Title Reigns

[Bear0721]

How long should a title reign go for? Or what would be the signs that it needs to change hands?

[Makhai]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Bear0721" data-cite="Bear0721" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="50823" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>How long should a title reign go for? Or what would be the signs that it needs to change hands?</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Usually, 4-6mos, although they can go longer or shorter depending on the number of challengers I have available and how many reigns they have had before. I'm not one to book people to win the belt 400 times unless they have that kind of longevity or the division is that thin. </p><p> </p><p> The ideal for me is your first reign is always your strongest, your last one your weakest. Sometimes as they say... "crap happens" though. Sometimes I can keep guys on top for a long, long time if it's a Figurehead situation. but it's extraordinarily rare.</p><p> </p><p> I know a lot of people have different ideas on how to use their "props" but that's how I do it.</p>

[ShibataHeadbutt]

<p>i think its mostly about how you see the wrestler </p><p> </p><p>

i'm a few years in on a real world 2004 save </p><p> </p><p>

i booked Samoa Joe as a complete destroyer, taking on everyone in his path but at the same time his opponents were strong competition from other companies or wrestlers who nearly got him like Bryan Danielson or Adam Copeland who was my favourite hire in the save </p><p> </p><p>

Joe held it for a year and a half</p><p> </p><p>

Raven beat him and only held it for three months as a cocky cult leader who fought he was invincible until Joe's ally Takeshi Morishima came along</p>

[DeBosco]

I also think it depends on the company you’re using. I think I’ve had the Glory Crown on Masaru Ugaki in a PGHW save for over a year now and it seems pretty in-line with the belts previous title history.

[kdcastles]

I like long title reigns, and if I put together a good program, I can get 4-6 months out of one challenger. Usually, that's 6-9 defenses for the champion (not all against the other in the feud). So, if I get three programs out of one champion that could be a year and a half with around 20 defenses. Not that I don't have short title reigns, but I like my world champ to hold the belt a while. mid-card and tag title reigns tend to be shorter (in the 3-9 month range).

[BrokenCycle]

You should probably shoot for a wide range of title reign lengths, based on the stories you want to tell.

 

It's noble, I guess, to put a belt on someone for 2 years or whatever, but there's nothing wrong with giving someone a one month title reign. Just from a gameplay perspective, short title reigns can dampen the repetitive nature of main event scenes and heighten creativity.

 

Midcard titles should be changed with regularity. Tag especially due to the nature of how tag divisions function.

[jean-vic]

Depends how you perceive a title, in my opinion. If you're more of the mind that belts represent the "top guys", as I do, then I think longer reigns fit well. Take WWE for example. In my opinion, the world title should be on the top guy in the company most of the time, and he should only occasionally drop it for storyline purposes, whereas the IC should be on the top worker who is then used to spotlight up and coming midcard talent, dropping it again occasionally for storyline purposes or when he outgrows the belt. For instance, if I was booking WWF in 1998, Austin wouldn't be dropping the belt to Kane for one night, but he would lose it closer to Mania so he can chase it to the main event. In line with that, Rock would be holding the IC until Summerslam and then Trips would be holding it until at least around about the Rumble.

 

However, if you view belts as props in storylines, shorter reigns would be more suitable as you pass the belt to whoever needs it for the story to progress, but I personally thinks this devalues the belts and makes holding them worthless.

 

The period you are booking should also be taken into account. If you're booking in the 80s and have fewer events, you'll naturally want longer reigns. If you're booking 12 PPVs and two weekly TV shows, a wrestler holding a title too long is going to become stale and needs more frequent changes to freshen up the title scene.

[Wicked Intentions]

I generally book title changes by the prestige of the title itself. I try to keep the title on the current as long as that doesn't start to dip. When it dips is when I plan a title change to freshen up the title.

[Vinsmoker]

I, personally, really like long title reigns. Irl and in TEW they require lots of careful work, to not make the booking stale. If you do it well, you can get years of storylines out of every champion.

 

But I also love title changes. I like to see the history being told through the title history. So I tend to do something like Long Reign -> Surprise title change -> OG champion wins it back for another (but definitely shorter) long title reign

 

This prevents irl situations like the way WWE booked Humberto Carillo/Cedric Alexander in their feuds for the US title from happening.

[Derek B]

For me, title reigns go hand in hand with story telling and with the type of company I want to book. From my time on the forums I see a lot of people who book long title reigns (12+ months) only to run out of juice for what to do with a character after that point. I've done it myself too... how do you book someone who was once almost unbeatable to now be beatable without making them feel "weak" or "wrong" somehow? It's tricky and I have seen so many characters get burned out because people didn't have them lose at the right time.... for me, just as in real life, a champion should lose the belt while they are still hot and NOT when they have started to drop off. When someone loses while they are still hot it keeps a lot of momentum going with their character and it can make multiple title reigns easier to book and help to tell a lot of stories with the top tier roster while keeping things fresh.

 

In my BHOTWG in TEW16, I started to use my main title (and the various tournaments I added) to create a main event scene that wasn't centered on my figurehead Tadiyuki Kikkawa, who was deep into Time Decline and not delivering right from the start. Instead of having long reigns with one champion who seemed above everyone else, I went into "The Aceless Era" where I made it that no main champion could have mroe than 3 successful defences of the title. It meant we had a lot of champions in a relatively short period of time for the company but it also helped to set up a lot of stories as a group of talented performers were seen to be on the same level as each other. Leaders of stables in particular would rarely lose to anyone else below them, excpet to stars I was trying to build up for further down the line and it led to an obvious structure within the company that could be relied on to not only create great matches, but to do so logically and by referring to history against each other.

 

And all because of how I wanted to treat my main title.

 

That said, I did also have a 30 month title reign with the tag belts for The Melbourne Blondes in the same save. They were the best team in the world, delivering great matches with anyone, in an over stable but even then they weren't unbeatable. There were a few heavily protected teams and they were barely able to stay ahead. They lost matches in tournaments, hey lost solo most of the time, they lost some stable based matches (usually due to someone else) but when it came to the titles, they always found a way and it was up to other teams to raise their game to beat them. Was a lot of fun to book.

 

And one of my favourite title reigns ever was an old SWF game.... Eric Eisen was the champ and was corrupt as hell at the top. Brandon James won the Golden Opportunity (Money in the Bank) and demanded Eric pay him lots of money every month to NOT cash in on him.... when Eric finally lost the title to Christian Faith at Supreme Challenge, it was an iconic moment for Faith given all the hoops he had to jump through to get there.... only for Brandon to immediately cash in and win the title from him. Eric was irate. Faith's fans were heartbroken. Brandon was cemented as the top guy in the company. So many stories spun off from there.

[ConcutioCaelum]

It depends on the story for me. In my 2016 Death of WCW save, I created my own company at cult size. I had my mid-card and tag titles change on a somewhat regular basis as I wanted to test everyone's abilities. This built John Cena, Kevin Owens, and The Second City Saints.

 

My main event title went to RVD for 8 months where he lost it to the undefeated Samoa Joe at my season finale in 2001. Along the way, I had my own G1 tournament where Joe beat RVD in the finals to get the season finale title shot. Joe remained undefeated and held the title until my season finale in 2003, where he lost to CM Punk. Joe won all three of my G1's and picked his opponents for the season finales(The Rock in 2002, and Punk in 2003).

 

But the story I wanted to be was Joe being that dominate monster while Punk toiled up from the mid-card. With the main title, he became my first grand slam champion and brought a new era to my era company. The titles just helped prop up and solidify those storylines.

[Evito]

Depends on the wrestler, and what you want to do.

 

I'll normally go between 8 and 18 months for a 'normal' reign. I got 4 years out of Bull Nakano with the red belt in AJW and it could've kept going. I've currently got her for 2 more years and I've got easily 2 more years of stories to tell with her (the evil WWF will no doubt steal her away). That was a special case though.

 

Typically with the way I treat the red belt, Short reigns are for transitional champions or if a champion is just not working out. The more times you change the belt, the less meaning it has.

 

The white belt has more frequent switches 5-10 months and I'll hotshot it occasionally.

 

As for the burnout; You book a long reigning champion what do you do when they lose the belt?

It's always different, the one constant is that they're completely out of the title picture. Sometimes it's a heel or face turn, sometimes there's a personal feud that they can get involved. But, my go to is to put them in a tag team. I give every wrestler allies anyway that they regularly tag with on TV so it's the easy option, and benefits the tag division for a while, and feels completely natural. It's also easy to bring them back into the main event singles scene after they've spent enough time away from it.

[DeathZone2]

I've always viewed championship as a prop. In the way that they affect the storylines and the characters. They're my "Infinty Stones" in the sense that the characters need motivation to want them and having them affects their character, losing them affects their character, and chasing them affects their character. In SWF for example, does Skull DeBones need the belt to add to his character? If so, why? It's also why I rarely have the big championship on my #1 guy. He's bigger than the belt and his character doesn't need it to get popular, so if HD fued will draw anyway why give him the title? Lengths of reigns depend on story too. That's why I may have 7 different World Champions in a year, sometimes only 1, sometimes 3. It all depends on what stories are being told.