Skummy

Yeah, this is the difference between a ring announcer in TV wrestling and a host or MC on smaller independent shows, which is a more expansive role and arguably easier to replicate in TEW - they are talent that, if you particularly wanted to, you could book in angles based on Microphone skills between matches. I don't think ring announcers will ever be added as a role, because they haven't been in any of the EW games so far. I wouldn't object to there being an additional slot on your announce team that's specifically for ring announcers/MCs, but I also think that them being included as part of Production or some other broad category is fine too. I have seen and worked shows where a bad announcer definitely dragged the quality of the show down, but it's hard to say that they negatively impacted on individual matches, just on the quality of the show as a whole, so treating them as an aspect of your Production quality feels more appropriate.

Some things I noticed:

These points are contradictory, though - you're arguing that changes in popularity should be less significant in one direction but more significant in another; there's no balance or consistency there, that's just asking for the game to be made easier. I do agree that changes in company size should be less abrupt - maybe some warnings before it happens, or some potential "buffers" in place to offset falls in company size; just thinking off the top of my head, but there could be some bonuses that add an extra (invisible) point or two to your popularity. Something like having a deal with a TV network of a certain size could add a point or two, having a certain number of wrestlers above a certain popularity, or having your figurehead be a certain popularity, might add a point or two, that's not enough to push you up a size but could stave off dropping down to a smaller size. A run of bad shows for WWE aren't going to make them a smaller company overnight if they still have great TV contracts and the biggest stars in the world, so that could protect them for a while, but if you don't turn the ship around, you end up in a late stage WCW situation where it doesn't matter how popular your stars are and how good your TV deal is, the show just isn't good enough.

Just a thought as I came across some stories from the '20s suggesting that Frank Gotch Jr. might become a wrestler - he never did, but what if things had gone differently? It could be interesting, particularly for fantasy mods, to include "Yet-to-debut" workers that might not necessarily ever show up. It could be based on percentages, or based on only debuting if they meet certain conditions - for an obvious if somewhat morbid example, a second-generation wrestler's debut would be reliant on their parent being alive at the right time; if you're playing a historical scenario and Dusty Rhodes dies in a freak accident in 1984, Cody Rhodes wouldn't be able to debut. Beyond that, there could be broader requirements - second generations of masked gimmicks (not necessarily family relations) not debuting if the original never got above a particular overness, as one such idea. I remember when Future Workers were first added to TEW, there were a few present-day real world mods that included a load of wrestlers' kids as workers set to debut later down the line - Undertaker's son was in there, that sort of thing. That's obviously not realistic, as we don't know if any of those kids will ever become wrestlers, or what they'll be like as wrestlers if they do. But having no future workers means that, in longer games, the game world will become depleted as existing workers age out and retire or die, and players might want a little bit more character and familiarity than purely randomly generated workers offer. So adding in a degree of chance to whether some future workers ever debut could add that extra sense of unpredictability to long-term games using current day mods, could really expand fantasy mods in dynamic ways that add more variety to different playthroughs, but could also open up potential curveballs to historical mods if some creative license is exercised and "what could have been" workers are added as potential debuts that never happened in real life. Thinking further on this, there could be different dates for potential debuts too - a story circulated recently of Koko B. Ware, as a talent scout, attempting to recruit Kurt Angle in 1987. He then showed up in ECW in 1996 (and was offered a ten-year deal by the WWF that same year), before finally debuting in 1998. So as well as there being a variable chance of a future worker debuting at all, there could be % scales for wrestlers debuting at different times - so in a historical playthrough it's most likely that Kurt Angle debuts in 1998, but there's an outside chance of him debuting in 1996, and an extremely slim chance of him debuting in 1987.

Just to add to this that NGD have subsequently lost the belts to Los Vipers - Psicosis, Abismo Negro Jr and Toxin - with El Hijo de Mascara Ano 2000 subbing for Cuatrero. Ano 2000 has been teaming with his cousins pretty regularly since April, so I think it's safe to asssume El Cuatrero is out of the picture for the time being.

some random notes based on going through workers on the June mod: Alexxis Falcon should be able to work in Europe - she's worked France, Germany, Austria and Spain Alpha Female shouldn't be signed to Stardom, she hasn't appeared for them since last November. Avery Good should be active as a Personality Baliyan Akki should be able to work the USA Cara Noir should be out with a long-term foot/leg injury - unknown recovery time, but it's in the multiple months Cassandro should be either On Hiatus or have a starting injury; I don't think he's wrestled since early last year. Charles Crowley should be able to work Canada - he's done some work for Smash Doug Williams has retired Drago is now going by Dios del Inframundo and has left AAA. They have debuted a new Drago. Janai Kai should be able to work the UK, she has wrestled for EVE in London Jinny and WALTER/Gunther are married Lana Austin should be able to work Europe Little Miss Roxxy is based in the US now Mariah May should be active in Japan Mei Suruga should be active in the UK

I don't see it as requiring that level of detail at all. There's no reason it needs to be any more complex than a "Crazy Bump" note, or a risk value on a match, in how it relates to the worker, the match quality, and the broadcaster. After that, it's basically a roll of the dice. My point on nuance is that it needs to be - as I feel the majority of features in TEW should be - a balance of risk and reward, rather than the "instantly make this match more interesting" button that some posters were interpreting it as. It needn't be complex.

All of this are nuances to how it could work, not drawbacks, though. Austin bleeding in that match got over because he's Steve Austin. The blood wasn't what made it work, it was his selling and charisma combined with the blood, at the end of an all-time great match. A lesser worker, without Bret and Austin's psychology stats, Austin's selling, and Austin's charisma, wouldn't have made it mean as much, and wouldn't have got the associated bonuses/perks, if we're considering this in TEW terms. The same goes for Becky Lynch bleeding after the brawl with Nia Jax - if she'd covered her face and meekly rushed to the back, she wouldn't have got any more over from it, and might actually have risked killing her credibility. But because she made it work, it was a star-making moment. It's a risk/reward system. A wrestler bleeding accidentally could make a match better, or it could slow it down and make it much worse as wrestlers/referees stop the match to try and deal with the bleeding, or slow things down while they figure out how bad things are and get things back on track. Maybe it does make the match better, but even then, the broadcaster doesn't want blood on their show, and it affects that relationship as well. It's far from as simple as an "add blood to improve matches/make stars" button. And then there's overexposure - blood starts to mean less if it's in every match on the card, or if you use it in every main event every week. The extent to which you can get away with can depend on the company's product - a hardcore promotion will expect more blood, so you can get away with using it more, but its effects won't be as strong because it's less of an "event". A family-friendly promotion wouldn't want blood at all, so you'd risk turning your crowd off if someone bleeds in a match on that show. Any number of products falling in the middle can benefit from blood used sparingly, but not to excess. Full-blown deathmatch promotions would likely get no real perks from blood at all, because it's expected as a matter of course, but you might be penalised if nobody bleeds across a show.

Adrian Finch wrestled as one half of the UK Nasty Boys, and in the early '90s as "Macho Man", if that makes it any easier to track down a picture. He also teamed with Scott Conway around '92; I've been looking through Scott's Instagram, and while there's plenty of posters with them as a team, I've yet to find any with a picture of Adrian! Not found anything of either Finch brother on a couple of World of Sport Facebook groups either. Is it this Mario Milano, or a different wrestler using the same name - Mario Milano - Wikipedia? This appears to be Greg Stekker - Greg Stekker Greg Smith Australian Wrestling Champion Submission Master AWE Australian Wrestling Entertainment Australian Sports and Entertainment Portal (australiansportsentertainment.com)

I think perhaps the counterbalance to it overpowering families, or other relationships, is that there could be more of a negative side to relationships too. You'll always hear Steve Austin talk about "booking the territory" on long car journeys, and old wrestlers talking about how much they learned just from riding with veterans and learning bits of psychology and understanding of wrestling that way - in my experience, you do far more talking about the nuts and bolts of how wrestling works in the car than you ever do at shows, when everyone's busy with their own stuff going on. But the car's also where the most gossiping gets done, and being on the road with more negative influences would be even worse, and relationships could reflect that kind of out-of-the ring stuff. So while at the moment we have mentors passing on experience to their trainees, and the prospect of expanding this to other relationships. But what if that's not always a good thing? What if there's a risk that a wrestler with bad habits passes them on to their student, friend or relative? Two wrestlers with drink or drug habits becoming friends, and working in the same company together, could heighten the chances of drink or drug-related incidents occurring to those wrestlers - so do you keep them both around, or separate them, either by releasing one, or keeping them on separate ends of a brand split? Maybe a wrestler with a high opinion of themselves but low Psychology and Respect might try to pass on knowledge to their blood relatives, but that actually hampers them because he doesn't know what he's talking about. So in that case, again, it might be worth considering not keeping both members of that family under contract, and having to balance the family's morale against other concerns.

Some very minor corrections/updates I've noticed when going through the database. Mostly related to the UK scene, with a couple of Mexico and Japan notes too: It's probably one for the RWC+ thread, but if I ever have time, I might look at suggesting stats or making my own importable database for some other British promotions, talent, and particularly supporting roles like refs, announcers and so on, to help flesh things out there.

Cut of ticket sales would be a useful one historically - Gorgeous George used to take a pretty sizeable cut of the gate for shows he was booked on, and that was true to a lesser extent of a lot of big name wrestlers before him. It would also be a useful option for Tiny promotions, to try and gamble on bringing someone in based on a % of ticket sales if they can't afford their upfront fee, but then run the risk of the ticket sales being too low to pay everyone what they'd expect...

On the discussion of AJW's retirement age, I've never managed to get a clear answer on when that rule was introduced - to the point that I've literally asked people who worked there and they couldn't answer me. I would be surprised if it was already in play in 1970, though - Miyuki Yanagi, who worked early AJW shows as "Masked Killer", was in her 30s, and I'm sure that a lot of the American talent they were using early on would have been older. I think it would be perfectly fair to raise their hiring rule to nobody under 40, for this time period. If I had to take an educated guess, I would say that the enforced retirement age didn't come in until around '75/'76 with The Beauty Pair. Unfortunately, there's no narrative to change hiring rules, to allow for that rule being implemented later, as far as I can tell - maybe one for the suggestions thread.

That's the main issue for me - when somebody is filming a movie or agrees to an MMA fight, you have a few weeks or months notice to finish up your plans with them, but when someone goes into politics it's immediate, and you might end up losing them for multiple years. I'm a year into a game using the Millennium Bug 2000 mod, and I've had Steve Austin, Mick Foley, Chris Jericho and Jeff Jarrett all go into politics within a year, all while contracted to the WWF. I have random incidents set to High, so I know that's part of it, as I've spoken to other players who have never seen this happen at all.

Kung Fu was born in 1943. L'Angle Blanc was - according to Wrestling Heritage - born in November 1930. Also from Wrestling Heritage, there's a mention of Steve Adonis celebrating his 50th birthday in 2013, which would put his birth year in 1963. Tina St. Clair-Gregory also worked as Tina Starr, if that's any help at pinning down her age. Shane Stevens I'm assuming is "Psycho" Shane Stevens - I worked with him about 11-12 years ago, unfortunately. The Sunday Mail ran an exposé on his tribute shows, fraud, bounced cheques and other assorted dodgy dealings back in 2001, and I found a newspaper account claiming (using "Shane's" real name) that he was 49 at the time, which would put his birth year at 1952, which sounds about right.

Wrestlingdata.com has Kendall working in January '92: https://www.wrestlingdata.com/index.php?befehl=bilanzen&wrestler=682&jahr=1992&monat=1 Blackjack, meanwhile, I can't find anything until later in the year. Could it be that Kendall was released earlier, but people have just conflated the two and assumed he got out the same time as Blackjack? It may be that wrestlingdata is incorrect, but the card seems legit.

No intention for it to be daunting, I just know it's impossible to keep tabs on every promotion and where every single wrestler is, so when it's promotions I follow fairly regularly I'll allows check in to see how accurate the data is before starting a new game, even if I'm not playing as that promotion.

There have been times in the past that there were genuine restrictions on masked wrestlers - I don't know if that was ever the case for individual titles, though, it usually came down to State Athletic Commissions. The most famous example is that the New York State Athletic Commission forbade masked wrestlers from working in certain New York venues - there are wrestlers who wore masks elsewhere, like El Olympico and Black Demon, had to wrestle for the WWWF with these weird hoods with the front cut out so you could see their whole face. (An example of El Olympico here - Greg Valentine vs. El Olympico MSG-Apr.-1975 - YouTube) The ban was waived specifically for Mil Mascaras to wrestle at Madison Square Garden in 1972, though ironically his opponent, The Destroyer, still had to work unmasked. I don't know if there's any benefit to reflecting that sort of thing in-game, or any real mechanism with which to do so - external pressures like athletic commissions aren't a feature, so other than some combination of historical trends, narratives, or added restrictions to venues (i.e., not being able to book certain gimmick matches at specific venues, or venues not permitting masked wrestlers, intergender matches, or so on).

Some things I've picked up on starting up a new game: The Wee Man's nationality is set to American, should be Scottish Brian Kendrick is set to Retired, he should be an active wrestler - he's wrestled this month Drake Younger is set to Retired, he should be an active wrestler - he's wrestled this month Alexa Bliss has an Evil gimmick, but is a babyface Tully Blanchard should be removed from AEW Lulu Pencil should be On Hiatus, she hasn't wrestled since 2021. Andrade should probably be removed from AAA - he hasn't wrestled for them in months, and has been very critical of them in interviews. Deonna Purazzo should be removed from AAA Konnan should be active as a Personality in AAA Villano IV should be unmasked According to Cagematch, the following should also be removed from AAA: Australian Suicide (hasn't wrestled there since 2020) Hades (hasn't wrestled there since 2020) Extreme Tiger (hasn't worked AAA since March, is mostly working NOAH now) Vanilla Vargas (hasn't worked AAA since 2020) Jeff Jarrett should be removed from AAA and GCW, Karen Jarrett from AAA The following should be removed from Pro Wrestling EVE: Aurora Teves (only worked one match there last year) Charli Evans (no longer lives in the UK, hasn't worked EVE since March 2022. Gia Adams (only worked one match, in August 2021) Heidi Katrina (last worked EVE in December 2021) Katey Harvey (only worked EVE once in 2020) Maddison Miles (last worked EVE in August 2021) Natalie Sykes (last worked EVE in April 2022) The following should be added to Pro Wrestling EVE: Jayla Dark (also needs to be made active as colour commentator) Kanji Mille McKenzie Nina Samuels Yuu (current EVE International Champion) Miyu Yamashita (current EVE Champion) Leah Owens should probably be retired - other than a brief spot in a Rumble, she hasn't wrestled since 2018. Erin Angel should be on hiatus, she's only worked one match this year, one last year, and prior to that not since 2019 Rhio should be babyface in EVE Jetta & Charlie Morgan should be heels in EVE Rebel Kinney is retired EVE should have a working relationship, or at least a positive opinion of, Marvellous EDIT: Breezus/Tyler Breeze should be either retired or on hiatus Rocky Mac is retired Shane McMahon should be On Hiatus, Retired or Left The Business Super Parka currently has a relationship with L.A. Park and L.A. Park Jr, but not El Hijo del L.A. Park I would suggest starting scandals for Ace Steel and CM Punk to reflect the fallout from All Out, for Tessa Blanchard to reflect that no major promotion will touch her, and for The Blood Hunter (Hannibal) based on him assaulting a referee a while back. Vampiro should be added to AAA, he's been wrestling and doing guest referee spots there regularly this year

I think he left, and then was quietly brought back more recently, in a backstage role.

For the most part, I don't think whether a worker is Trans or not impacts in any meaningful sense on the game, so just setting them as their gender is the best option. If there were to be any change, I would suggest adding a Non-Binary gender. In Yu Ishino's case, he's been retired for two years, with his only post-retirement match being a one-off memorial show. So whether or not STARDOM sign him is a bit of a non-factor, and I'm not aware of trans men being booked by women's promotions in any other instance, so just having his gender set to Male is the best option.

Exactly. The complaints here are largely about the feature being misused by mods more than the feature itself being too rigid. It's meant to reflect cases like NJPW and AJPW (more historically than present day) where a wrestler who trained and debuted with a particular promotion was likely to stay with that promotion for most, if not all, of their career, and that to jump ship to a rival would be a major scandal. It's more than "this person made their name with this promotion" or "this wrestler worked there for a long time". That said, I wouldn't object to some tweaks to the concept - someone who was loyal to a particular promotion might still sell them out if they're particularly money-oriented and you're throwing enough money at them, or their loyalty may fade over time if they're not treated well and their morale slips.

Because there's still financial concerns in that situation - if your body doesn't hold up to working twice a week, it doesn't matter if you've got guaranteed money or not, you want to work safe to be able to keep making money for longer. More fundamentally, in terms of gameplay, this would be really open to abuse - if there was a wrestler you wanted on all shows, but was insisting on not appearing on B-shows when you offered them a written contract, you'd just be able to give them a handshake deal instead and bypass that issue. I do like RasslinFan's suggestion of having an only work house shows and B-shows option, whether as a means to develop talent if you don't have a developmental territory, or to keep a few jobbers around who never pop up on the main show, or to use old-timers to help younger workers gain experience away from the spotlight.

It's not just TV that works that way; the vast majority of wrestling shows I've worked are based on allocating times to each match. It can be a little vaguer than TEW - "your match has 10-12", rather than "you have exactly 11 minutes", but then TEW basically takes that into account anyway. Because in the vast majority of cases, you have external restrictions on the length of your show - that could be TV or PPV timeslots, or it could be the closing time of the venue, the timing for your audience to be able to get the last train home, or that there's another event scheduled in the same venue an hour after your show finishes. So you really don't have all that much wiggle room, in terms of timing of segments, when booking a wrestling show IRL. What does happen all the time in real life, and that I don't think can happen in TEW (nor do I know if it's strictly possible with how TEW calculates results and so on) is matches and angles running overtime. We've all seen it on PPV, and I've been at shows where a promo just drags and drags beyond it's allotted time, or workers don't go home until five minutes after they're told to. It would be interesting to incorporate that - do you punish workers for going overtime, or just wave it off? If one match overruns, does it impact the time left over for subsequent matches on the card? If your TV or PPV overruns, does the broadcast cut off before the end of the show - in which case do you have to deal with angry fans, or an angry broadcaster?

<p>A few notes:</p><p> </p><p> - Emily Read no longer works with Pro Wrestling EVE, shouldn't be under contract, and status changed to Left The Business</p><p> </p><p> - Sammii Jayne now wrestles as Emersyn Jayne</p><p> </p><p> - PlayFight could be added as a Southern England-based school, owned by Cara Noir</p><p> </p><p> - Hyan's contracts should be removed from EVE and RevPro</p><p> </p><p> - ACH has no active roles - he's out of retirement now, so should be active as a wrestler</p><p> </p><p> - Gabai Ji-Chan is down as using the PSYCHO name in Gatoh Move - while he used it earlier this year, predominantly he wrestles there as Sawasdee Kamen, and occasionally as Gabai Ji-Chan, he only used the PSYCHO gimmick for the Tag League.</p><p> </p><p> - Gisele Shaw should be removed from EVE, she hasn't worked there in almost two years.</p><p> </p><p> - Greg Burridge should probably be an Occasional Wrestler, rather than Wrestler. He hasn't wrestled since 2019, and was only working infrequently for a couple of years before that.</p><p> </p><p> - Hoshitango should have a handshake deal with Gatoh Move, he's a regular there</p><p> </p><p> - Jakob Hammermeier should be able to work as a Colour Commentator</p><p> </p><p> - Jinny and WALTER should be dating, not Jinny and William Eavers. Even if you're not prepared to set the Jinny/WALTER relationship based on what evidence is out there just yet, Jinny and Eavers definitely aren't together any more.</p><p> </p><p> - Johnny Kidd should probably be (yet again) out of retirement and an active wrestler; he was competing for LDN in October</p><p> </p><p> - Joseph Conners is no longer with NXT UK</p><p> </p><p> - Leah Owens should be able to work as a Colour Commentator</p><p> </p><p> - Mei Suruga (and possibly Lulu Pencil?) should be eligible to work in the US</p><p> </p><p> - Mike Knox should have a contract with the NWA</p><p> </p><p> - Molly Holly should have a contract with WWE, where she's working as a producer/road agent</p><p> </p><p> - Mr. Iguana should be active in the USA</p><p> </p><p> - Raven should be signed to the NWA</p><p> </p><p> - Rebel Kinney shouldn't be signed to EVE - she hasn't worked there since March 2020</p><p> </p><p> - Scott Taylor should be out of retirement, and working as Scotty 2 Hotty again</p><p> </p><p> - Skye Smitson should be homosexual, not heterosexual</p><p> </p><p> - Vampiro should be an Occasional Wrestler, he's competed multiple times this year</p><p> </p><p> - Warren Barksdale should probably be Retired or at least On Hiatus - he hasn't wrestled since 2019, per Cagematch</p><p> </p><p> - Wink Vavasseur should probably be Left The Business - as far as I know he's had nothing to do with wrestling since the end of his run with CHIKARA several years ago</p>