Total Carnage Wrestling (Remastered)

[amd]

After a very long hiatus of playing, I'm back in the mix and my thoughts have now turned to my old bootleg characters. So much time has passed and they are all drastically overpowered and broken stat wise I want to try as a pet project going back and revising, revamping and trying to modernize them as best I can. These were all created from 1995-2000 when it was quite populate for folks to just make characters and send them out into the wild. Its crazy seeing the advances both in quality and quantity of great bootlegs available. I'm partial to the homebrew approach though as everything was done by me - art, story, stats, etc. I made these by just copying blank CAC cards and filling in the moves by hand (in pen no less) then making full sheets to copy/cut and mail out. Again, its wild how things are now where there are resources with excellent PDFs just ready to go...!

Anyway, as part of the project I will probably go in phases:

1) Upload a few of the characters in their original state. 
2) See if Justin Case can help me get them in a better format
3) Work out balancing them and getting feedback for improvement

These cards were mostly set to compete against similar characters so the stats being bonkers is not a deal breaker for me since I want them to make sense in the overall setting of my fed. I had a lot of my own characters so I was just basically running my own fed loosely off the core mechanics. Looking back now I do see the value in having a more varied range of wrestlers so its not a pure power gaming scene. Not a lot of prestige in making low card guys, but I do see it as worthwhile.  I think some of what I have character-wise are decent enough that setting them at various parts of the card would be fine. A good mix of upper/mid/lower card guys will make the revamped fed better in the long run. It will also increase the possibility of others possibly using them if they fall in line with more normal/average cards.

I will use this thread to organize this project and welcome any input. Its good to be back rolling the dice!

Special thanks to kazreturns for his new release. Awesome and inspirational, plus another familiar face from the early bootleg days. I need to dig into that set sooner than later. Perhaps a cross promotion card is in order at some point! One of the highlights of my time playing was doing full cross promotion with Jamie B Wilson and having the card basically be a fed vs fed supercard. As a mostly solo player it was super cool collaborating in this way.

[amd]

My secret confession regarding the card creation process. I believe I was misplaying things which then led to the way the cards were setup. It's funny now thinking how big a difference it makes since the core mechanics are very basic, so the characters and story are what elevates things. The advance rules add a lot more flavor to the game and I made two critical errors when I was younger (I was just anxious to get playing I guess...)

1) Chart moves followed by a (c)

For whatever reason I thought if you get this result you just reroll. Playing now I see how broken that is since it basically makes that spot on the card inconsequential. Playing more with more focus on the correct rules, it makes way more sense and lends to some push your luck scenarios. It adds more choice to the mix which is always good when so much else is driven by the dice.

2) Choice charts

These I just skipped over entirely. I must have skimmed that section and not realized WHY you would even want to do that. It does streamline the match a bit, as I find myself still trying to memorize what each one is, but similar to option 1, it adds a bit of flavor (do I try to overpower someone I probably cant, or just throw him into the ropes). You can game it a bit, but if you roll with it from a story perspective it adds a lot to the match. A few recent matches I ran presented some scenarios where the move option was not great (roll a 4 or less) but it made sense to just try it, versus getting kicked back to a less effective offense. I think if you dont sweat the stats a lot and go based on feel it helps. I think I must have seen this process as just too slow when I was younger so just skipped it which is a shame.

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Thinking more now, I wonder about some of the other players of that era and what their thought process was since I know I received similar setup cards that didnt follow all the rules. Its all your game ultimately, so if you want to take rules a la carte there is no harm but its interesting having seen and played so many different games in the time between when I started and now. At the end of the day, I appreciate the creative outlet this game provides and am enjoying both revisiting and revising the way I play!

[TTX]

Some of those old cards were wild with things like out of the ring and deathjump on lower levels of offense and ropes/turnbuckle/ch A and ch B on level 3 offense and some of the power (for the time) was crazy.

Of course now, the GWF has some wrestlers who could be competitive with the highest bootlegs back then (well most, I've still seen a couple with say four finishers and they weren't all 0s either)

[Chad Olson]

Sept 8, 2020 13:31:34 GMT -5 amd said:

Looking back now I do see the value in having a more varied range of wrestlers so its not a pure power gaming scene. Not a lot of prestige in making low card guys, but I do see it as worthwhile.  I think some of what I have character-wise are decent enough that setting them at various parts of the card would be fine.

I think this sentence in particular needs highlighting. I think it takes a lot of creativity to make a mid to lower card guy with an interesting enough storyline that people would want to use them. Think back to Vanity, he was very popular in the old days, because he had a great gimmick, despite a lack of talent. Compare him to Reptillo, who came in as the third stringer in a great group. Tom did a great job of making Reptillo interesting through the Serpent Unman/Doomsday Creature story, but even Unman's card wasn't great.

Sept 8, 2020 13:31:34 GMT -5 amd said:

It will also increase the possibility of others possibly using them if they fall in line with more normal/average cards. A good mix of upper/mid/lower card guys will make the revamped fed better in the long run.

If you look at the first Legends Color set, it's pretty much all main event/high card talent. If that was the only LOW set you had, you'd have a ridiculously loaded show. Thanks for the Legends Color Expansions, CAC sets, Pro Prime and other Legends Color products, you have run a balanced card with a variety of talent on your roster.