Struggling with organization and story telling (long term)

[DavGen]

Hello

 

I'm pretty new to the World of TEW. I like to run my shows and so on, doing lots of mistakes but that's things I can improve from failures. However there is a whole part of the game I'm struggling with, it's the management of the roster. Not exactly at which place the guys are, but I have so many difficulties to see for the future, what direction I want to go.

 

For example, in my game, playing MAW, I changed the Universal Title to The Architect because he's good and changed the American Title because well ... Jaylon Martins is not really a good holder for now. And now ? I don't know.

 

It's pretty different from others management games, if you're playing Football Manager, you know you need to have the best players you can afford to win your league. Here, you tell a story with predeterminate matches and this is hard for me to create a plan in this situation. It's maybe odd, because I love wrestling and I knew how it works before buying the games and I feel it doesn't suit me because of that part of the game (and this is a big part )

 

So I'm here to ask you some advices on how well I can manage my roster, to create stories in a fictionnal game (even with a real world mod it would be hard for me I think) and see what I'm doing in long-term. I tried to manage that with some Google Sheets or what, but I don't know, still blocked with that. Could also be because I'm used to watch WWE as a weekly + PPV and not an only one event per month ? I don't know. I didn't try with a major company because of their big roster, a bit feared by that when I'm struggling with a tiny roster ...

 

Well, I hope you'll be able to help me and understand what I mean by all that. And sorry if sentences are not in a good english but I did my best

[Diablox]

Firstly, your post makes perfect sense, your English is fine so don’t worry about that.

 

Secondly, the beauty of any TEW game is that you can play it any way that you want to - there is no right or (more importantly) wrong way to play so don’t worry if you’re struggling to find ‘your way’ to begin with.

 

Thirdly, as a suggestion, maybe try booking matches using a random generator (each worker has a number). Separate out the faces / heels & stars / unimportant before you roll the number so it makes some kind of sense. Don’t set the winner for any match. Let the AI (the game will say the road agent) decide who wins.

 

After a bit of doing this you might find that ideas start to spring up in your own mind. You’ll see worker C unexpectedly beat worker A for his title. How does worker A react to that? If he was a bad guy then chances are he wants revenge! So maybe now you’re choosing to book the rematch...

 

And so on and so on...

 

Never be afraid to add an element of randomness if you need inspiration.

 

In my current game I didn’t set a winner in my main title match. When I saw the winner I found it quite exciting working out what would happen from there. Someone may be able to confirm whether or not the AI automatically picks the most popular winner but that’s okay because if that’s the case & you’re not happy about that... change it! Problem solved either way.

[praguepride]

<p>First of all, don’t panic! It is fine to run a promotion into the ground as long as you are learning stuff.</p><p> </p><p>

Second of all as long as you don’t go crazy with your finances and sign a ton of people you can’t afford and up your production beyond what you can afford you don’t have a lot of risk of going belly up. </p><p> </p><p>

If you are running at a huge loss and running out of “runway” reduce the size of your shows and look at your finance screen and consider lowering your production value. Local music costs just $500 a show but the next level up costs something like 5k-10k a month. Don’t worry about the penalties for being under your rival production values, focus on your finances. If your finances are solid and you are hitting show popularity higher than your current popularity then you are fine.</p><p> </p><p>

Third: know your company, know your product. I suggest starting off with a nice stable company as opposed to grabbing the reigns of a giant like SWF or TCW. CZCW is a great company because it is almost impossible to get a poor match out of their main event, they don’t have a lot of crazy restrictions and penalties like the hardcore feds and you don’t need to worry about angles and such. Otherwise MAW is considered THE de facto ‘new player” fed. Straight forward product, a great mix of talented veterans and promising youngsters.</p><p> </p><p>

Fourth: Understand how to book a show. Most companies use the main event style where your show is almost entirely rated on your main event and the match right before it. Therefore you can put on pretty much garbage matches through 90% of your card and as long as you put your two top guys in the main event you’ll get a good show. This works a couple of times but then you start running into momentum issues.</p><p> </p><p>

Fifth: Momentum - If workers win, they get hotter. Fans get interested in them, they start gaining popularity and their matches start getting a boost. If they loose to much they’ll start going going cold. They start losing popularity and their matches get a penalty because people are losing interest in them. There is a lot more tension between two undefeated workers going into a match then one guy who always wins versus one guy who always loses. </p><p> </p><p>

The way to solve this is you have to look at your roster holistically. Your main guy beats other main eventers. Your other main eventers win matches over the mid card. The mid card wins over the jobbers. The jobbers are just permanently cold but as long as they put on decent matches that is fine. I believe you can reset their momentum to neutral if you just keep them out of the spotlight for awhile. This is also a way for you to “reset” your main event guys if they go super cold.</p><p> </p><p>

You see this in real world all the time where after a big match up the loser often goes MIA for a couple of months before coming back hot with a new gimmick and a new feud. </p><p> </p><p>

Sixth: Popularity. Chances are you’re playing a fed that is rated heavily on popularity so this is your lifeblood. Think of it as a currency. You get it by wrestling in really good matches or cutting really good promos. This is why super entertaining guys are important as they can generate popularity that they can then job out to your more talented but less charismatic roster. Having really entertaining jobbers is the ideal situation because they can stay popular without ever winning a match. Make sure to pay attention to gimmicks though. If you click on the gimmick it will give you hints because based on the kind of gimmick they might get bonuses or penalties to popularity. For example a badass losing to a comedy worker gets a huge penalty. Imagine Goldberg losing to someone like the Hurricane. It depends on your product though so check it out. Most Sports Entertainment products put restrictions like “stars can’t have comedy gimmicks” etc.</p><p> </p><p>

Seventh: Storylines - I find it works better to work backwards. Look at you “season finale” show. Your wrestle mania or what not. This is where the big storylines tend to be concluded as well as potentially setting up future ones. Figure out your main event draws for that show like “I want X to face Y” and then work backwards through your events. You don’t want them to have a real blow off early so you’ve got to find ways to keep them from settling the feud early. They are circling one another or the match gets disrupted (a false finish if you will). </p><p> </p><p>

Some very basic storytelling tropes are as follows:</p><p> </p><p>

- The traditional heel. Heel gets the belt either clean or dirty and then has some goons (or does it solo) and continually cheats his way to victory. Your hero(es) is continually getting blocked. Maybe he is attacked so he can’t make the match. Maybe the heel throws up some stipulations like “beat these guys first”. They get into each other’s faces, they backstage ambush one another before finally building up to the big payoff at <season finale>. The key is you want to get them both white hot momentum going in so you have to give both your hero and villain some big legitimate wins on their way so that means you expand your scope to see who you can “feed” to them to build them up. </p><p> </p><p>

- Lucky Suckers - An unprepared (or multiple unprepared) people stumble into a belt and keep winning despite themselves. This is the face version of the above story where the heels keep blocking one another and preventing a clean match so the faces keep winning. Start with a bunch of heels in the mix and have one of them start taking out the others one by one by one before finally winning clean.</p><p> </p><p>

- Undefeated Streak - have a worker get the Goldberg push and just win and win and win. Have them climb the card one after another after another. Maybe they have the belt or maybe they are hunting for the belt. Bigger and bigger stars start falling to them so the ultimate company badass steps in to finally put them down. Or maybe a group of people team up so the finale is a handicap match to finally put the monster away.</p><p> </p><p>

Figure out what the final match of the storyline is going to look like and get that put on the schedule and then work backwards. Think of it as a three-act story so if your finale is the climax then you have to figure out what the rise and fall will be. </p><p> </p><p>

Finally for organization I use a combination of excel and (digital) post-its. This lets me try out different combinations of people for storylines and future storylines to make sure I’m not missing anyone or overbooking anyone. Excel lets me list all my people out and then slot them on shows so people don’t go too long between matches. It is easy to let people slip through the cracks which is a shame for youngsters because they need ring time to develop. A “future prospect” who isn’t wrestling is a waste of space. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>

Anyway I hope that helps at least as a rough outline of how to approach the game. Because products play very differently I can’t offer anything specific without details. What product are you running, what company etc.</p>

[RatedRKO16]

<p>I'll use what I've going on in my games as examples...</p><p> </p><p>

Savage vs Ventura</p><p> </p><p>

Savage has been champion for almost a year. Ventura has been bad mouthing him at every turn from the commentators desk. Savage won at a PPV but Ventura finally snapped and jumped into the ring viciously attacking Savage. Its being told that Ventura is jealous of Savages success. Also this story is to give Ventura one last run as a competitor. </p><p> </p><p>

Steamboat vs DiBiase (then Steamboat vs Backlund)</p><p> </p><p>

So this goes back about 6 months. Steamboat hired Arnold Skaaland to manage him. DiBiase won the IC championship with Undertaker as his menacing manager (a way to introduce Taker). He has been doing Dibiases dirty work all the way to helping him win the title. Dibiase beat quite a few guys until Steamboat came along. Taker accidently hits Dibiase during their match and Steamboat gets a quick roll up for the win. After the match, Backlund jumps the barrier and attacks Skaaland then an already hurting Steamboat. This story will go into Backlund blaming Skaaland for his world title loss by throwing in the towel all those years ago. (This is a story line I was prepared to do months in advance)</p><p> </p><p>

In the tag team division Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson have dominated every other team. They won the titles in a tournament after British Bulldogs were forced to vacate bc Davey Boy failed too many drug tests. So almost a year later, he is back. Arn and Tully have proclaimed they have beat every team in WWF. British Bulldogs music will hit. They will claim they should still be champions and those guys have never beat them. </p><p> </p><p>

There is a lot of inspiration in the years of WWF and WCW. Going back and watching videos about past story lines can help give ideas. I'm usually listening to a YouTube video while I play TEW. Its also easier once your game is started and you have something to build off of. The first month or two is the hardest booking imo.</p>

[DavGen]

<p>Well, first of all, a big thank you for the advices ! <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/biggrin.png.929299b4c121f473b0026f3d6e74d189.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p>

I tried the randomness way and honestly, for now, it works. I have to tweak this to be really comfortable and then I hope I'll be able to not use it. So for now, I only have two storylines, one for the primary title and the second for the secondary title and I'll see how to expand it in times.</p><p> </p><p>

I just don't know if I have to ended up after a big victory or if I just remove the loser and add a new worker in the storyline. Kind of a perpetual storyline.</p><p> </p><p>

@praguepride : I did note everything you wrote, there's a lot I already understood by myself / the handbook, but I learn from you too. Thanks ! Just to mention the momentum stuff, when you say it'll reset after a while when the worker is not on show for a moment. Didn't see that in the handbook, are you sure about this ? Could help me for a main eventer, so I'll send him to vacation and see what happend, I guess.</p><p> </p><p>

@RatedRKO16 : Yeah, I try to take inspiration from what I already see in WWE/WCW, it's just hard for me to push someone I don't really know about. <img alt="" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/smile.png.142cfa0a1cd2925c0463c1d00f499df2.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p>

[KevinStorm]

Storytelling advice straight from Eric Bischoff (and me, a semi-retired actor and short film writer/director): start at the end and work backwards. So if it's January 2004 and I'm WWE, and I decide I want Eddie Guerrero vs Brock Lesnar as my Mania main event, then I work backwards from there to where I'm starting and plan whatever major plot points I want to hit. If you know where you eventually want to go, it's a lot easier to figure out how to get there.

[CloudyDay]

<p>I face the same trouble you do a lot and here's how I manage mine based on the type of product I'm booking.</p><p> </p><p>

If it's a storyline-based pop>perf product, I would follow the Lucha Underground style of booking where short storylines keep cycling in and out. Almost everyone is involved in some kind of storyline, they're just in different phases of it. So in the first event you might see the start of Fued A, Feud B heating up and the blowoff of Fued C in the maint event. In the next event, a new feud gets started up while Feud A starts to heat up and now Fued B gets its main event spotlight for its blowoff. I think with a small company like MAW, this works perfectly because you're not building to a big show per se but trying to get your fans to tune in to every events. I struggle the most when I'm stretching feuds so that I can build to a big blowoff event so you might find it helpful to tell stories at your own pace instead (2-4 events short).</p><p> </p><p>

If it's a wrestling-based perf>pop product, I tend to run tournaments year-round to make it as sports-like as possible. The first few events could be 'Road to' shows leading to a 6-men ladder match granting the winner a title shot. After that, you can hold a 16-men single elimination tournament with again the winner getting a title shot. Maybe a round-robin style tournament after that. This is easy for me because storylines happen organically and are told in the ring (will Person A get out of Block B with his rival in there as well? Will Person B finally make it to the semi-finals this year when they have failed to do so the last 2 years?) The idea is that you don't get a title shot just by attacking the champ, you have to actually earn it through tournaments so it's very sports-like in that way. Wins and losses matter because 1 loss might mean that you're not getting a title shot that tour. The champ is only defending his title 3-4 times a year but they're guaranteed to be the best challengers. The midcard belt gains more prestige because it gets defended a lot more and they could make a case for themself as a fighting champ.</p>

[praguepride]

when you say it'll reset after a while when the worker is not on show for a moment. Didn't see that in the handbook, are you sure about this ? Could help me for a main eventer, so I'll send him to vacation and see what happend

 

I don’t have a lot of info on that, it isn’t something I have tried out yet but I heard it from someone that Momentum slowly resets when they are off the air.