KBook Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 ZEN: Art of Wrestling This is my first game dynasty and proper play-through of TEW 2013, and I’m going to do this as a general step-by-step account of how my game is going and give insight into what I’m thinking and why I’ve made certain decisions, etc. It will be more of a journal of my game than a story or anything like that, but hopefully it will still be interesting and fun/easy to read. I’ve played Adam’s games since the first EWR, but I’ve never completed a real long term game, despite loving the series. For TEW 2013, I’ve decided that I’m going to give the game the attention it deserves and actually see it through for the long haul. I wouldn’t class myself as a beginner, but there’s definitely a lot of things I don’t know about the game and a lot of things I probably overlook, so please feel free to give advice and tips as we go through this thing. So without further ado, I’ll get started… ---------- As noted in the title, I’ve decided to go for ZEN: Art of Wrestling as my promotion, and I’m using the original data with no changes. It was the first promotion I selected as I like its unique name, and after reading about it and taking a tour, it seemed a lot like real life Chikara Pro. The characters are larger than life and that’s a good thing, as it helps me get to grips with each unknown character. My user avatar is Mexico’s El Avatar, using the Jack Of All Trades pre-set user talents, and my user preferences being the default settings minus Owner Goals, Perfect Show Theory and Dirt Sheet Hidden. I’ve turned Owner Goals off because I want to make or break based on my own decisions, not those set by the owner. He has set the basic product of the company and can fire me for poor performance, so I think that’s fair. It gives me a looser rope to either swing or hang myself. Probably hang myself. Perfect Show Theory I’ve switched off as I’m not sure I agree with it. On one hand I do, but on the other, I think the game is already set up to penalise you enough if you place matches in the wrong order. If you get the main event wrong, like Hogan/Rock - HHH/Jericho at WMX8, you're gonna know about it anyway without PST. Plus, I don’t think it needs to be a set rule. Showing the Dirt Sheet is just to help me when playing the game. As I can’t see the matches unfolding as I would be able to in real life, I see the Dirt Sheet as my own notes made on the matches, or the notes of other viewers, such as road agents or even the wrestlers themselves, etc. After starting the game and looking over my roster, I noticed that El Avatar is a good fit for the promotion. He’s a high-flyer and his recommended place on the card is Opener. I’ve decided to go one above this and make him a Lower Midcarder. I think I can use him better that way because there’s hardly any other openers. Here’s the rest of the starting roster: Blue Flea Classy Paul Massey – Road Agent C-W-A Cyanide Damien Dastardly Devilfish Guru Vishni – Male manager HalloWarped Halloween Knight – Owner and wrestler Jester Killer B Man O’ War Massacre Mirror Universe John Gordon Molly Cuddle – Female manager Necromancer Pink Spider Pumpkin Jack Shaolin Sparky Sparks - Announcer Steven Yale – Referee SubUrban Legend Super Zero The Alex Arturro Experience – Colour commentator Toady Vertigo X-Calibre Staff wise it was okay. I had a decent road agent in Paul Massey, a decent announce team (although they didn’t have much experience together), and a decent referee. The ref plays a blind gimmick, with the joke being that he misses almost every break of the rules. I have a heel manager in Guru Vishni, who manages Mirror Universe John Gordon, who is a guy who got warped into a parallel universe and returned as his evil alter-ego, complete with goatee. I also have a face manager, Molly Cuddle, who started off managing Vertigo because her boyfriend Super Zero didn't want her managing him. Almost everyone is under a hood (minus only Blue Flea, Damien Dastardly, Guru Vishni, Killer B, Molly Cuddle, Toady, and the staff members) and the main characters who jumped out at me are Devilfish (a multi-coloured fish), Halloween Knight (a skeleton La Parka look-a-like), and Necromancer (a WCW-era Psychosis look-a-like). There’s three championships in the company, which are: ZEN Master – The main championship of the promotion. ZEN Conceptual – There is no actual title belt, it’s invisible. ZEN Harmony – The tag team titles. Necromancer was the ZEN Master, Pumpkin Jack began as Conceptual Champion, and the ZEN Harmony titles were held by Man O’ War and X-Calibre, who go by the collective name of "X-War". There’s a big stable that the promotion seems to be based around called F.E.A.R. – The Four Extreme Agents of the Revolution. It consists of Cyanide, Halloween Knight, Massacre and Necromancer. They all seem pretty good talents and their gimmick is they all wear black and white. In wrestling, you know someone means business if they wear black and white. Halloween Knight and Necromancer appear to be the leaders of the group, with Massacre being the big muscle and Cyanide making up the numbers but being a good talent himself. I ran a few shows using the default set-up to get a proper idea about things, and made only one signing, but it was a big one; a former ZEN main eventer and the first big name to ever leave ZEN according to his bio - Lone Shark - a Shark Boy look-a-like. He worked for Australian Pro Wrestling, ZEN’s rivals in Australia, and was main eventing shows for them. I signed him on a pay-per-appearance deal, and so he now works for both companies. I decided to build my first big feud around him and Necromancer. Due to ZEN’s product, I need to run two storylines that have at least a D- rating at a time, so for my other feud I went for Pumpkin Jack against Pink Spider. Jack has a kind of pumpkin mask, as you’d expect, and Pink Spider is like Adrian Adonis in a spider mask. They couldn't be more opposite, which I thought would make for a good feud. I started the game with $100,000, and my roster is earning roughly $200-400 Lower Midcard, $400-700 Midcard and Upper, and $700-1000 Main Eventers. Because of this I thought it was best to just run the one show a month like it was already set up to. I’m getting $26,000 sponsorship money per month, so that should ensure a good monthly profit and allow me to build slowly, with a bit of spare money here and there for bonuses and stuff if I need them. Here’s how I got on with my first two shows and what my thoughts were behind each match and angle: SHOW #1 – ZEN Way Of The Dreamer Shark saves Devilfish from The Dark Knights – D- Killer B defeated Damien Dastardly - E Devilfish and Shark challenge The Dark Knights – D- The Dark Knights accept challenge – E+ X-War defeated The Enemy to retain ZEN Harmony titles – D- Pink Spider drew with Pumpkin Jack for ZEN Conceptual title – E Devilfish and Lone Shark defeated The Dark Knights in a Lucha Libre dream tag match – D+ Overall show rating: D-, show raised popularity in New Zealand Attendance: 289, Ursula’s Comic Store Monthly profit/loss: Approx. +$11,000 After looking at APW’s schedule, I saw that they are running all of their shows for 2013 on week 3, whereas I run on week 2. This meant I could use Lone Shark on every show going forward, which changed my booking ideas a bit. My original idea was to put Necromancer fully over at Shark’s expense, but Shark could now be a genuine threat to Necromancer and actually take the title, because I knew he would be around to defend it. As the show was called Way Of The Dreamer – I thought this would be a good chance to have a dream tag team match for the main event of the evening. The Dark Knights tag team are Halloween Knight and Necromancer from the F.E.A.R stable. I had Devilfish come to the ring to talk to the fans and F.E.A.R. assault him without explanation. I just figured that F.E.A.R. are bad-asses and need no valid reason to beat up another main eventer. It makes sense too, because in their eyes, Devilfish would be the main threat to Necro’s title. That is until Lone Shark made the big surprise return and cleared house. A D- grade isn’t as high as I was hoping but I think it’s good for a small company. Shark’s return was well received by everyone in Ursula’s Comics. Anyway, this led to the main event of the night, where Shark and Fish defeated The Dark Knights. I made it a Lucha Libre tag match to randomly throw some Lucha influence in there, which is something I’ve continued with randomly on each show as time has gone on. That’s one of the things I like about ZEN, nothing has to make perfect sense because it’s such a crazy company. In the rest of the action, X-War defeated The Enemy to retain their tag team belts. The Enemy are the other half of F.E.A.R. – Cyanide and Massacre – so it wasn’t a good night for F.E.A.R. The disappointment of the night for me came in the Pink Spider and Pumpkin Jack match, which is one of my featured feuds. I booked it to be a draw, which would lead to a rematch on the next show. It didn’t go down well and despite both guys having decent/good in-ring skills, the match was poor. I took away from this that maybe a clean finish and a scripted match would give better marks next time around. Still, the show raised my popularity and I made roughly $11,000 profit in the first month, which is a good start. SHOW #2 – ZEN Way Of The Scholar No Laughing Matter defeated Mexican Hit Squad – E+ Pumpkin Jack defeated Pink Spider to retain Conceptual title – E Spider beats down Jack post-match – E- Massacre defeated Blaze Maximum – D- Halloween Knight defeated Devilfish – D+ Necromancer defeated Lone Shark to retain ZEN Master Championship – C- Devilfish saves Shark from 4-on-1 assault courtesy of F.E.A.R. – E+ Overall show rating: D, show raised popularity in New Zealand (now E, up from E-) Attendance: 292, Ursula’s Comic Store Monthly profit/loss: Approx. +$4,000 We’re back in the comic book store, and this was a better show than my first, but only slightly. It was attended by 3 more people (hey, an increase is an increase), achieved a D rating instead of a D-, and made less money than the month before but still a decent profit. My goals for this show were to build the Shark and Necromancer feud more, and to hopefully get the Jack and Spider feud over. I failed on the second one. The show was called Way Of The Scholar, so the concept for this one was to have F.E.A.R. take everyone to school. I had Halloween Knight defeat Devilfish in a one-on-one contest, and then Lone Shark lose to Necromancer in a Lucha Libre match for the title via outside interference from Cyanide, who was the unseen member of F.E.A.R. that night until that point. This was to balance out the month previous, where F.E.A.R. lost both their matches to the babyfaces. Devilfish saved Shark from a mugging at the hands of F.E.A.R. to end the show as payback for Shark helping him the month before, but he will be phased out of the feud going forward as I want to play on the “Lone” part of Lone Shark’s name. I wisely moved Spider and Jack down the card this time, as they weren’t ready for the Semi-Main Event spot. I have no idea what to do with this feud going forward. It isn’t taking off as I’d hoped. I thought having Spider assault Jack after the match would raise the interest in the eyes of the fans, but it lost a grade point. I’m going to try throwing in a gimmick for their next meeting to avoid a repetitive booking penalty and to hopefully give the feud a boost. I made two new signings in the lead up to the show – Armando Guerrero and Blaze Maximum. Armando is a typical Guerrero, wearing the Mexican colours and sporting a big moustache. I can’t remember if he had a mullet or not. I put him in a tag team with myself, El Avatar, and formed the “Mexican Hit Squad”. We faced “No Laughing Matter”, who are another new team I put together consisting of C-W-A (which stands for “Clown With Attitude”, apparently) and Jester. The thought process behind this is to really expand the tag team division and make it a focal point of shows going forward. Blaze Maximum looks just like early 90’s Randy Savage, complete with cowboy hat, beard and colourful attire. He put the powerhouse Massacre over to continue the theme of F.E.A.R. winning all their matches on this show, and also because Blaze Maximum punched Armando Guerrero in the face in the locker room before the show and started a big fight. Both Guerrero and Maximum have really bad attitudes and I had to release them after this show because I got penalised on all matches for poor locker room morale. Needless to say they weren’t the best signings in the world. I decided to ship out C-W-A and Vertigo too, as they also had bad attitudes and I wanted to improve the backstage atmosphere. That ended the short-lived Mexican Hit Squad and No Laughing Matter tag teams, and my tag team expansion experiment v1.0. C-W-A later signed for Deep Impact Wrestling, a hardcore Australian promotion who are rivals of ours, and Blaze Maximum signed shortly after him too, immediately winning the DIW Tag Team Championship with a wrestler called Menace To Sobriety. Their team is called “Maximum Menace” or something like that if I remember from the news section. My only regret is not keeping Vertigo and using him to build new stars before releasing him, as he was a main eventer and ring general. He can have a good match with anyone, allegedly. I might bring him back in the future if my backstage morale can take the hit. I replaced the releases with a guy called Christopher Gerard, a biggish guy who wears a singlet and seems to have an amateur wrestling background, and Jimmy Stratosphere, a midcarder for APW who is a great athlete and could go far in my promotion. Both these guys have more positive attitudes and I’ll see what I can do with them going forward. Here is the card for the next show, Way Of The Healer, and I’ll reveal the outcomes and my thoughts on the show in my next post, plus anything else of interest that has happened in my game so far. SHOW #3 – ZEN Way Of The Healer X-War vs. The Enemy – Lucha Libre tag team match for the ZEN Harmony Championship Pumpkin Jack vs. Pink Spider – Ladder match for the ZEN Conceptual Championship Christopher Gerard vs. Mirror Universe John Gordon Halloween Knight vs. Jimmy Stratosphere Lone Shark vs. Necromancer – Steel Cage match for the ZEN Master Championship Thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEffect Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Watching. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timber Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 ZEN is a great and fun promotion, you really have to go all out with the silliness and enjoy it. Looks good from what i've read. I'll keep checking it out and see where you take them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spud1305 Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Looks good so far. Interested to see where you take the Lone Shark feud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayden Posted August 20, 2013 Share Posted August 20, 2013 I am from New Zealand so Ill be reading this <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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