WWE: Know Your Role

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WWE: Know Your Role is a role-playing game published by Comic Images, using the d20 system. It is meant to serve as a way to simulate professional wrestling matches, especially World Wrestling Entertainment-style action.

[edit] Gameplay

The focus of the play is on matches themselves between two (or more) characters. The mechanics allow play to go on with or without a game master serving as a referee. An attack roll is made, with modifiers for attributes (unlike in most d20 games, all six attributes can add to an attack roll--Intelligence for a tricky hold, Charisma for a devious move, and so on), damage inflicted (more damage lowers chance to perform), and special attributes (the better the results, the harder it is to do). The winner of the roll performs the manoeuvre he or she wished, describing the result in a godmoding fashion.

As the game is not based on Dungeons and Dragons, it does not refer to that or the System Reference Document; it instead contains its own character generation rules and descriptions. It still contains many concepts, including character classes (six, one matching each attribute), feats (applicable ones, as well as genre-specific), and skills (applicable ones as well--the Swim skill, for example, is not included).

One other deviation comes to player characters. As the game focuses on a wrestling show with a number of matches, and wrestlers rarely appear in more than one in a given show, players are encouraged to create multiple characters so that some are available for action in whatever scenarios or angles are available.

[edit] Presentation

Unlike most other RPGs, the book covers a real-world subject; thus, rather than commissioning artwork to be drawn, photographs from WWE events are used as illustrations throughout.

A few layout or other errors are in the book; the aforementioned Swimming skill is listed as an example of what skills Strength modifies, but is not included in the game at all.

[edit] Wrestlers

As most WWE-based games, this one features a roster that has quickly become outdated, including Eddie Guerrero, who was alive when the game was made, but died later. It also featured other wrestlers who had left the company, both in example text and in sample characters.