Face: the name a wrestler receives if their in-ring persona is deemed to be "The good guy". Ever since pro wrestling entered the world of entertainment and presentation, there has always been "good guys" to battle against the bad guys. Face characters are those we cheer for and applaud when they over come cheating and rule-braking to vanquish evil. In daysof old, the nice guys, finish first!

But these are not the olden days, this is today. Face the modern day media facts, face characters are the hardest e-types to do. Why? Because they have so many restrictions that they must adhere to. There are those that say that the day Stone Cold and The Rock and DX became popular, they changed the Face characters forever. They say, now fans were cheering for wrestlers that still acted like heels, with their swearing, beer drinking and actual disdain for the fans. Personally, they are wrong because those are not face characteristics at all. Just because the fans cheer for someone, doesn’t automatically make them a face. What Austin, DX and the Rock did was to complicate face characters instead by crossing over into their traditional traits. Allow me to explain...

Being a face, means being the good guy. Most e-players think that means you can do whatever you want as long as the fans cheer for you (Stone Cold). They think they can be bad-asses(what), swear(what), drink beer (what), humiliate others (what), and other heel-like behaviour, just because the fans are on your side. But really, that's not being a face, that's having "ATTITUDE"... don't confuse the two. I’ve even created my own character type called the "TROUBLEMAKER". This new type is cheered by the fans, but still made fun of opponents, pulling pranks and being very insulting towards others. But a true face is good all the time and in all ways, from how they think, to how they act in the ring, to what they do outside the ring. Think back to your high school days (for some, that's still going on). Being popular and cool wasn't the same as being a good student. As a matter of act, they rarely blended together. In order to be cool, you generally had to give up being good.

Being a face thou means you pander to the crowd and bathe in the cheers of the crowd. Paul London, Spanky, and Rey Mysterio are true face characters. They are as squeeky clean inside as out of the ring. They show up at charity events, they sign autographs, they never make headlines for drunk driving or are caught in bar room fights. They don't swear, they don't attack people back stage, they never form factions and they always perform for the crowd in the ring. I know, that sounds pretty boring. Well, try writing interesting RP's with those sorts of restrictions and you'll see what boring really is. It's no wonder e-players stray from being true faces. As a face, even your out-of-ring gimmick isn’t allowed to be bad.

With so many restrictions and a limited amount of writing leeway you should only consider being a true face character as a temporary challenge. I say this because if you do it correctly, you'll soon tire and run out of material. Or, if you start to run dry, you may stray the course and start to add heel-like traits to your supposed face character. When BABY-FACE BOBBY goes from helping wheelchair-bound fans to talking about revenge against those that attacked his tag partner and how just thinking of the attack makes his blood boil... then you know you no longer have a face on your hands. Sure it may be more interesting to RP this way, but it's not the FACE way. You want a real challenge? Start off a character as a face, then turn them into a heel. The progression will give you plenty of writing material and add much needed depth and history to your character.

Never mind the word-play here when I say the face of face characters has changed. True faces, if done correctly, is not very good choice in the game of e-fedding. If you want to be a fan favorite and have the fans behind you, I’d recommend something more along the lines of an attitude character instead. Face characters do have a place in wrestling… but only in the make-believe world of ‘real" wrestling. In the world of e-fedding, where sometimes attitude is everything, most times it’s the nice guys that finish last.