E-fedding. That one hyphenated word brings up a definate picture and clear image to those involved in the practise. And thus, therein lies the problem. You see, E-Fedding has become the same old predictable thing all over the net. Everyone has come to expect the same thing, everytime they enter a Fed. They want roleplays, character development stuff, character pages, OOC forums, storylines, feuds, etc, etc, etc. Blah, blah, blah with the same old results posted each week. I mean really, do people even read detailed results anymore? No wonder players suffer from burnout so often, it's the same old same old, each and every week.

E-fedding needs to stop what it is doing, and steer the ship over in a new direction. From what I've read and heard from old-timers (5-12 year vets of the game), E-Fedding has pretty much stayed the same since it came into being other than some Feds, being play by mail). The new direction I am proposing is this... LET THE OWNER RUN THE STORYLINES 100%. By this I mean, the owner makes the matches and through the results, setup the reasons roleplayers will be fighting.

Now I know this will shake up a lot of things and cause a lot of disruption of things as they are now, but that's the whole point. By having owners control who fights whom and in what context, you move a step closer to mirroring the 'real" world of wrestling. It'll make being an owner a very hard job to do and one that most fly-by-night wannabes will not tackle, resulting in a drop in the number of crap-feds out there that open just because some ego-driven fool wants a bit more control over things. By making the owners take complete control, it'll weed out the pretenders. You think Vinny Mac sets aside a part of his week to hear where Chris Masters & Hardcore Holly want their characters to go and whom they want to fight? He may listen to their advice in passing, but "HE" is the one that steers the ship, deciding who holds which oar, so to speak.

By placing the power to decide "ALL" feuds and storylines in the hands of owners, players are free to roleplay and roleplay alone...they never again have to worry about "where is my character going? Because they will ultimately be the ones to decide in which direction their characters will go simply by roleplaying. In "real" wrestling, an owner takes the best and most entertaining on his/her roster and gives them the most airtime and the bulk of the creative writing team's efforts. A promotion's rep depends on the type of talent that is being pushed and placed in the what storylines. In e-fedding, the same principles apply... true roleplayers will be spotlighted and be placed in the top matches. They stay there by writing good RP's that the owner can work with in terms of continuing an entertaining  storyline.

In "real" wrestling a performer is placed into a storyline by the writing staff and he/she goes out to the ring to fill that role that the writing staff have placed them in. The truly good performers decide how to fill the role and how to display the proper outcome, leaving the writers to continue the story after the match is done. Sounds like E-fed Rp'ing to me.

But by adding such a responsibility to the owner's duties you'll improve the E-fed world fourfold...

1) Complaints of bias will drop because now owners will control 100% of who fights whom and will now be totally responsible for not pushing worthy Rper's. Examples of "burying" people will become very apparent "IF" it exists within a fed and thus not be a practise, borderline owners may want to risk doing.
2) Since ownership now has such time-consuming, resposible duties, all those lightweight, crappy, newbie owner-wannabes will not even attempt to start up a Fed, thus making those Feds that do open or are already open, a great place because of a devoted owner.
3) Roleplayers' creativity will be put to the test as they must dig deep to make sense and direction about the feud they are in. They have to RP within the limits already set out for them instead of coming up with their own ideas.  It'll be challenging that's for sure, but isn't that how the good Inter-fed tournys run things anyways?
4) Results will now mean more than just a set of who won & who lost and segments will be some of the most important parts of a show, since they set the scene for the next RP stage.

If everyone does their parts, here's an example of how things would go, in the "NEW" World of e-wrestling... "Sparky has just finished pinning The Executioner on Monday Night ROW. The owner has written the match to coincide with how the RP battle went, and decided that Sparky was the winner. But now he needs to move Sparky up a bit, to face some new & better talent. Rather than have Sparky try to set up a feud of his own, the owner adds to the results by having Johnny Fister come to the ring and attempt to lay the boots to him. Luckily, Sparky avoids the attack and with the help of his manager/valet and a chair, stares down Fister. Thus a new feud is born. But, it doesn't stop there. RPer's then continue the feud by devoting a portion of their 1st RP to show what they are doing about the other person (getting mad, extra training, hatching a plan...etc, etc.)in the locker immediately after the show, in addition to whatever else they would do in their normal RP's. The owner then reads the RP's and decides the winner. When writing the results, the owner takes into consideration what the player said or did after the last show, and writes it to fit into the results and characters, as well as setting up next week... be it the same two peeps, or time for someone new? Maybe someone new for now, but having an old feud-mate run in to interfere...the sky's the limit for choices! End result? A continuing story, that's a surprise each week to read and a challenge to write for.

Sure beats knowing well ahead of time, who you'll fight, over what circumstances, and which direction you'll be going. Shesh!, no wonder people don't read results anymore... you already know what's going to happen.