like Drunk Mummy, a wandering hobo the promotion wrapped in toilet paper) to put over the main talent. Using limited resources to build a balanced stable with enough talent to put on spectacular shows really made me think! I surprised myself by how long I would ponder a card before executing it.
The puzzle element extends to booking the matches, which is even more challenging than creating the stable! As the promoter, the player decides which wrestlers fight. To determine the outcome of a match, the player adds up an offensive stat of the winner (ex. Power) and the Selling stat of the loser, along with applicable bonuses like holding a title belt, to determine the match’s potential. Then the player rolls two D6 dice. If the dice roll is higher than my potential, that’s good! The more I roll under, the better. The more I roll over, the worse my match goes.
The problem is that the more your wrestlers fight, the more run down they become, so you can’t keep leaning on the same wrestlers show after show, or there’s a good chance they’ll get injured or forcibly retired. But since the talent pool is limited by resources, it becomes difficult after a few shows to find talent that is (a) healthy and (b) talented enough to raise the potential of the match! And sometimes you will book a high potential match, but get an unlucky dice roll, and the match goes so poorly that now you have to scrap the planned “angle” (multi-show story) between the wrestlers, which was genuinely heartbreaking. My plans! My beautiful plans!
It’s a smart simulation of what I imagine real life bookers go through all the time. I know from personal experience you did an excellent job building an engine to simulate what it’s like being a professional in the arts. I’ve written for games with high potential that underperformed, and games that sold well beyond my expectations. You add up all the factors, like the talent, the genre, and the marketing, then compare that to a random number which represents the fickle taste of the public and external factors beyond the team’s control. I think this engine could be used to simulate a variety of professional arts, such as running a movie or game studio. My first thought was a Muppet Show simulator, where you pair Muppets up for skits, throw them on stage, then get Statler & Waldorf’s reaction.
Five Star Match is a great example of how solo roleplaying games can be more than writing exercises. If I want to write a novel or screenplay, I’m only limited by my imagination. (Okay, and other stuff too, like client demands and genre tropes.) In many solo roleplaying games, the actual events that can happen are predetermined by a table or a pre-written prompt. The game asks me to write in my journal as a way to contextualize the pre-written prompts narratively. (ex. “Write about how it makes you feel to be devoured by a man-eating plant.”) But in Five Star Match, I determine the events. I can make any wrestling thing happen, from a vampire blood brawl to a werewolf silver bullet match! The game just tells me whether I was successful. Did my concept “get over” or get my performers hospitalized? I’musing my imagination fully. The game is challenging me to adjust to its notes, which come in the form of a puzzle. I will probably end this monster promotion and start a new one, because now that I’ve played two pay-per-views, I have a clearer picture of how to build a roster that better solves the inherent puzzle.
Overall, I’d give your game six stars. It’s so inventive. The most fun I’ve had playing a solo RPG, and I have half a shelf of them. I’d recommend Five Star Match to any pro wrestling fan who thinks they can out-creative The Creative. I’m curious, what was the inspiration for the mechanics in Five Star Match? Was it purely a translation of pro wrestling storytelling? Did other games inspire you? If you’ll permit, I’d love to share your answer with my readers.
Thanks for the great game,
Geoffrey
🎲 Your Turn: Have you experienced any great art lately? A movie, book, TV show, video game, tabletop game, podcast, toy, live show, immersive experience, or something in a medium I missed entirely? Comment with the orange button below, and also send your thoughts to one of the artists involved. I guarantee it’ll make their day.
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