Lucha Libre?

[General Markov]

Just got the LL book this week, I was curious. Does anyone have a Lucha game going? I was thinking of doing a Lucha in the ring game. I'll be posting a few character when they'll be finished. I would like anyone who have Lucha characters, campaign our resources to post it here in this thread.

 

El General Marcos

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

bueno senor general proceed

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I love lucha libre and I also love the LLH book. I have it here on my desk next to the computer as I'm typing this, and I'll be using it for a convention game this Saturday.

 

Last November, a few of my friends made up their own player-character wrestlers for LLH based on the Luchador Package Deals in the book (Mat Technician, Luchador Noir, etc.). So, there is not a lot of variety there since we took most of the stat values from the book. Our first game was also a tag-team match the characters had between themselves. Using the detailed Hero System LLH rules for combat, this took the whole evening. So, ever since I've been strongly in favor of using the basic combat rules and simplified lucha maneuvers for straight-up adventuring. Most players are more interested in out-of-the-ring adventures than in the wrestling aspects of LLH. I'm usually OK with that.

 

When I have more LLH characters ready to go, I can post them here.

 

I am currently transitioning to the 6th Edition rules. Today, I wrote down 6th Ed. versions of three of my favorite characters from the book: Craneo Llameante, Supergran, and Amazonia.

 

Good to hear from other LLH fans.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I don't have a campaign going, but I've been running LLH at cons since the book came out. I just use modified versions of the heroes in the book -- el Espectro, Supergran, Craneo Llameante, Amazonia, Caveman Cortez, and one of my own creation, Silver Sapphire.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Very nice, teh bunneh.

 

LLH probably lends itself very well to convention gaming because it can be played "out of the box" with just one book, independently of any other Hero book. It's also fun to play your own self-contained lucha movie in 4-5 hours game time. The book even has its own random plot generator, which works better than some of the other random plot generators I've seen.

 

By the way, it was pretty easy to convert those sample characters to 6th Edition. Really, the major changes are basically refiguring the characteristics (DEX being cheaper now, for example), converting ECV to OMCV and DMCV, and making minimal adjustments to STUN and END. All the lucha maneuvers and Skills cost the same, as far as I can see.

 

I think even if the maneuvers cost a different number of points, I wouldn't feel like "messing" with them now. Better to leave them as is.

[kahuna's bro]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I don't have a campaign going' date=' but I've been running LLH at cons since the book came out. I just use modified versions of the heroes in the book -- el Espectro, Supergran, Craneo Llameante, Amazonia, Caveman Cortez, and one of my own creation, Silver Sapphire.[/quote']

 

letys havea lok at silver sapphire

[teh bunneh]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I've posted her before. Here she is:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/74885-6th-Edition-Character-Sheet?p=1931680#post1931680

[Darren Watts]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I've also found that several of Steve's "Hero Plus" pulp adventures translate over to Lucha for con games very easily, usually just by changing names and locations and adding a fistful more aztec mummies for seasoning. dw

[teh bunneh]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

One of these days, when I'm sitting on a pile of extra time, I should write up my convention adventures properly and do 'em up as pseudo-Hero Pulp Adventures for folks to download...

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

My Lucha Libre Hero game is scheduled for the day after tomorrow, 12 AM. Once that game has been played, I'm perfectly ready to post to you guys on this forum how it went and what we did.

 

I'm very likely going with one of the short plot seeds in the book. No space aliens this time, since a friend of mine at the same convention is already doing a lot of science-fiction. But a mad scientist and a mythological creature will make an appearance. Since Craneo Llameante is intended as one of the PCs, I think there should be a supernatural monster for him to use his bonus on.

[Pól Ruadh]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I don't have enough friends into Lucha Libre to run a dedicated game, but I did play a Luchador Superhero, El Aguila Azul, in a superhero game. I got to incorporate a bunch of Lucha elements including an evil mad scientist/sorcerer, some evil luchadors, a mentor/trainer, and lots of monster-bashing.

The GM even ran several character-specific arc, with mine centring on an old enemy of El Aguila's mentor returning from Hell to seek vengeance on his enemy's protegee.

Loads of fun.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I don't have enough friends into Lucha Libre to run a dedicated game, but I did play a Luchador Superhero, El Aguila Azul, in a superhero game. I got to incorporate a bunch of Lucha elements including an evil mad scientist/sorcerer, some evil luchadors, a mentor/trainer, and lots of monster-bashing.

The GM even ran several character-specific arc, with mine centring on an old enemy of El Aguila's mentor returning from Hell to seek vengeance on his enemy's protegee.

Loads of fun.

 

Hello Pól,

 

Sounds like great fun right there. Hope you'll get to play more games like that. Best of luck!

[Schiz02]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I'm in a similiar boat to Pól Ruadh. I have Luche Libre Hero (it was actually the first Hero System book I bought), but not a big enough group to play. I've got one friend that's interested, but the others are just sort of "meh..." on the whole idea. This is why I'm going to incorporate a few Lucha-based heroes and villains in my next Champions game.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Here is my info about the LLH game session I ran last Saturday. I didn't quite get around to posting feedback immediately. In a way, I am still a bit tired from the past weekend where I was up for approximately 33 or 34 hours.

 

Anyway, I was getting ready to run LLH at that con at an old wooden house on the third floor, just as it was getting warmer and warmer on Saturday afternoon, and eventually it was hotter inside than outside, what no one had quite expected that weekend in late April. In addition, I had my Mexican wrestling mask on and I'd forgotten how hot it was getting with that on. The promotional effect of being the only masked guy in the building can't be overestimated, though. I'm really happy I have that mask. Whenever I am in a new town for a convention and no one there knows me or Hero Games or LLH, it's safe to say that they will notice the "guy with the wrestling mask".

 

That is also how I got a 10- or 11-year old boy to join my game session. His parents were running the catering and bar area for the convention, and he got very excited about talking to the guy in the wrestling mask and when I told him I had a roleplaying game with wrestling, of course he wanted to be a part of it. There were 2 married couples who joined me as players, and a friend of one of the couples, so I had six Lucha players altogether, all new to the system.

 

That number of players also caused a bit of a problem, since I had only prepared three player characters for LLH, never expecting so many people to want to play something that obscure. But luckily I had all my notes with me, the LLH book, and six blank Hero 6th character sheets. Yes, I'm running LLH with the 6th Edition rules now, which makes almost no difference in-game. The only main difference is that you pay more points to buy up OCV and DCV as separate stats, and less for DEX and some other stats.

 

Eventually, one player played a slightly rewritten version of Craneo Llameante, one played the Wrestling Detective (based on Caveman Cortez), there was another wrestler based on Craneo, two Amazonias -- one called Dolores (great idea, since "dolor" is pain in Spanish) and one called Tequila the Killer -- and the 11-year old player played The Undertaker from WWE. I always notice that young kids who watch wrestling on TV still like The Undertaker best.

 

What I loved about all that was that the young boy not only understood the entire Hero 6th character sheet and all the rules used in-game (skills, holds, action stunts, etc.), but played the Undertaker character with great panache. Sometimes kids that young don't have the patience to sit through a 6-hour session, but he did, never complained. That made me so happy. I'd played another game with friends from Friday at 7:00 PM till about 5:30 in the morning, so I didn't get any sleep before traveling to the con, and when I arrived there I was physically in no shape to do a detailed 6-hour game, but the players' interest and enthusiasm kept me going. A magical day for the Hero System and for Lucha, I believe.

 

It got really funny when at one point, the Undertaker pulled out a medieval two-handed sword, but that was in a scene where the luchadores were in the jungle and confronting a giant mutated anaconda, so it made sense that they had a lethal weapon against that danger. And besides that, knowing the Undertaker character a little, it is not too far-fetched to believe that he dabbled in medieval weaponry and historical combat guilds in his off time.

 

A few problems we encountered:

 

- Next time I have to make sure that all characters prepared for the session either use the full Lucha Libre Maneuvers rules or Variation Dos or Tres, since the previous versions were mixed. I think next time I'll give everybody Variation Dos (my favorite, since it makes a good middle ground between the detailed combat rules and the super-simplified Variation Tres "Beyond the Bone"). Technically, it is possible to mix characters with Variation Dos/Tres with full system characters in the same group, but it looks confusing to a new player. I just want a coherent and consistent system for wrestling holds, strikes and escapes.

 

- We were quite surprised when we realized in the middle of the game that Amazonia, the jungle girl on the team, did not have a Stealth or Tracking skill. Editorial oversight?--Well, when the characters wanted to sneak around in the jungle, we agreed to just use a DEX Roll every time.

 

- In the same scene with the characters traveling through the jungle, they wanted to use teamwork on the giant anaconda. Their plan was to build two slings from the ropes they had brought with them, suspend the slings from branches and pull them tight when the anaconda moved through them, with three luchadores pulling toward one side and three others pulling toward the other side. The question was just how to do that properly in the rules. Pulling the ropes to make the sling tie around the snake and then holding in place (before the Undertaker hit it with his two-handed sword) ...well, to me that is basically a STR Roll versus the STR of the snake. But how do you do STR feats when several characters are all co-operating? Do you add all their respective STR scores? Is the actual STR relevant, or only the STR Roll target number?

 

Since I didn't have time to read the full rulebook for that, I determined that the character with the highest STR on the team could use their STR Roll, improved by +3 for preparation and clever teamwork.

 

- There was slight confusion over Weapon Shots and Lucha Libre Weapons. Most characters had the WF: Lucha Libre Weapons among their skills, but only a few had Weapon Shot as a power. I explained which items (and even referees and audience members!) constituted "lucha libre weapons" in the game, but the game wasn't so clear about the weapon damage dice. Should I use the individual weapon's # of dice from the Lucha Libre Weapons table, or should I just add +8d6 for Weapon Shot?

 

This just reminds that a character like Supergran with his 6d6 Hand-to-Hand Attack damage, adding the +8d6 for Weapon Shot, would do 14d6 with a folded chair or trash can. Wow, that is 42 points of STUN damage on average. With that, a single Weapon Shot would ordinarily take an opponent out. That's great for occasional mooks, guards, and zombie-style monsters, but maybe not so good once you want to play wrestling matches.

 

Apart from those small problems, I think we had a great game session and it made me really confident about running the Hero System, well, at least Lucha Libre Hero!

[Darren Watts]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Weapon Shot is a specific ability, either you have it or you don't. Ordinary use of "Lucha Weapons" only adds the damage appropriate for the specific weapon, which frequently means the GM must decide what's appropriate- maybe +2d6 for a belt or concealed brass knuckles, +3d6 for a trash can or folding chair, and +4 or 5d6 for putting your opponent through a table or piledriving him with a referi? This sounds like a need for one of Jason's PDF-extra products he keeps threatening to make- a table of damage and CV bonus/penalties for anything a luchador might find to hand to pummel his opponent with!

 

Anyhoo, thanks for the high-quality con representation and report, Jed! Sounds like a blast!

dw

[Susano]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

One of these days' date=' when I'm sitting on a pile of extra time, I should write up my convention adventures properly and do 'em up as pseudo-Hero Pulp Adventures for folks to download... [/quote']

 

If you ever do, let me know. I'd love to try running stuff like that out here on the East Coast.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Weapon Shot is a specific ability, either you have it or you don't. Ordinary use of "Lucha Weapons" only adds the damage appropriate for the specific weapon, which frequently means the GM must decide what's appropriate- maybe +2d6 for a belt or concealed brass knuckles, +3d6 for a trash can or folding chair, and +4 or 5d6 for putting your opponent through a table or piledriving him with a referi? This sounds like a need for one of Jason's PDF-extra products he keeps threatening to make- a table of damage and CV bonus/penalties for anything a luchador might find to hand to pummel his opponent with!

 

Anyhoo, thanks for the high-quality con representation and report, Jed! Sounds like a blast!

dw

 

Thanks for the nice reply, Darren. Very good to hear from the writers themselves, as always.

 

The convention game was fun indeed, especially since none of us had expected attendance to be particularly high, and someone on the internet who claimed to be familiar with the con in that town had previously told me, "No one plays unknown stuff like that over there." He was wrong, I was right. End of story.

 

As for the lucha libre weapons: If a character has bought Damage Classes with all lucha libre combat, do those extra DC apply to unarmed lucha only, or can I also add them to lucha libre weapons like chairs, baseball bats, steel poles, brass knuckles?

 

One player was very clever with rules commentary and one-liners. He said, for example, "Now that I know that referees count as impromptu weapons, I say next time our referee travels with us to the mad scientist's lair."

[Twilight]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Weapon Shot is a specific ability, either you have it or you don't. Ordinary use of "Lucha Weapons" only adds the damage appropriate for the specific weapon, which frequently means the GM must decide what's appropriate- maybe +2d6 for a belt or concealed brass knuckles, +3d6 for a trash can or folding chair, and +4 or 5d6 for putting your opponent through a table or piledriving him with a referi? This sounds like a need for one of Jason's PDF-extra products he keeps threatening to make- a table of damage and CV bonus/penalties for anything a luchador might find to hand to pummel his opponent with!

 

Anyhoo, thanks for the high-quality con representation and report, Jed! Sounds like a blast!

dw

 

Piledrivers should have quite a bit of damage to them as they're considered quite dangerous in lucha libre. The piledriver class of moves are labelled Martinetes and using one is an immediate disqualification. The Tombstone piledriver is considered the worst of all, only the vilest heels would use it and I recall one storyline that had a rudo turning face on his tag team partner because he was horrified by said partner using a Tombstone on a rival.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Piledrivers should have quite a bit of damage to them as they're considered quite dangerous in lucha libre. The piledriver class of moves are labelled Martinetes and using one is an immediate disqualification. The Tombstone piledriver is considered the worst of all' date=' only the vilest heels would use it and I recall one storyline that had a rudo turning face on his tag team partner because he was horrified by said partner using a Tombstone on a rival.[/quote']

 

That is very good to know, thank you.

I think the Martinete (Piledriver) in the present rules is already pretty dangerous, as it is one of the few maneuvers listed as doing Killing Damage. So far, I've done everything as standard HTH attacks affecting STUN, not BODY.

 

I find the idea of a finisher that is feared and avoided even by rudos extremely interesting.

[Twilight]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I figured it would be, that's why I brought it up.

 

I hadn't gotten to the part where the Martinete was mentioned as doing killing damage though, it's good to know that aspect of Lucha Libre is covered.

[Darren Watts]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

 

As for the lucha libre weapons: If a character has bought Damage Classes with all lucha libre combat, do those extra DC apply to unarmed lucha only, or can I also add them to lucha libre weapons like chairs, baseball bats, steel poles, brass knuckles?

 

"All combat" levels and DCs do apply to using lucha-appropriate weapons (admittedly a large and varied class, but probably could be further limited- El Zorro might use a wooden sword as part of his shtick, but I'd likely rule that it didn't count as a lucha weapon for anybody else who might pick it up.) dw

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

Here's one more thing that I've been thinking about regarding Lucha Libre Hero.

One of the fun things that almost all player-characters have is Damage Classes for lucha libre, which literally means that they simply pack more punch with their various wrestling maneuvers.

 

Since a single DC costs only 4 points, do you use any sort of cap on buying DCs? A player of a typical 250-point Luchador character could go crazy and just put 40 points into Damage Classes. I feel that this getting too much. If you could add 10d6 and more to every wrestling maneuver, fights wouldn't last long. The character could just waltz through any opponent.

 

I'm not sure whether the book defines a limit to DCs one might have with a martial art, including lucha. Personally, I have used a maximum of +4 DCs. That seemed about right.

[godfish]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I'm in a similar boat as others have mentioned. I am a big fan of lucha libre and pro wrestling in general, but absolutely NONE of my gaming buddies are, a game like this requires that everyone have some interest in the subject. This is yet another gaming book on my shelf that no live group I can find will actually play.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I'm not a fan of wrestling myself, but the camp factor can be appealing to non-wrestling fans. Maybe you could talk your guys into a one-shot, pull out the stops with supernatural weirdness, and see if they'd be up for making it a two-shot...

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Lucha Libre?

 

I'm not a fan of wrestling myself' date=' but the camp factor can be appealing to non-wrestling fans. Maybe you could talk your guys into a one-shot, pull out the stops with supernatural weirdness, and see if they'd be up for making it a two-shot...[/quote']

 

That is a good idea. I second it! I've found that a large majority of players are more interested in chasing werewolves, Aztec mummies or space aliens than in the kayfabe and/or actual in-ring wrestling performances. I played LLH with two guys last year who didn't even know how wrestling "worked", what a pinfall was, and who had never seen a lucha film. It still worked. Maybe not my best GM performance, but we played it and it was worth it.

 

One of the best comments from a player that I got after the session was, "I had no idea what intricate plots were possible with this game. I thought it was all about wrestling." So, the lucha genre and LLH can really surprise people.