How does everyone think of storylines?

[Earth]

When starting a new game, I always find it quite difficult to think of storylines out of the blue. I am wondering how you guys go through the process of devising storylines for the right workers etc.

 

I tend to just stick with unchained storylines because it gives me the freedom to adapt them how I want at the last minute. I have never touched the chained storylines. Is this wise?

 

But yeah, I guess my main question is ... how does everyone think of new and engaging stoylines completely out of the blue?

[Thomnipotent]

The perk of the chained storylines is that they can be advanced by adding an angle or match that only has one feud participant in it. That's really the biggest perk.

 

I prefer to use chained storylines as they keep me disciplined and sticking with a set series of events, whereas I tend to neglect unchained storylines because of the sweeping freedom I have with them.

 

Usually, I just use the set storylines and they always turn out differently in my head. Plus, there are a number of angles to suit each storyline segment requirement, so no two are ever really exactly the same.

 

You can try your hand at writing a storyline, which I've done before, but I prefer to stay away from this feature simply because of the amount of time it takes.

[Pugsly34]

for me it's usually been tough to get into the game beacuse i can't think of good storylines but with my new uspw game i decided to give Lead Belly a deadman gimmick and call him Reaper and make Playboy Jake Sawyer Father Sawyer and pair them and i knew his debut would be against Sam Strong for the overness but i still didn't have a storyline and then it just hit The Reaper is coming after Sam Strong to collect, it's a little dark for USPW but the basics of the storyline is that years ago Sam Strong sold his soul for fame and fortune and now it's time to pay up but most of it will be implied and not actualy talked about where exactly it's gona go i don't know but it will last a long time and will involve others coming to Sam's aide Alicia will defiently become involved and will eventualy lead to Strong vs The Reaper after The Reapers been built up, it's the first good storyline i've come up with and it just kinda came to me

[Comradebot]

The perk of the chained storylines is that they can be advanced by adding an angle or match that only has one feud participant in it. That's really the biggest perk.

 

I prefer to use chained storylines as they keep me disciplined and sticking with a set series of events, whereas I tend to neglect unchained storylines because of the sweeping freedom I have with them.

 

Usually, I just use the set storylines and they always turn out differently in my head. Plus, there are a number of angles to suit each storyline segment requirement, so no two are ever really exactly the same.

 

You can try your hand at writing a storyline, which I've done before, but I prefer to stay away from this feature simply because of the amount of time it takes.

 

And tag feuds. Its obnoxious to have an unchained tag feud, as EVERY match either team participates in will count towards the story. Which sucks if you just want them to have a dark show squash against another team designed to build tag experience.

 

Personally, I just look over the company and get to know who's who and where they are on the roster. I prefer to put together my own storylines to insure they play to the strength of the participants, to know for sure who loses to who, and because it allows me to be creative. Though I have used unchained storylines whenever there's a feud that I want to use as an excuse to give a couple workers something to do, or if just a loose thing that's worth keeping track of but doesn't have any major implications. As it is, without working out the direction ahead of time of where the story is going and what leads to it, things tend to get muddled and fall apart. Sorta like what happened to the last season of 24 (not the excellent season that's on now).

 

And sometimes, particularly with tag feuds to avoid the pains of unchainnedness, I'll use one of the pre-made ones and just write angles more appropriate to the workers involved.

 

But by far, the best storylines I've had have been the ones I wrote myself to insure they catered to the strongest abilities of all involved. Make sure the talented in-ring guys get plenty of chances to wrestle, that the folks with microphone skills cut plenty of promos, and that the big hulking monster has ample opportunity to show off how menacing he is.

[CQI13]

I look at title histories as a starting point.

I take storylines that have happened (or I wish would have happened) in real life, and adapted them to the game.

A storyline I'm running I came about by simply autopush.

 

And as someone once told me, sometimes #4 face vs #4 heel can be used as a starting point. From there, just look at their characters. Why would they go against each other?

[Eisen-verse]

When starting a new game, I always find it quite difficult to think of storylines out of the blue. I am wondering how you guys go through the process of devising storylines for the right workers etc.

 

I tend to just stick with unchained storylines because it gives me the freedom to adapt them how I want at the last minute. I have never touched the chained storylines. Is this wise?

 

But yeah, I guess my main question is ... how does everyone think of new and engaging stoylines completely out of the blue?

 

For me, It depends on the characters that are in play. Typically, I start off with some traditional storylines and, over time, break out into more specific ideas that I have in mind after I've overseen who I like in the game.

 

However, as I said above though, sometimes characters make it easier to think of a good storyline off of the bat. With most of my SWF games... It was easy to get Vengeance into deep storylines right away as his character was really easy to book.

[Bigpapa42]

Stories can be found anywhere, I believe. Its just about getting the heart of the story and adapting it to the world of your promotion. You can find inspiration in anything from classic literature to sitcoms. For example, I watched part of some kids sitcom the other day and the basic story of the episode was best friends turning on each other, causing everyone around them to pick sides and turn on each other, only for the friends to reconcile and enjoy the show... There's a great story arc that could carry a major promotion for awhile. And that's just an example - they can be found anywhere if you really look.

 

Eisen-Verse is right that some characters are simply easy to find stories for. Others can be tougher. What I think is key - especially for a diary game - is deciding where you want to go with a given character. Do you want them involved in a story that will move them up the card, justify their position, or move down? Figure that out and it will help you find the right story to mold around your goal.

[FINisher]

This is more of a post concerning diary writing, eh. I plan them (Storylines) as I write them in my diary. Sort of Stephen King sort of writing, I vaguely remember an article where he said that he doesn't plan the plot of a book to the end, he just writes and writes One reason for this is that you can never know what's going to happen within couple of months, who's gonna leave, who's going to get injured altough I must say that I have this subconscious view on where the storyline or a character will go to in the end but I don't write it on the text file, I just keep it in my head.. Speaking of characters, what I do is that I look for characters in movies, comic books and such, or real wrestlers or combine all together.

[Self]

I guess I'm more of an anti-King. I know where things are going. I have charts and spreadsheets written up detailing what happens when, week by week or month by month, for a good long while. Obviously these things change all the time, but the point is I plan.

 

In terms of writing diary stories, I usually try to decide "What matches would be good on the PPV?" first. I pair up the guys I personally think would put on a good/interesting match, THEN I look at the characters and try to figure out why they would fight, and plot out the story accordingly. These stories seem to come to me pretty naturally, but it's no doubt me subconsciously remembering all of the movies and tv shows I've seen over the years, and tweaking for wrasslin' purposes.

 

In strictly TEW terms, just for the game, I do things a bit different. After I decide "What matches would be good on the PPV?" I usually just find/write an angle that utilises everyone's best qualities, and run it over and over again until the PPV, giving matches only to push momentum. I play regular games far more mathmatically than my diary games, where I barely pay attention to the stats & skills.

[Derek B]

I've had many different booking strategies over the year but at the moment I'm sticking with a fairly regular one. I make sure I know my roster, work out the motivations and personalities of the workers I've got and then start to work out the potential clashes from there.

 

Then before I actually do anything else I book my next PPV. I pencil in the matches I want and then plan out what is going to continue the storyline for each match on each TV show leading up to that. Sometimes I'll leave things to grow from show to show depending on feedback and my own mind coming up with more ideas, but generally I know what's happening for about 90% of my shows. Sometimes with lengthy title reigns or major characters I'll have their next few PPV matches planned out ahead of time. Like in my USPW game I had Nicky Champion as my World champ, and he was going to be feuding with giant after giant after giant in sequence, so I already knew a lot of what he was going to be doing with the title, just not the specifics of between shows.

 

I also tend to stick to unchained storylines. I've never had the patience to write out storylines and since more often than not my people are going to be interacting with each other in some way (perhaps even only in a hype video) then I'm not likely to be missing out on anything. I'm also a huge fan of putting both members of 1 team into a storyline with each other. I LIKE the story advancing every time both guys appear in a match or promo.

[Earth]

Thanks for the help, guys. Much appriciated.

 

Ha ha. In my determination to have a go at a chained storyline, I started a feud with Davey Jennings and Earl McPeterson (I had no choice, because they were the only two main event workers I could afford). In the first match Jennings had to go over McPeterson ... que Mcpeterson, who is, by the way, my boss ... "I am blocking this because I don't like the book of this match". Ha ha - you have to laugh, though. I cancelled the storyline and got a no storyline penalty. Having no money and an annoying boss sure is annoying.

[praguepride]

I'll be honest, I generally view unchained storylines as one step up from cheating. I've heard about many people just throwing all their top workers in unchained storylines just so they can help build heat.

 

The downside is though that building new chained storylines is a pain in the rear. Just finished a relatively short one (about a dozen plot points)...took me about 40 minutes because I had to keep consulting the angle database to figure out what the roles were in each one. It's better then it used to be by a TON but it's still a bit rough. Half the time the issue was that I needed a new angle to fit the role (like what happens if you want a "Sacrifice self to save someone else" angle WITHOUT 3 attackers?

 

My longest one which has the full 50 plot points took me about 2 hours to make, but then again it went a lot quicker because I didn't need to customize a lot of angles.

 

[CHEAP PLUG]These angles and storylines will be made available for download through my Chicago Championship Wrestling diary. Basically when a storyline concludes I'll throw up the storyline and any custom angles and put them online for others to use.[/CHEAP PLUG]

[Phantom Stranger]

I tend to just look at what I think would be interesting. So I figure, say, I've got Whistler, and I'd like to do something with the question of America, and I've got Travis Century, so I can do something with American reactions to nutjob evangelists.

 

Or I'll just have a phrase float through my head and a couple of images from a program will present themselves. (Like the recently-debuted stable in my diary that came from the phrase 'Golden Age of Hollywood' transmuting in my head into 'Golden Age of Hollyweird')

 

And then I just go at it.

 

Mostly I find that if you develop people's personalities, feuds present themselves.