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My September 1990 mod game has reached April 1992. Gordon Gecko's money has come in handy. Notable happenings: -Ole Anderson remained as booker in WCW, and the company has thrived. -The WWF has also been thriving. Ric Flair, Mr. Perfect, Bret Hart, Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan, etc. have shown they can get matches rated in the high 90s. Dusty never left and has done well in the mid-card mix. WWF will be tough to catch anytime soon. -Curt Hennig (Mr. Perfect) somehow got a WWF contract that allowed him to work as a true independent contractor. But then PNW loaned Hennig to WCW a couple of times, and both times they had Hennig lose to enhancement talent. And that included when Hennig was WWF Champion. -First chance I got to book it after Hennig won that WWF title, I had my champ (Ricky Steamboat at the time) beat Hennig. -It has been great fun running TWF, rebranded from Texas to Titanium in the company name. Steve Austin is my face champ with Gary Hart as his manager. Hart was a face when I started the game, so I've stuck with it. -Scott Armstrong snitched off about performance-enhancing drugs in TWF and he became strongly disliked as a result. Even his brother Brad in the game wasn't happy about it. The probation of sorts from that fallout will finally wear off in three or so months. -Eric Bischoff died in a car wreck in 1991 in the game, only notable early death to-date there. -It took a $1.5M signing bonus, but I signed Shawn Michaels to a three-year exclusive contract. Suddenly the cost of business went up for everyone. And thus far, Michaels has been well worth the price tag. -Bobby Eaton and Owen Hart, with Bill Dundee as their manager, just dropped the tag belts to the Freebirds after a 14-month run. -It has been very entertaining booking USWA wrestlers and intentionally trying to provoke bad blood among them. Though I have to be careful to avoid allowing that to affect my locker room. The game remains great fun, highly recommended.

<p>So I started a new game with a September 1990 mod, using the Gordon Gekko avatar to buy the Texas Wrestling Federation. </p><p> </p><p> Trying to be realistic to the character from the film Wall Street, I maxed out Gekko on negotiating and silver tongue, but left him very weak on creativity and leadership.</p><p> </p><p> The result was a really toxic locker room. 6-8 incidents for every show. Finally have most of the really bad influences gone but even now I'm in the 40% range in December 1990. At one point early on it hit 0%, which I had never seen before.</p><p> </p><p> This was my first time to truly try out some of the owner mode updates for TEW 2020 (after playing as a developmental promotion) and it feels more realistic than past versions of this game.</p><p> </p><p> Notable things for me include:</p><p> </p><p> -Dick Murdoch had an incident bullying Bill Mercer, my play-by-play guy. That sounds familiar. Dick Slater and Austin Idol and Iceman Parsons proved problematic as well.</p><p> </p><p> -Bill Watts had so much heat that I had to fire him before my first show. I really underestimated the whole leadership deficit.</p><p> </p><p> -Marcus Bagwell kept causing me problems, then Bob Orton Jr. beat him up in a fight that Bagwell provoked. I then fired Bagwell.</p><p> </p><p> -Steve Austin went from making $30/match to $10,000/month guaranteed on a five-year deal. It's the only contract of the sort that I've offered thus far, but I'm going to build around him.</p><p> </p><p> -Ricky Steamboat has been a great World Champion for me. I managed to get a booking on Curt Hennig, who had just won the WWF Championship, and Hennig put over Steamboat clean.</p><p> </p><p> In short, it has been great fun.</p>

I've been playing as a child company to an AI-controlled AEW. A separate child promotion (SHARP Cutting Edge Women's Wrestling for Everyone) exists as well, and thus far they've lost much less money than me. But I've also signed my own talent to go with the developmental send-downs. Launch Wrestling World Champion: Chris Hero World Tag Team Champion: FTR (The Revival) Sprint Champion: Lio Rush The Sprint Championship is a melding of the CMLL "lighting" 1 fall/10 minute time limit match and the Smoky Mountain Wrestling "Beat the Champ" TV Title concept, only without an upper limit on defenses. Much like how Jeopardy got rid of the 5-time winner cap for contestants, in theory the champion could keep going for months or even years. It helps that the champ retains on a time limit draw. It's a format I used for my secondary singles title in my Thunderverse game in TEW 2016 that worked very well. If I was going to have a secondary title, it needed to have different rules. You have to defend the belt on TV every week or you lose the championship. Lio Rush just suffered a "Brain Fog" in my game, but it appears he'll be able to defend next week.

You made the right call. There is a learning curve to TEW 2020, but I've found considerably improved nuance and realism in everything from negotiating to momentum from the 2016 version. Enjoy!

I've had fun playing as a child promotion to an AI-controlled AEW via Gary Wooder's excellent real-world Killing the Business mod. I added the twist of a separate AEW women's developmental promotion controlled by the AI, giving the women in developmental a chance to gain experience working high on the card. From that game comes this beef between Will Ospreay and Nick Jackson. It made me want to see Birds of Prey vs. Young Bucks. Perhaps someday.

I've been playing Thunderverse lately in TEW 2016 and really enjoying it. When I began I signed the Mountie and hired one of his sons, Pierre Lejosne, as well. And, somewhat remarkably, Pierre at age 23 has become the breakout young star of my promotion six months into the mod. Adam Massey has been my World Champion the entire time, I've had steady growth, and now my company is very close to Cult status. There are some little details that are great. I ended up getting heat with one of my road agents, Les Gotch, as I unknowingly ran an event on the same night as his small SWA show. Kris Phoenix is SWA's one real standout, but Phoenix works for me as well and I had him booked that night. The game never exactly explained why there was heat, but that's somewhat like real life. And it was easy to figure out what happened once I looked closer. The Thunderverse world has great depth and balance. Nice work by all involved.

In anticipation of the forthcoming TEW 2020 release, I was able to get TEW 2016 going again thanks to Grey Dog customer service. Much appreciated. While I had a great time booking Ring of Honor to greatness with Alex Shelley as the ace and turning TNA into a successful all-women promotion before my old computer died, I decided to save any real-world stuff for the 2020 game. Searching for 2016 mod ideas led me to the ThunderVerse, and thus far it has lived up to the high praise I've read about it online, both here and elsewhere. Opted to start my own company, Jolt Wrestling. Workrate-heavy American promotion. Much like the real-life indies of modern day, there were limited options out there for good workers with at least some name. But I signed who I could and did my best to build the first show around the strengths of my crew, and to that end it went great. The ramp-up to the first show took a bit longer than normal, but much of that was reading the various wrestler bios and backstory. Quite entertaining. Unfortunately I miscalculated with the production value and got dinged on the final score, but from a booking standpoint it went well. Adam Massey beat Buff Norton to become the first Jolt World Champion in a good main event. Best surprise of the night was Shay Kinsella (59 popularity) beating 46-year-old Evgeny Dobrenko (62 popularity) in a semi-main rated at 70. https://i.postimg.cc/T3KK8zKX/TEW2016-TVerse-Jolt-Kinsella-vs-Dobrenko.jpg

A rough night for The Big O -- which lead to this unpleasant-sounding diagnosis:

I've had some fun playing with TCW 2016 and the CornellVerse today. Have had a strong build for Aaron Andrews vs. Rocky Golden for the TCW World Title at Malice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, trying to work in some younger talent toward the bottom of the card on my shows has been bringing my overall rating down, in part because I kept on the auto "call it in the ring" setting. That didn't turn out very well, but I didn't mind since that is probably realistic to how it would really go. Seems that the key will be doing what I can to keep other feuds (like Bryan Vessey vs. Sammy Bach and Marc Speed vs. Benny Benson) strong enough so that the minimum 77 heat threshold in at least two of them is met. I dig the layout and setup. It's my first time playing this series since buying TEW 2010, and I expect to purchase this new game once it officially goes on sale. Nice job.