Wrestling based roleplaying.

I’ve been in a discussion recently about roleplaying, one that has been around as of late, the one whereas players debate whether roleplays should be about wrestling or about the character. Well, I believe it’s not as cut and dry as that. Let’s expand on that thought…

What E-feds are, is that they "ARE" places where gamers get together and role-play as wrestlers. Like real wrestling, Feds are places where epic matches take place, where titles are fought over, where TV shows showcase the talent. What Feds are "NOT", are places where gamers sit around a coffee shop debating who has the most complicated life or who’s off camera job results in the best newsworthy gossip. I mean, get real people, you are wrestlers in a wrestling game… DEAL WITH IT!!!! You are not serial killers who happen to perform in the squared circle on weekends for a change of pace… you are professional wrestlers! PERIOD!

Readers of roleplays should be able to pick up the fact that you are reading about an active wrestler. That’s where writing a roleplay based on wrestling comes into play.

But players argue back that e-wrestling is based on writing. And the best topics for writing is about what goes on behind the scenes and between wrestling dates. They don’t want to write about wrestling stuff, it’s too boring and predictable. They go further and state that if they were to become wrestler-based writers all they would churn out would be boring trash talk RPs and back-stage interviews Well, that’s not the case, as will become clear later in the article.

But first, the majority of E-feds do not consider themselves the top wrestling federation to be in, and even acknowledge other feds across the make-believe world of e-wrestling. As such, e-wrestling having second jobs to make ends meet is very believably, since there isn’t a single place getting all the ppv money, TV contracts or ticket sales resulting in lower salaries. However, most e-players also mention that they also give their wrestlers secondary jobs not because they need the money, but in order to have some sort of material in which to base RP’s on.

Now while the argument of needing secondary jobs in order to have RP material sounds reasonable, e-players can’t seem to understand the difference between a wrestler’s gimmick, and a wrestler’s off-camera job. They are not supposed to be the same. To put it into perpective, let’s look at WWE wrestlers. Unlike e-Wrestlers, who tend to be millionaire Hitmen, Leaders of unholy Cults, or evil pharmasists, to these WWE elite pros wrestling is their only job. When the camera goes off, they go off and do every day things. The Undertaker does not head to Tombstone, AZ and bury people… Hornswaggle does not magically whisk off to his pot of gold in Ireland… and Triple H does not return to a castle to reign as the "King of Kings". It’s all for the cameras. The gimmick of being "The Kings of Kings" is not something that is supposed to transcend the ring, that’s why it’s just a gimmick.

I’ve never seen a player write a character who had a gimmick on-camera but was a totally different person off-camera. Like if they were playing a derranged and unbalanced salivating monster in the ring… then when the cameras were off, he turned back into Philip Ontakos, ex-bartender. But if you really think about it, this exactly what players should be doing in order to mirror real wrestling. It also provides that "needed" RP material meaning players do not have to resort to constant trash-talk interviews or in-ring promos in order to role-play.

But somewhere along the way, players have come to believe that wrestling is secondary in this game and writing is what it’s all about. While that has some sort of truth to it, it’s not an absolute with any wiggle room. Yes, role-playing is about writing, but that’s too simply of an description. It’s about creating a character, fleshing out and explaining that character to the reader, placing them in vignette style situations and then writing out and describing those situations as the role of the wrestler takes on a life of it’s own. But what is often forgotten is the over all theme of the game… WRESTLING. That’s the whole reason the character was created in the first place, to be a wrestler competing in a wrestling game. The role should somehow keep in touch with it’s theme in order to be successful. One of the basics in short story writing is being able to stick to the theme. And role-plays are really just short stories.

So argue with me all you want and come back with your own reason for getting away from Wrestling-based roleplays all you want, for all the good it’ll do. This is just a game and players are free to play whichever way they want and feel comfortable with. If you insist that writing long, off-topic roleplays that do nothing but tells stories about a character that unfamiliar readers would find impossible to connect with wrestling, that’s your business. But if you insist that this method is the correct way of doing things…

Re-read this article, because you’ve obviously missed the point!