Out with the old…

And in with the new. A good way to start the year of the TIGER off. So in order to do that, I have to clean out my literary closet of all past unfinished articles. From time to time an idea pops into my head and I begin to jot things down. Then I go out into the vast E-Wrestling world and do some research. Most times, I get an article out of the idea, but some times I do not. This is usually because the subject matter was too short to become a full length article or because I didn’t have the time, information or energy to fully expand the idea . So listed below are the left-overs from last year. Enjoy!

LONG TIME FEDS: In the world of 3 month feds and Hall of fames opening after a mere 6 months time, there lives the rare breed of E-fed, that of the longtime e-fed. I’ve looked at seven such long time Feds that have been around for at least 7 years. I looked for a reason as to why these places have been open for so long. I thought there would be common elements that they all shared so that I could present to you, a recipe for building a successful long time e-Fed. What I found, surprised me. I thought it was because of a core group of long time Rper’s helped the site out, but that was not always the case. I thought it was because the websites were great to come to, but again, some of these Feds have hard to navigate sites that most people would get pissed off at. However I did find a single factor that kept coming up again and again. It’s this one factor that I believe is the key to enjoying a successful, long term E-Federation, and that is… a long time, original owner.

Three such feds which I have cruised by a lot over the months and to which I am familiar with, do have these long time owners; the TFWF has had Ian Trumps as it’s long time owner, the XWF has had Jon Brown as it’s long time owner(who has since stepped down) and the EWC has had Danny Mac as it’s long time owner. The stable and unchanging ownership styles of said individuals seems to have formed the basis for everything around it. No matter what else changed, be it roster, results, RP periods, graphics, website, etc, the fact that the original dedicated figurehead was always there to oversee the place appears to have had a stable effect. The E-fed seems to have stayed around simply because the owners found a way to keep it around. This seems to attract e-players since the e-fed world is and has always been, littered with hundreds of unstable but active feds. Players seem to like the idea of stability and thus join up, thereby maintaining the long term fed.

But this long term ownership trait is not just limited to E-feds but can also be lent to e-wrestling communities or other e-wrestling sites. Successful e-wrestling sites that went downhill after a shift from a long time ownership to a new owner, include X-Net (at one time “the” e-wrestling community), Fedwars and even to some extent eWzine. Also, would anyone tune in to the Efed Knights podcast if new hosts other than Sir Ian, Triple B or Duckman hosted it? And not to be modest here but would anyone read “The Screw” if someone else took over the writing either? Hardly.

So a central, strong figurehead that everyone can circle the wagons around in times of trouble or when inspiration is needed, is the core element for long term e-feds. With so many e-fedders only out for themselves or their own playing enjoyment, finding someone to slice away a good chunk of their free time in order to better the experience for others, is truly a rare thing to find. Which explains why there are so few long term e-feds anymore.

FEUDS: This is the storyline aspect of e-fedding. It’s where you face the same opponent in a series of matches with an underlining reason for the fights to take place. Now, what I’ve seen is that a lot of feds like to have a feud go back and forth in terms of winners and then climax the feud off at some sort of super-card, be it a PPV or inter-fed event. But most fedheads have realized long ago, either by being an active RPer or by handling lots of feuds, is that a lot of feuds tend to be lopsided in terms of judged role-plays. An even balanced Rp battle whereas one player wins one week only to have his/her opponent win the next, with the whole feud going back and forth, is a rarity indeed. So, rather than have one person dominate the feud, making written match outcomes seem predictable, or to avoid frustrating the efforts of the losing Rper, the fedhead tends to toss the term “angle” into the fray and inform the players beforehand that their feud is now ‘angled”. What this means, for you newbies, is that the match outcome is predetermined and that RP’s are not considered when posting the winner of the match. They claim it necessary it order to maintain the feud. However, I disagree. Feuds can go on regardless of who the winner is for as long as creatively possible. A couple of times, when working on a feud with others, we have reworked the entire storyline after each match with our direction coming from who won that week. Using the week-by-week winner method, we managed to make the feud unpredictable, since even we had no idea of it’s direction. Personally, I think this is the first step feds take when transforming away from RP Feds into angle feds… and the competitive nature of my soul finds angle feds to be quite unappealing. Also, without the competitive motivation of roleplaying, the e-World would fall into one big “character development” novel writing contest, where feuds are explained in excruciating detail that is sure to bore the socks off many a new player. And we all know this hobby needs new plays on a constant basis.,

WHY SCREW?: The last name of Screw is weird enough, but when placed next to the first name of Sally, well that’s truly a mouthful. It’s a rather cliché and truly horrible name to give any literary character, so why do I keep it? Simple. Because of the trouble it causes. The knee jerk reaction to the name of Sally Screw is to bring up images of sexuality, prostitution and other vulgar flashes of fantasy. To what ends does this sort of behaviour serve? Again, a simple answer. It serves a very useful role-play purpose. Most RP opponent’s that take up an adversary role against her fall victim to the same fate, those images my last name invokes, come flooding up around them as they try to think up ammunition. The resulting RP then comes out filled with material that is mere fluff and banter filled with words such as whore, slut and such. This ends up bringing down the entire score of my unsuspecting opponent. So, without even realizing it, having my name next to yours truly does have an effect on certain people.

MATCHES: No, not the kind you use to burn down the family garage (yes, I know it was you). But the kind your fed owner puts up to showcase your character. I’ve read all types from simple 3-5 sentence summaries to long dragged out mini-novels. What’s the best method? For me, the answer is somewhere in between. More precisely, 2 -3 mid sized paragraphs in length. This is good enough to show off your…….. You don’t need a blow-by-blow description that showcases the brilliant air-effects your character is capable of or how technical his/her ring savy can be. To me, match results should be exactly that, something to showcase the results of your RP efforts. If you are looking for a place to showcase what your character does in the ring, write it yourself as part of your roleplays. 9 out of 10 roster members just read their own matches in full, while only skimming the rest. So even if a match has a lot of character detail, not many will read it anyways.

The best way to get the word out on what your character can do in the ring, is by roleplaying it. I’ve read many an RP that employs the “flashback” method to inform the reader what was going through their wrester’s mind during a particular described event. Why not just relive a previous match, describing the mindset of your character as well as painting a picture of what your character did in the match. After all, what better way to make your wrestler look good than to do it yourself.