This week I’m building a decorated professional wrestler turned prolific actor…
Welcome to Essential Builds, the blog that you can’t see turn popular culture icons into Essence20 Player Characters.
John Cena’s a lot of things. The champ. Peacemaker. The record holder for most Make-A-Wish wishes granted. The only human smart enough to ask if we should be trusting people who call themselves Decepticons. He’s more than just a performer. He’s a meme. And that’s the John Cena we’re building today. You could say his time is now.
Who Is John Cena?
We haven’t seen a celebrity like John Cena in a long time.
He’s this larger than life personality who started as a wrestler that people absolutely hated, despite, and I can’t stress this enough, being written as the show’s top good guy. Somehow (presumably by way of hustle), he overcame being viscerally booed for doing the main thing he’s known for, and went on to be one of the biggest actors in a time when movie stars aren’t really a thing anymore. And THEN he returned to wrestling, more popular than he’s ever been.
For the last year he’s been hyping up his farewell tour, with his last pro wrestling match coming next week. Most wrestlers have wrestled many one last matches, but I’m inclined to believe Cena. Between his busy film and series schedule, and the fact that he sold over 300 000 units of his debut album then never released a follow-up, leaving the ring opens him up to be anything he wants to be. Such as an Essence20 PC.
Building Essence20 John Cena
Meme John Cena is a mix of his wrestling gimmick, talk show persona, and the gifs and images celebrating/mocking all of the above. That means we’re treating him as this super powerful warrior who throws around enemies twice his size, recovers from injuries in a fraction of the prescribed time, and is or can turn invisible.
Role
Spirit of Loyalty (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
John Cena’s equivalent of Hulk Hogan’s “Say your prayers, eat your vitamins, etc” is “Hustle, Loyalty, Respect.” There’s no Spirit of Hustle or Respect in Essence20, but there’s a Spirit of Loyalty!
Granted, John Cena the wrestler doesn’t always live by the second or third parts of his mantra, but he is a four time tag team champion and has led multiple Survivor Series teams. He’s some kind of team player.
The Spirit of Loyalty is one of the more combat-ready My Little Pony Roles. Right away, we get a bonus to Initiative. The Role’s later Perk reward us for lending assistance, and allow us to run interference on behalf of our friends.
As a My Little Pony Role, we get to set our Essence Score progression. Strength and Social are going to the top, then Speed, and finally Smarts. Sorry John, but they call you Super Cena, not Super Smart Cena.
Faction and Focus
G.I. JOE (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook), Slammer (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Sgt Slaughter Limited Edition Accessory Pack)
We’re switching to the G.I. JOE setting, thanks to the Gen Con Worlds Collide: The Pony Puzzle Event – Character Preparations blog post. That means we lose Friendship Circle, Loyalty Is Magic, Talent For Loyalty, Pillar of Loyalty, Princess of Loyalty, and the Health bonuses gained at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level from the Role, replacing them with the G.I. JOE Faction and a Focus from the G.I. JOE Setting.
I know I already used this Focus for our last pro wrestler build, but we’re going with the Renegade Slammer Focus from the Sgt Slaughter box set. It adds a bunch of melee combat expertise to our build, and compliments the maneuverability and support functions of our Role. Unlike a lot of melee builds, this combination gives us interesting options on every turn. When we’re out of range for melee attacks, we use our Role Perks to benefit our allies as we move in. Once we’re in melee, we dominate a target.
Basically, we cut a pre-match promo, then we throw hands in the ring.
Origin
Marine (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Sgt Slaughter Limited Edition Accessory Pack)
I was always confused about the part of the Unexpected John Cena meme that says “A former decorated member of the United States Marine Corps needs your support. AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA!”
Was Cena a Marine (decorated or otherwise)? No. But he played a Marine in The Marine. And since we’re blurring the lines between real John Cena and the concept of Cena, we’re taking his meme-granted service as our build’s backstory.
Marine (originally published in the Sgt Slaughter box set and later reprinted in the recent Hawk’s Personnel Files) is a nice baseline Origin for a tough character, with the added bonus of Swim Movement (reflecting his experience playing a merman), and a Perk that lets us ignore the effect of one attack. That’s how Peacemaker survived The Suicide Squad!
Influences
1st Beastly (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Ferocious Fighters: Factions in Action Vol. 1)
2nd Kind (Welcome To Night Vale Citizen’s Guide) with Something To Prove (Transformers Roleplaying Game Decepticon Directive) Hang-Up
3rd Local Legend (Power Rangers Roleplaying Game A Jump Through Time)
A broad swath of Influences to capture the multiplicity of John Cena.
Thematically, Beastly is all about the size of John Cena. Dude’s huge! Something I’ve noticed with wrestlers is that it’s easy to take for granted how big they are until you see them in a non-wrestling context. I saw Cena walk around shirtless for years, but I only realized how jacked he is when he started doing movies and appearing on talk shows. Obviously I thought he was in shape, but I didn’t realize that shape was kaiju until I saw him next to normal humans. Mechanically, it helps us deal damage with our unarmed attacks. Handy!
Kind reflects Cena’s record-breaking charity work, and his disarming presence when he gets candid. We get to reroll failed Social Skill Tests, just by being a good person.
I paired it with the Something To Prove Hang-Up, because it feels like John Cena tries to be the flower-smelling champion at everything, including charity. Unfortunately, Something To Prove says we surfer a penalty for Fumbles in the eyes of our commander. I’m just going to say John Cena is his own commander, and so suffers that penalty whenever he Fumbles.
Finally, Local Legend. Another great option from A Jump Through Time, one of the books I’m surprised makes so many appearances in this blog. I gravitated toward this one because of the “Local” in the Influence’s name. John Cena has a day in his honour in Massachusetts, where he grew up (November 10th if you plan on celebrating). However, after reading it, it seems the Influence emphasized the Legend part of the name.
“The local populace, or anyone else aware of why you are considered a hero to them, treats you with either the respect or the fear you deserve for it.”
As an internationally recognized star, it’s safe to say people the world over are aware of why John Cena is considered a hero. That, and he colour coordinates his gear and merch with the sports teams of the areas he visits, subtly ingratiating himself to the locals.
This may seems like an abuse of the wording, until you read the mandatory Hang-Up. “For every community or group of locals that hold you up for what you were involved in, some see you not as the story’s protagonist but quite the opposite.” Basically, the bigger we think the Legend of John Cena should span, the bigger the backlash we face.
Put another way, this Influence embodies the “Let’s go Cena/Cena sucks!” dueling chants.
Essence Scores and Skills
Strength 6: Athletics x1, Brawn x1, Intimidation x1, Might x3
Social 5: Performance x2, Persuasion x3
Speed 3: Infiltration x1, Initiative x2
Smarts 2: Culture x1, Spellcasting x1
Strength and Social, that’s a pair of Essence Scores you don’t see top a build together very often.
Strength is our Diamond Essence, so we’re going to improve it often as we level up. That’s why I went with one Rank in three Skills instead of building up one. Might could be higher, but we get a lot of bonuses to it from our Focus, so we’re good for now.
Normally when I invest in Performance, it’s with a specific discipline in mind. In Cena’s case, he’s a multidisciplinary talent, having released a surprisingly well reviewed hip hop CD years before setting his sights on Hollywood. Persuasion is there because this Role can fill a diplomat secondary niche. Tertiary niche? We’re already covering a lot of niches.
Two final thoughts: I completely avoided Alertness because, as a pro wrestling Face, he’s regularly blindsided by sneaky managers and cheating heels.
And finally, why Infiltration and Spellcasting? Because you can’t see him!
Invisibility
A large part of my inspiration for this build was to see if I could give him exactly one supernatural power: Invisibility. But how?
Option one was obvious. Spellcasting. I designed, love, and am proud of the Spellcasting system from My Little Pony. Straight out of the Core Rulebook, there’s an invisibility spell (called Don’t Notice Me Field, after the in-universe invisibility spell). However, as a Superior spell, it requires +d6 in Spellcasting, which means we’ll have to learn two other spells first.
The second route is Sorcery from Finster’s Monster-Matic Cookbook. This is an a-la-carte system where you gain a pool of points which can be spent on the creation of a sorcerous power, following a set of guidelines.
Two problems. First of all, the guidelines are vague and broad. I believe the intent was to give players freedom to create whatever spell they could imagine, but I just don’t find they give enough instructions. All Essence20 Core Rulebooks have the Invisible condition, so I believe all I need to do is choose the “Add a special Alternate Effect/Condition to a Sorcerous Power or attack” Effect. But there’s zero guidelines for the duration of the effect, or the DIF to activate it.
Secondly, once I gain Sorcery General Perk, I keep gaining points to create new Sorcery Powers. That means we still gain more than just the one power we want.
I’ve been asked to dedicate an episode of Upshift to the Sorcery rules. I might have to just to understand the rules enough to use Sorcery in more builds.
My final option for Invisibility was to a Form Influence from Technorganic Secrets that grants it at 1st level. Huzzah! Unfortunately, more than most Transformers sourcebooks, Technorganic Secrets’s options rigidly tie them to the setting. There’s no way to gain the Technorganic Influence Perks without taking the Mutant Beast Influence, which requires having an Origin with an Alt Mode.
So I am going the Spellcasting route. We’ll grab Common Ground and Healing Bandages on our way to Don’t Notice Me Field, Spells that are within the John Cena power set. We don’t get a General Perk at level 1, so we’ll have to wait until level 4 to take Magical. That’s fine. John Cena didn’t say You Can’t See Me until a few years into his career.
Conclusion
I think this build works. It’s all over the place, and only works as the concept of John Cena. But it fills its primary combat function —melee combatant— well enough that all of the other options are fun surprises, like a scene in a John Cena movie that makes you think “Oh wow, John Cena CAN act!”
Resources
Field Guide to Action & Adventure
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Sgt Slaughter Limited Edition Accessory Pack
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Ferocious Fighters: Factions in Action Vol. 1
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Hawk’s Personnel Files
My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game Finster’s Monster-Matic Cookbook
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game: A Jump Through Time
Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Transformers Roleplaying Game Decepticon Directive
Transformers Roleplaying Game: Technorganic Secrets
Welcome To Night Vale Citizen’s Guide
Gen Con Worlds Collide: The Pony Puzzle Event – Character Preparations
Ryan Costello is one of the designers of the Essence20 system and an author on the G.I. JOE, Transformers, and My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebooks. As of this writing, he’s written over 300 000 words for Essence20, contributing to over a dozen products and counting.
