World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition
World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition is Nathan D. Paoletta's Powered by the Apocalypse TTRPG of pro-wrestling shows, feuds, promos, backstage pressure, audience heat, championships, and dramatic swerves.
Pro-wrestling drama - Powered by the Apocalypse - Creative GM role - Gimmick playbooks - One-shot shows or full Seasons - Paid PDF, print, and free play aids
World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition is the TTRPG to consider when the table wants pro wrestling as drama, not as a joke premise. It is about wrestlers performing in the ring, chasing championships, cutting promos, building feuds, reacting to backstage pressure, and trying to make the audience care. The game is loud and theatrical, but its best trick is practical: it gives a table procedures for turning kayfabe, career ambition, and spectacle into playable scenes.
It is not a tactical sports simulator. If your group wants precise positioning, detailed move-by-move martial procedure, or a neutral contest where everyone simply tries to win, this will probably frustrate them. World Wide Wrestling works when players want to perform, improvise, accept booked outcomes as pressure, and sometimes swerve the plan in a way Creative has to make look intentional.
What the game is
Designed and published by Nathan D. Paoletta / ndpdesign, World Wide Wrestling: Second Edition is a Powered by the Apocalypse game about creating a professional wrestling promotion through play. One player takes the Creative role, books each show, introduces antagonists and storylines, and decides what matches are on the card. The other players portray wrestlers built from archetypal Gimmicks.
The default play identity is split between the show and the people making the show. Characters work the audience, clash in the ring, cut promos, pursue feuds, protect or sabotage relationships, and deal with the backstage reality of their careers. That split is why the game can support both a single event and an ongoing Season.
Publication history and editions
The original World Wide Wrestling RPG was published in 2015 after an earlier Patreon release, and the line built a visible following through supplements, play aids, and actual-play coverage. The current Second Edition itch page says the new edition brings in material from the original line, refines the core play experience after years of play, and adds support for long-term play, going outside the ring, example Promotions, match stipulations, and essays.
ndpdesign currently presents Second Edition as the supported version. The official store lists softcover, hardcover, and digital options, and the itch page shows recent support activity including 2025 digital-bundle repackaging and 2026 Gimmick-sheet updates. For TTRPG Games, that matters because the page is not documenting a dormant curiosity; it is pointing readers to a live, purchasable edition.
Product line and what you need to play
The core product is a 260-page color book. The official page says the digital bundle includes the screen-ready PDF, EPUB, plaintext/accessibility-oriented formats, printable and form-fillable Gimmick sheets, reference sheets, and print-and-play Move cards. The game is sold through the ndpdesign store, itch.io, Payhip, DriveThruRPG, Indie Press Revolution, and selected retail channels.
Free support materials are unusually useful here. ndpdesign provides Gimmick sheets, Creative and Move reference sheets, form-fillable sheets, and Training Ring play-along scenarios. Those downloads are not a complete free edition, so the game should not be tagged Free, but they do make it easier for a group to test the flow of a match and prepare a first show.
Supplements and community support
Second Edition collects and revises the original core material and earlier support, but the line still has current branches. Warlock Pro Wrestling and Five Rings Wrestling Alliance are expanded Promotions for the core game, while New Year's Fray is a separate festive wrestling game. ndpdesign also offers Hailing From World Wide Wrestling as a compatibility/licensing route for inspired projects.
The practical read is that groups are not buying into a supplement ladder they must complete. The core book is enough, while the current line gives alternate promotion frames and extra table inspiration once a group knows it likes the wrestling engine.
Digital tools and online play
There is no official VTT package to treat as a major selling point. Online play is still straightforward because the game is conversation-first and the downloadable materials include printable and form-fillable sheets. The optional Move Deck and print-and-play move cards are table aids, not a separate rules dependency.
Core rules and play structure
World Wide Wrestling is Powered by the Apocalypse. The core resolution uses 2d6 plus a stat when a move triggers, with the usual strong hit, partial hit, and miss cadence. The important point is not the math; it is what the moves care about. Working the Audience, Cutting a Promo, breaking kayfabe, running in, wrestling, gaining Heat, and building Audience all point the table toward professional-wrestling drama.
A session is structured like a show. Creative books segments and matches, decides who is supposed to win, and creates pressure. Players pursue their own goals inside that structure. They can lean into the plan, complicate it, or swerve it, and Creative's job is to make those choices feel like they belong in the show. That creates a different relationship to winning: the booked result matters, but what the audience thinks, what a rival does next, and how the wrestler's career changes may matter more.
Characters, Gimmicks, and advancement
Characters are built from Gimmicks, which function like playbooks. The official materials describe 15 Gimmicks in the Second Edition and show how each wrestler can evolve through stats, custom moves, maneuvers, managers or valets, championships, Role changes, and even changing Gimmick over time. That makes the game class-based, but not static.
The character is also both performer and persona. You play the on-screen wrestler, the backstage professional, and the tension between those layers. This gives World Wide Wrestling a strong reason to sit next to social-intrigue games: status, trust, audience reaction, and rivalries are not just color around the match.
Signature mechanics
- Creative booking gives the show a planned card while leaving players room to chase feuds, demand spotlight, and change what the booking means.
- Gimmicks give each wrestler a recognizable dramatic lane, then advancement lets that identity shift as the character rises, falls, or reinvents themself.
- Heat and Audience make relationships and crowd reaction into tracked pressure instead of background flavor.
- Match narration uses move outcomes and narrative control to create back-and-forth spectacle rather than tactical combat rounds.
- The Promotion can become a living campaign object, changing alongside the wrestlers across a Season.
What play feels like
A good session feels like a wrestling show made by people who understand that the match is only part of the story. Players perform entrances, promos, betrayals, desperate comebacks, backstage confrontations, big finishes, and humiliating reversals. The table is partly collaborating and partly competing for attention, which is exactly the tension the game wants.
The tone can be funny, sincere, melodramatic, or rougher-edged depending on the promotion the group builds. The constant is performance. Players who enjoy speaking in character, describing stunts, and finding the emotional hook in a rivalry get the most from it.
Running the game
Creative has real responsibility, but not the same workload as a tactical-prep GM. Prep means booking shows, setting stakes, choosing what pressure to apply, and keeping the promotion moving. The free play aids and example Promotions help, and the Second Edition's onboarding focus makes the role more approachable than the premise may suggest.
The harder part is taste and pacing. Creative needs to give players enough planned structure to push against without closing down their agency. New groups may also need a quick shared vocabulary for wrestling beats so match narration does not stall. The Training Ring scenarios and reference sheets are the best first tools for that problem.
Campaign fit
World Wide Wrestling is unusually flexible for a strongly themed game. The itch page says it supports large and small groups, irregular attendance, drop-in guests, one-shot play, a single show in about two hours, and linked shows as an ongoing Season. That makes it a strong choice for convention events and for home groups that cannot guarantee the same roster every week.
Campaign play gives the game more room to breathe. Feuds deepen, championships change meaning, Gimmicks evolve, injuries and Audience shifts create consequences, and the Promotion itself can become a recurring object of play. It is not a forever-campaign engine for every group, but it has much more long-form support than the novelty pitch might imply.
Reception and awards
The awards record is strong. The original game shared the 2015 Indie RPG Awards Indie Game of the Year with Night Witches, and ndpdesign also lists a 2015 Best Support win. RPGGeek records the original line, its Powered by the Apocalypse identity, and several supplements and support items.
Current sentiment also supports a live page. The official itch listing shows a 4.9 rating from 70 ratings and active 2025-2026 updates. A 2025 Veritas Tabletop review is useful because it is positive without flattening the caveats: the reviewer found it easy to prep and fun to run, but called out wrestling-description load and PbtA constraints as possible friction for tables missing one or both points of buy-in.
Where it is strongest
- Groups that want professional wrestling treated as a full dramatic genre with rules for audience, Heat, feuds, promos, and backstage pressure.
- One-shot or short-arc tables that want a complete show quickly without giving up campaign continuity later.
- PbtA fans who want a game where the moves are tightly tuned to one very specific genre.
- Mixed groups of wrestling fans and wrestling-curious roleplayers, especially when the free play aids are used up front.
Where it can frustrate groups
- Players who want sport to mean fair tactical competition rather than staged drama, performance, and career politics.
- Tables that dislike describing action, cutting promos, or performing big character moments in front of each other.
- Groups that already bounce hard off PbtA move constraints and do not want genre procedures telling them when the dice matter.
- Creative players who want to prep a plot and protect it from being changed by the table.
Content and safety notes
The baseline game is less horror-heavy than many PbtA entries, but professional wrestling can still bring up humiliation, betrayal, body harm, injury, rivalry, fame pressure, trash talk, and aggressive performance. Groups should calibrate how mean promos can get, how serious injuries are, and whether backstage relationships stay playful, melodramatic, or sharper.
Best starting path
Start with the official ndpdesign World Wide Wrestling page, then decide whether you want print from the publisher store or the digital bundle on itch.io. Download the free Gimmick sheets, Creative and Move reference sheets, and Training Ring scenarios before the first session. If the first show lands, add Warlock Pro Wrestling or Five Rings Wrestling Alliance only when your group wants a more specialized promotion frame.
Research notes
Last checked: August 30, 2026.