Pre-planning/preparation in your saves

[Bigpapa42]

I used to really only plan for diary games and just plug n play for non-diary games. But I found that I would do a bit too much power-gaming and turn a game into a straight up input-output function, which slowly sucked the fun out of it for me. So I have taken to planning for almost every game.

 

I use a spreadsheet. Its nothing too fancy or exciting. I have separate sheets for the roster (to keep track of things), PPV plans, possible feuds, random ideas, music, and so on. The PPV plan sheet has PPVs for the next 3 or 4 years and I don't prefill everything well out in advance, but I can plot in certain key goals (like knowing who I want to headline the next WrestleMania or Supreme Challenge). I will usually only fill in the next 2 or maybe 3 months of PPVs fully, and the rest have just a little bit.

[licensetochill23]

The way I book is somewhat similar to what others have described, but also a little different.

 

I tend to start with long-term booking ideas, which comprise a major story arc centered around one more more wrestlers that takes place over a year or more. For example, in my ThunderVerse game, the entire year of 2015 was built around Eli Morton's reign of terror, where the monster heel champion ran through all comers. 2016 was built around Sean Riley's road to redemption, losing the world title to his biggest rival Cloud James and building to him winning it back at our biggest show. 2017 has been built around two strong babyface champions establishing a "friendly" rivalry, while 2018 will see one of the two turn into a vicious heel and form a dominant heel stable around himself. I generally don't write this stuff down, but just keep the ideas floating around in my head, because plans often change depending on how my roster develops. But overall, I tend to plan who my world champions will be at least a year in advance.

 

With those long-term story arcs in place (typically only one or two at a time), I move into the medium-term booking. Here I target the supporting players and wrestlers who won't have much involvement in those stories and flesh out where I want them to go over that time period. I'll keep notes on which guys I want to move up or down the card over the next 6-12 months, who needs development, etc., and then write out a listing of the top ~5 matches I'd like to see happen on each pay-per-view for the next 6 months or so. Then I'll take my time to review how all of those pieces fit together, and rework ideas to ensure that we don't have too many feuds being blown off at once or big gimmick matches happening on a single card (unless it's meant to be a big show).

 

Then, once I know what matches I'm building towards over the next few months, I plan out the best ways to build to those matches and start short-term booking, week-to-week. For my big 2-3 storylines, I'll sometimes plan out all of the major angles in advance. For midcard stories and ones that I'm not particularly invested in, I often just get a rough idea of the story I'd like to tell and make it up as I go along. It often just depends on whether the story and characters grab me or not.

[Dolfanar]

My divas brand also has their own "Mania" like show called Diva La Revolucion that I try to stack as well.