"Battle Royale," "Fatal Four-Way" House Rules for FACE TO THE MAT
Jeff Gilbert, Freeport, IL is a new member of the PLAAY Games community, and quickly made himself at home on the Delphi Forum! He posted these new house rules he's created for Battle Royale and Fatal Four-Way matches for FACE TO THE MAT Pro Wrestling Game! We've also created a downloadable PDF of this article which you can print and place in your game box for future reference! Good stuff, many thanks, Jeff!
ADVANCED BATTLE ROYALE RULES
This system is designed to be used to quickly and elegantly resolve large Battle Royale events while remaining as consistent with the standard Face to the Mat match rules as possible, using mechanisms already introduced elsewhere in the rules.
Select the wrestlers that are to participate in the Battle Royale. Ideally, there should be a good (roughly 50/50) distribution of Personas. Turn those wrestler cards face down and shuffle them. For a standard Battle Royale, deal the above cards out in groups of two in front of the player.
Determine what the Elimination Value for the bout should be. Ideally this should be a number between 3 and 6 (the lower the number the more quickly eliminations occur). When that many points are scored against a wrestler, that wrestler must roll to avoid being eliminated by rolling on the Pin Escape table.
Once paired, find the pair with the lowest total sum Grudge Grade and begin there (the idea being that lower-priority eliminations usually happen earlier in the bout while the most important stars tend to last into the late portions of such events). Determine between those two wrestlers as to the 'Favored' wrestler versus the 'Underdog' wrestler. Place the 'Favored' wrestler on the left side of the pairing (to mirror the normal FttM board).
OPTION: Instead of using the lowest Grudge Grade sum pairing, start with the highest. This option has a greater chance of eliminating important wrestlers from the bout early but does help capture the feel of one or more big stars chopping their way through a swath of opposition.
Draw a FAC. If it is a damage (point scoring) card for one of the participants, apply the damage by marking the value with a d6 on the face of the leading (winning) wrestler. TV Grade and Grudge Grade ties are resolved as normal. If it is not damage (i.e. Wild Card or something else), resolve it as best as can be done in a Battle Royale setting, using either the Tag Team or Ring Match Wild Card table if needed. Some creativity may be required here to frame the result properly. If the card specifies an immediate win or other circumstance that eliminates a wrestler from the bout, treat it as an immediate elimination. If the 'Elimination Value' for the pairing has been met, the trailing wrestler must roll to Avoid Elimination. If the trailing wrestler scores points first reduce the leading wrestler's d6 by the points scored until it reaches zero. If the trailing wrestler scores additional points, move the d6 to the formerly trailing wrestler's card and track it as above. That wrestler is now the leading (winning) wrestler.
Each time a wrestler scores points in a pairing (or every so many points scored if the player wants to stay focused on one pairing at a time rather than bouncing around), resolve the damage (and possible elimination), then roll a d6 and consult the Advanced Battle Royale chart (below). This may trigger a change in the pairing or some other shift in focus. Any time there is an elimination, switch to the next lowest Grudge Grade sum pairing as above.
Avoiding Elimination: When the Elimination Value for a pairing has been met, the trailing wrestler must roll on the Pin Escape table (for their current TV Grade letter). If they fail that roll, they are eliminated from the match and the leading wrestler becomes Unpaired. If they succeed, reduce the d6 value on the leading wrestler's card by 1 and continue drawing cards. Once a wrestler is eliminated, remove the d6 from the face of the leading wrestler, move on to the next lowest total Grudge Grade pairing and begin resolving that pairing. The leading wrestler is now unpaired. If the wrestler survives elimination, reduce the Elimination Value by one and continue with the pairing. He or she is still considered paired with the previous opponent unless the d6 Advanced Battle Royale Table roll breaks up that pairing.
D6 ADVANCED BATTLE ROYALE TABLE
[ 1 ] Pairing breaks, previous Winning wrestler paired off against nearest unpaired wrestler. If no unpaired wrestler, Winning wrestler pairs off against nearest Enemy; if no Enemy, Winning wrestler pairs off against wrestler of the opposite Persona of highest Grudge Grade. Reset damage die.
[ 2 ] No change, continue drawing FAC.
[ 3 ] No change, continue drawing FAC.
[ 4 ] Switch to next pairing, damage remains on current pairing. If there are no additional pairings, pair up nearest two unpaired wrestlers of opposite Persona if available and highest Grudge Grade and begin with that pairing. If not of opposite Persona, pair up with nearest unpaired wrestler of highest remaining Grudge Grade with next highest Grudge Grade. If no additional pairings are available and there are less than two unpaired wrestlers left, treat this result as number 2 above and remain with current pairing.
[ 5 ] Same as [ 4 ] above.
[ 6 ] Double-team on the losing wrestler (add +1 point to the winning wrestler) with the help of the nearest unpaired wrestler; if no wrestler is unpaired, the help is from the nearest Ally of winning wrestler (and breaks up the pairing from which the Ally came); if no Ally, the help is from the nearest paired wrestler of the opposite Persona from the trailing wrestler with highest Grudge Grade (and breaks up that pairing). If the damage resulted in the elimination of a wrestler, then the wrestler assisting in the double-team effort helped cause that elimination and the double-team wrestlers become unpaired.
OPTION: Do not return to an existing pairing until all other pairings have had an opportunity to resolve or break.
Thematically, the other pairings are busy engaging in the battle royale, too, while the player's focus is on a specific one, but selecting one pair at a time to resolve represents the attention of the audience or TV crew to the most 'interesting' action at that moment.
Once there is only one pairing left, there is no need to roll the d6 each time damage scores, finish resolving the final pairing as above (unless the player would prefer to resolve the final pairing as its own singles match for dramatic narrative effect).
After the match, all eliminated wrestlers gain 1 point of Grudge Grade. The winner of the battle royale gains one to two TV Grades (depending on the importance of the battle royale, one grade for a general battle royale, two grades for a high priority battle royale (such as the Main Event of a Special Event)).
'Nearest' wrestler or pairing refers to where the cards sit on the table or the next highest Grudge Grade (as suits the player). If there are two or more cards that could be considered 'nearest', determine randomly by assigning numbers to each card and rolling a die (or just pick one that suits the story-line best).
OPTION: HEAVY wrestlers require 1-2 more points against them (decide at the beginning of the match) before they check for Elimination as they are hard to get over the top rope, AGILE or SMART wrestlers check for Elimination as the next highest TV Grade letter as they are squirrely and good at pulling themselves back into the ring.
RUMBLE: A Rumble would work the same as a standard Battle Royale, however it starts with a pre-determined number of wrestlers (usually 2 or 4) and then every so many FAC card draws (every 3-6 cards depending on the Rumble interval; player should choose this value before beginning the match) a new wrestler is drawn and added to the mix as Unpaired with an immediate roll on the d6 chart where the new wrestler is used for the team-up or new pairing (if there is one) or becomes an unpaired wrestler.
"FATAL FOUR-WAY" TAG MATCH RULES
As a big fan of Lucha Underground and increasingly of NJPW's events like "Wrestle Kingdom 10", a common staple is a four-way match with either singles or tag-teams. As such, I have been using them in my home-brew league and I thought I'd share what I have been doing to represent these matches!
Let me start with a four-way tag-team match. This assumes two wrestlers are in the ring at once and that anyone can tag anyone, but that there are four teams present. I actually set this up on paper as two tag-team matches (so that I have two different sets of point tracking grids and two different sets of Hot Boxes), but I resolve them for each team as the corresponding team scores points, so the trick is for any one team to get to the required points for a Pin or Finisher in order to win.
Pre-Match Highlight Reel results are applied to everybody if it calls for all/both wrestlers to be affected, otherwise, the results correspond to the two teams that start out the match. In order to determine which teams start out, just roll randomly, where the die roll corresponds to the team number. If the result is a 5 or 6 (or a repeat of the team number already in the match) on this roll, then the player picks a team of his or her choice (or, if the player does not want to choose, then use the highest combined Grudge Grade not already in the match). I use the normal Advanced Tag Team rules for resolving tags (see the Highlight book), but I add one extra thing.
When I roll to see if there is a tag, I actually roll -both- dice. If the first die calls for a tag, then the second die determines who might be tagged in. Specifically, if the number on the second die is odd, then the wrestler's tag is to his or her own partner. If, however, the result on the second die is even, then that tells me that they either had to tag to another team out of need or that another team tagged -themselves- into the match. Whatever team is tagged in, all points are now counted on -their- track, until they have to tag out. Obviously, if there's no tag, the second die's result is meaningless and ignored.
On that second die (where needed), a result of 2 means that they tag in the first team not already represented in the ring, 4 means they tag in the second team not already represented. A result of 6 means they tag in whichever team the player prefers (or if the player doesn't actually want the choice, the 6 corresponds with whatever team is the same Persona as the tagging team; if there's no team that is the same Persona, then it is the team with the highest combined Grudge Grade).
Typically, I have stacked the team cards so that once a wrestler tags out, his card is slipped underneath his or her partner, and whenever there is a new tag to that team, the card on top is the participant that enters the ring. So whichever team is tagged in, it is the top wrestler in the stack that responds. This also enables for larger teams (such as a four-way match with trios teams).
Once any one team makes it to a successful Pin or Finisher, that team wins, having pinned or submitted whomever is their opponent (or if a Wild Card result calls for a win or loss). Post-Match results are then rolled and correspond specifically to the two teams involved in the decision.
For a singles Fatal Four Way, I still keep a separate point tracking for each member (using two match grids), but any tag is obviously to another wrestler so 1-2 is tagging the first idle team, 3-4 is tagging the second idle team, and 5-6 is Player's Choice/ Same Persona/ or Highest Grudge Grade. I also assume that each wrestler has a Helped quality reflecting an idle wrestler of the same Persona (if there is one), so sometimes the non-legal wrestlers outside the ring affect the pair that is in the ring by interference (I usually use the Manager chart typically).
Using this system makes use of mechanisms already present in the game but still gives the variety of action seen in a "Fatal Four-Way!" Hope you all can make use of this!