Jaded's Journey Through Part Of The Wrestling World (C-Verse)

[Jaded]

So, I wanted to do a dynasty, but for a ton of reasons I don't want to commit to a long-term game yet. I'm planning on trying as many US/Canada/UK/Australia/Europe feds as possible (at some point I want to try Japan and Mexico but past experience says I'm terrible at them) for somewhere between 5 and 9 cards each, dependent on a variety of things.

 

This will be very much an OOC diary similar to the awesome ones by FINisher and Astil, although not as detailed, in the same vein as my posts in various fed threads. However, while I did all of those posts with variance on none and scouting off because I felt that was the best way to help people new to the feds, I'm going to try these games with extreme variance and with scouting on/dirt sheet off.

 

I'm playing as The Grand Avatar every time here, by the way.

 

First up, USPW...

[FINisher]

Ooo. someone remembers my Jobber's Guide to Stardom and others <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/tongue.png.ceb643b2956793497cef30b0e944be28.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /> Looking forward to this, I know we've had many great findings on Discord thus far.

[praguepride]

Can’t wait Jaded! These are great ways for new people (or people returning from an 8 year absence) to learn more about the C-Verse.

[Jaded]

I got distracted by a ton of stuff, mainly trying to find bugs, but finally got around to planning my first show!

 

As mentioned, I'm starting at the top, with USPW. I'm going to talk through long-term planning because when I'm playing a heavily entertainment-based fed it tends to inform most of my booking, and I thought people might be interested in seeing how that went.

 

Extreme variance definitely makes things interesting – in creative, Steve Frehley is my number 1 wrestler.

 

I have 3 Next Big Things - Funky Fedora, Anthony Trask and Sweet Dani Adams

 

USPW’s 1st big show of the year is Stars, Stripes and Slams on Sat week 4 January. To fit in with my plans for 5 – 9 games with each fed, I’m going to get a B show on Thursdays and play through to that PPV, so that’ll be 9 shows altogether.

 

 

Starting Storylines

 

Champion vs Frehley (heat 89)

Money vs Wolf (heat 75)

 

Everything below here is 63 or below; storylines need to be 70 to count towards the heat requirement, and I need 3 of them, so I’m failing it.

 

Strong, Gloria and King vs Melody and Sara Marie (63)

Bulldozer vs Shaffer (62)

Jillian Jarvis vs Pariah (60)

Roger Cage vs Zeus, Bash Street, Siale Valhalla (57)

Texas Express vs Cold Warriors (42)

 

The two big stars I don’t currently have in storylines are James Justice and Tyson Baine, so I’m going to add them to one together. Neither wrestles on TV, with both being groomed as road agents with retirement clearly in the near future, but I can definitely get a big PPV bout or two out of them and build up to it with menace stuff from Baine and charisma-based stuff from Justice.

 

 

Tentative Stars and Stripes Forever line-up

 

World title match: Nicky Champion © vs Steve Frehley – yes, Money has the belt now, but extreme variance has NOT been kind to him and Champion vs Frehley is also a far hotter feud. While I don’t like changing the belt on TV normally, this time I’m going to have to.

Rich Money vs Running Wolf

James Justice vs Tyson Baine

Pariah/Sara Marie/Melody vs Strong/Gloria/King – despite Jarvis vs Pariah being a feud, I think Pariah taking care of her in fairly short order and moving in to this feud as an uneasy ally to the babyfaces may be the way to go here.

Bulldozer Brandon Smith vs Trent Shaffer

Texas Express vs Cold Warriors

Women’s title: Jaime Quine vs Charity Sweet – Sweet is a favourite of mine and with a very good gimmick, and higher psychology than any other face women outside the top three except Missy Masterson, she deserves a PPV gig here.

National title: Roger Cage vs Zeus

Tag titles: Jacob Jett and Julius Moor vs Bad Intentions – this is something of a ‘whatever’ match, but with the belts on faces, I don’t have many good options (Baine and T-Rex tempted me, but I’d rather do Justice vs Baine) and this at least lets me interweave it with the Cage/Zeus stuff

 

Frehley is at a massive 97 in the Tri-State (as I said, gotta love extreme variance) with Champion at 88, so that’s where the Stars and Stripes Forever card will be held.

 

So, how do we get there?

 

Let's just look at the first episode of American Wrestling to start with.

 

First, we need a way to get the belt from Money to Champion. Champion is at 100 overness in South West, Shaffer is at 86. Let’s go for a main event which sees the pair of them collide in a number one contender’s match for the World title. Raven Nightfall will try to interfere on Trent’s behalf, but Bulldozer Brandon Smith will be there to stop her, furthering that feud with Shaffer. It’s USPW, so we also want a ton of angles related to this. I’m going to build up to it with promos from both guys, along with a hype video. Post-match, Money will come down to sarcastically applaud Champion but say that the match will have to be delayed until February as he already has a match with Running Wolf at Stars and Stripes Forever, he just signed the contract earlier today. (This lets me set up an angle I want to run next week to hotshot the title match and give both a reason for that being on TV and for Money not getting an immediate rematch.)

 

Steve Frehley is on very hot momentum, but getting that higher would be nice. He’s not contracted to wrestle on B shows so there’s a limited time to do that. However, he’s very charismatic and has the squash master attribute. Greg Black seems happy to take a stunt bump, so I briefly considered having that happen, but I’m luckily reminded that our fans may have heart attacks at something that exciting taking place so it wouldn’t be a good plan. Fine, standard squash for him.

 

Casey Valentine is a face, and this just seems WRONG, even though his attributes say it’s okay. To me, from past games, though, Valentine will always be an insufferably arrogant heel, sort of like Rich Money. Which gives me an idea… Valentine/Running Wolf vs Dusty DuCont/Charlie Thatcher, with Valentine smugly refusing to tag in, leading to Ducont getting the win. Post-match, Money welcomes Casey Valentine as the newest member of the Business. This sets up an immediate Wolf vs Casey match for next week, gives me the chance to tease dissension in The Business in a few weeks with Whitlock unhappy about the new recruit, and gives me something to do with Ducont and Thatcher.

 

I’ll throw in Sara Marie/Melody vs Gloria/King followed by Pariah saving the faces from a Triumvirate beatdown, then an angle in which Sara Marie challenging the Triumvirate to a six-woman tag next week and offering a hand to Pariah, who tentatively shakes it.

 

TV shows are meant to be 30% angles – in practice meaning you can go between 15% and 45% - and I’m more confident in various angles getting sky-high scores than in Nicky vs Trent as a main, so I’ll skew closer to 45%. This means I need somewhere around 66 minutes of matches.

Let’s say 7 minutes for Frehley, 10 for the tags, 12 or so for Nicky vs Trent. That’s about 27 minutes left. I’m going to throw in three fairly short matches, all with people I have PPV plans for beating people I don’t.

 

So, let’s say Sweet over Kass, Cage with a National title defense against Whitlock (who’ll come up short, adding to The Business dissension soon when Money encourages Valentine to go after the belt rather than Whitlock as Whitlock’s failed once) and Texas Express over the thrown together team of Funky Fedora and Anthony Trask, followed by Cold Warriors attacking the faces.

 

More angles needed, of course. I’m going to have the former tag champions, Law and Justice, come out to announce that 2020 will be their last year in the ring and that they’re determined to make it a successful farewell. As the crowd applaud them, Tyson Baine and T-Rex will come out and mock them, saying they’re past it, leading to T-Rex vs Law next week (as Baine/Justice don’t wrestle on TV.) Joss Thompson isn't booked at all and is one of our bigger stars in that situation, apart from Enygma who I've given a week's paid holiday to due to not having plans for him. I'm going to have Joss issue a challenge to Cage for the National title on USPW Explosion as a way to kick the B-show off with a great main event. Joss is happy to put Roger over - I love that we can use Talk To Worker to check this!

 

So for the first episode that gives us

Number 1 contender's match: Nicky Champion vs Trent Shaffer

Steve Frehley vs Greg Black

Casey Valentine/Running Wolf vs Dusty DuCont/Charlie Thatcher

Sara Marie/Melody vs Glorious Gloria/Juliette King

Charity Sweet vs Killer Kass

National Title match: Roger Cage vs Sterling Whitlock

Texas Express vs Funky Fedora/Anthony Trask

 

Show to follow later today...

[Jaded]

That... could have gone better. To put it mildly.

 

 

 

 

Frehley's promo gets us off to an awesome start, getting the crowd hotter.

 

Kass is off her game, but the young female fans love Charity winning.

 

Champion revs the crowd up with another excellent promo.

 

Whitlock and Cage have great chemistry and their match is far better than expected.

 

More great chemistry, in the tag ranks, from Fedora/Trask.

 

Casey's turn is a complete success.

 

Money has an off night in the angle in which he's welcoming Valentine to the Business, unfortunately.

 

Champion and Trent have great chemistry, while Trent and Raven have pretty good chemistry, but the main suffers from a lack of psychology AND of selling.

 

 

In addition, the new storyline flopped, and we get hit by a penalty for lack of hot storylines. Ouch.

 

[Jaded]

Not really going to go into detail on B shows as the aim is generally going to be the same - have people with matches at the PPV beat people who don't have matches at the PPV to increase momentum and, sometimes popularity.

 

Notable exception here is that I'm starting off a Joss Thompson/Belle Bryden storyline in which the pair flirt, which is either going to end with Belle turning heel and moving off commentary to become Joss's manager, or Belle turning him down, him getting annoyed, and Belle bringing a face in to feud with him. This is because the old guys storyline flopped badly and I need something with 70 heat - here's hoping!

 

I've also put together Trask and Fedora as the Mayhem Express, riding that positive chemistry.

 

 

 

 

American Gold have excellent chemistry as well as a tag specialist bonus.

 

After a great start with Alicia’s promo, Gloria vs Faith cooled them slightly. Gloria is REALLY bad…

 

Morgan vs Zeus cooled them even more.

 

Again, girls in the crowd are really into Charity.

 

Joss worked the crowd well, improvising to his advantage, as he flirted with Belle Bryden.

 

Joss’s storyline with Belle comes in at exactly 70, just what we need to get rid of the penalty for lack of hot storylines! (Full disclaimer – I screwed up slightly here; I thought I’d replaced her on commentary with The Force but somehow didn’t, meaning the main event counted towards the storyline, which probably saved me as the angle was only 68.)

[Jaded]

For show 2, we’re going for Hawaii, where Nicky and Rich are both super popular. That’s obviously already set up from last week and will include an opening angle when Nicky comes out to announce that the USPW board of directors have said that as Money vs Wolf is locked in for Stars and Stripes Forever he’s been told that he can have his title shot RIGHT HERE TONIGHT! There’ll be a ton of angles to build for it – promos, entrances and a music video.

 

Also set up from last week, although with significantly less potential for high-scoring angles, are Law vs T-Rex and Pariah/Sara Marie/Melody vs The Triumvirate. The women’s match will end with an out of control brawl after a ton of interference, leading to a battle royal being set up for next week, winner getting a shot at Jamie Quine’s title at Stars and Stripes Forever.

 

We didn’t officially say we were going to do Casey Valentine vs Running Wolf, but it seems like an obvious one. Wolf will come down to the ring and demand an explanation from Valentine, Money will come out to taunt him, and Valentine will blindside him after coming through the crowd, leading straight into a match.

 

Frehley basically just needs squash wins to boost his momentum. I’m happy to sacrifice Howard and Rayne to him as singles stars beating tag wrestlers fairly easily seems reasonable to me. I’ll have those matches in week 2 and 4 and, to avoid making them look too bad, I’ll give them a tag win over him in week 3 where he just grabs a weak partner and tells him to stand on the outside and let him do all the work. Partner will get over-excited and blind tag in, get beaten by Storm, and Frehley will destroy him afterwards.

 

Bad Intentions are on their way to a tag title match and I have no idea how to get them there. Let’s give them a win over American Gold to start off with.

 

Cold Warriors attacked Texas Express last week, Express want revenge but I don’t want to give away a match that’s happening on Stars and Stripes forever on American Wrestling, so let’s throw in Kirk Jameson and Jimmy Chipolata to make it a six-man, with Chipolata putting over Karloff to try and get his momentum up from cooled if possible.

 

One more tag involving people who are set to meet up at the PPV – Shaffer, furious about Smith ruining his chances last week, will come down and challenge him to a six-man tag. We’ll throw The Mayhem Express in as Shaffer’s partners and add tag champions Jett and Moor, who I really need to give a win to, on Smith’s side.

 

So for episode 2:

 

World title: Rich Money © vs Nicky Champion

Rick Law vs T-Rex

Casey Valentine vs Running Wolf

Pariah/Sara Marie/Melody vs Alicia Strong/Glorious Gloria/Juliette King

Steve Frehley vs Eddie Howard

Bad Intentions vs American Gold

Texas Express/Jimmy Chipolata vs Cold Warriors/Kirk Jameson

Smith/Jett and Moor vs Shaffer/Mayhem Express