Road to Glory - TEW IX Edition

[Self]

I'll probably keep the +5 skill +5 reputation. I'm kind of banking on being able to move promotions at some point, so the reputation is slightly more valuable to me than most of the random bonuses on offer. I'm already the second best worker on the roster (and Tommy Jr aka Mary Sue Easymode really shouldn't count). I should probably be focussing on getting myself over more. Beating people, instead of working fun little Mixed Tag matches in the midcard.

[Self]

4 minutes ago, moafnsteel said:

I just finished year 3 and hit 25 pop.  When did everyone figure out the best time to sign with Wrestleworld? I haven't upgraded any of my productions yet and don't want to crash my company lol.  I just started upgrading my merchandise to level 5 for worker-specific merch because I already make enough in merchandise to cover the next level's costs.  I am only making about $4k a month and worry going on Wrestleworld will bankrupt me.  Thanks 

I hit 25 popularity in March 2025, but didn't sign with WrestleWorld until January 2026 when I had 36 popularity, and started making a profit around April/May. It comes with a LOT of downsides. Increased production costs, and as the wrestlers get more popular across the country they start asking for pay rises. The broadcasting revenue really wasn't much, although that might depend on which WrestleWorld you're talking about. The main one in USA/Canada is probably better than the tiny on in British Isles. Your merchandise is way higher than mine was at the time, so perhaps mail order sales across a wide range of areas will cover it.

I'd wait. Maybe to 30-32 pop. 

[MainOffender]

On 8/29/2024 at 11:11 PM, Jaysounder said:

If only my company was bigger than Medium... whatever you do just give Cornell Jr any amount of money he wants. He routinely puts on 85 - 95 ratings with the 'British Sportsmanship' product. He, plus buying out a bankrupt MAW, has been such a massive boost to my pop. I have 2 years and 3 months left before USPW offers him the insane money he deserves.

Jeez - I just made it to March 2025 and got a look at TCJ. His stats feel a little ridiculous to me. He's instantly the most well-rounded worker in the game world (no one betters his combination of top line stats). I can't decide if it's fun to have this wunderkind running around or if I want to nerf him.

[Bad Collin]

5 hours ago, MainOffender said:

Jeez - I just made it to March 2025 and got a look at TCJ. His stats feel a little ridiculous to me. He's instantly the most well-rounded worker in the game world (no one betters his combination of top line stats). I can't decide if it's fun to have this wunderkind running around or if I want to nerf him.

Big Rougey made a great point on the Discord; TCJ used to be a reward for booking ten years in the game but his debut has got closer and closer to the game start and now he can just be grabbed almost straight away. In hindsight is does feel like Adam should have nerfed him. 

[Bad Collin]

6 hours ago, Self said:

I'll probably keep the +5 skill +5 reputation. I'm kind of banking on being able to move promotions at some point, so the reputation is slightly more valuable to me than most of the random bonuses on offer. I'm already the second best worker on the roster (and Tommy Jr aka Mary Sue Easymode really shouldn't count). I should probably be focussing on getting myself over more. Beating people, instead of working fun little Mixed Tag matches in the midcard.

You can keep the booking rep since that is now in the game. It is only the booking skill you would be giving up.

[Bad Collin]

23 hours ago, Jaysounder said:

With this I think I will call this save done for now. I essentially played this save non stop for the last month as I had a three week break before my next semester of classes. Work + Masters program does not leave much time for TEW unfortunately. Maybe I'll do a couple more months to try and get the 100, but it feels more like I'm just hoping for a good dice roll at this point. Somehow 99s feel incredibly common in TEW while the stars must all be in alignment to get a 100.  

 

This was my first RTG so I don't want to try and offer a complete overhaul of the achievements, but I do feel that there could be some tweaking with the rewards, maybe even two levels of minor & major rewards. I gave myself three positive and three negative gimmick attributes not noticing that most of the rewards from 41-51 are all about gimmick attributes. I did take some rerolls as I rolled 41 a couple of times and one of my attributes was already that I don't play dominant well. It also seems that rewards tend to come in waves with long delays between the next roll. Only 5/17 of my rolls occurred outside of year end. Not counting the year end roll, each year I got to roll:

• 2022: 0 rolls
• 2023: 0 rolls
• 2024: 1 rolls
• 2025: 0 rolls
• 2026: 3 rolls (2 rolls were breaking into the top 250 & 500 of the top 500)
• 2027: 0 rolls
• 2028: 1 rolls
• 2029: 4 rolls (2 rolls were breaking into the top 50 & 100 of the top 500)

There are a couple rewards that may need to be updated. Unless I missed it, there is no longer 'loyalty' between workers. When I rolled 3, instead I picked 'like family'. 7 is also a strange one, with how rare rolls are, I would be pretty disappointed to roll it even once. I assume that is the closest relationship level to loyalty. The gimmick rewards that add Musician, TV/Movie star are also kinda pointless (except the stat boosts) as your UC will never take a break to go on tour / film. I guess it is just a little flavor, but still a bit odd. Hard to believe that my UC at only 25 is a famous wrestler, a musician, and a TV star. He must never sleep. 

I can't comment on booking rep/skill as I only had one size change with the new update, so I don't know how much booking rep you get from moving up in size. I ended with 52 rep and 86 booking skill. I believe I gave myself +5 booking one of the years my company received the 'most improved' award.

Hopefully by the time I'm able to do another long save the CV 1977 mod will be available. Such a good mod, I did my second longest save in 2020 on it. I will probably also try a more difficult product next time. British Sportsmanship felt like easy mode.

Thanks for the update. It is a feature of the challenge that getting a 100 is very hard. It is common to get 5-10 99's before finally getting 100.

Some of the rolls are definitely there for flavour, you start with a blank slate character so I find it interesting to see what kind of gimmick types and second jobs come up.

[moafnsteel]

10 hours ago, Self said:

I hit 25 popularity in March 2025, but didn't sign with WrestleWorld until January 2026 when I had 36 popularity, and started making a profit around April/May. It comes with a LOT of downsides. Increased production costs, and as the wrestlers get more popular across the country they start asking for pay rises. The broadcasting revenue really wasn't much, although that might depend on which WrestleWorld you're talking about. The main one in USA/Canada is probably better than the tiny on in British Isles. Your merchandise is way higher than mine was at the time, so perhaps mail order sales across a wide range of areas will cover it.

I'd wait. Maybe to 30-32 pop. 

Thank you! I will probably hold off until my merch upgrades one more time and test it out

[Jaysounder]

Mission accomplished. It did take an inspiring speech and a creative finish, but we got there. I will definitely pick a different product next time. British Sportsmanship has too many upsides and never booking a single storyline over an 8.3 year save just felt wrong. 

[alpha2117]

1 hour ago, Jaysounder said:

Mission accomplished. It did take an inspiring speech and a creative finish, but we got there. I will definitely pick a different product next time. British Sportsmanship has too many upsides and never booking a single storyline over an 8.3 year save just felt wrong. 

Congrats

[Self]

10 hours ago, Bad Collin said:

You can keep the booking rep since that is now in the game. It is only the booking skill you would be giving up.

What about the booking rep I got from the "Produce an Event Card of 25/50/75" achievements? I thought the game only rewarded taking your company from Tiny/Small/Medium. I should probably read the patch notes. 

I'll need to sit with my little tracker spreadsheet again and figure out what everything's supposed to be. No jobs have come up since I made the +5 tweak, so it hasn't impacted anything in my game so far. 

[Bad Collin]

6 hours ago, Jaysounder said:

Mission accomplished. It did take an inspiring speech and a creative finish, but we got there. I will definitely pick a different product next time. British Sportsmanship has too many upsides and never booking a single storyline over an 8.3 year save just felt wrong. 

Congrats! I have added you to the Hall of Fame. 

I know what you mean about the storylines, my owner just changed the product to Respectful Wrestling and it is so different to what I have been booking.

[Bad Collin]

1 hour ago, Self said:

What about the booking rep I got from the "Produce an Event Card of 25/50/75" achievements? I thought the game only rewarded taking your company from Tiny/Small/Medium. I should probably read the patch notes. 

I'll need to sit with my little tracker spreadsheet again and figure out what everything's supposed to be. No jobs have come up since I made the +5 tweak, so it hasn't impacted anything in my game so far. 

Hmm, fair point. 

I messed mine up too. We worked out that it is 1 point gained for every five shows and now we get 5 points for going up in size so mine should be 22 from shows and 15 from rises = 37. I'm on 46 at the moment which makes sense because there were two booking achievements I didn't account for, i'll drop it to 36.

I think for the next run i'll try a zero loyalty save where I take the booking stat increases and apply for any available job with a bigger company.

[alpha2117]

Look at the lucky smug guy above.  He put on one show.  It got above 25.  He then went to  http://www.brockjones.com/dieroller/dice.htm and rolled a d54.  Rolled an 8.

Suddenly we went from $282 to $56891 after Ms. Crazyia Catlady-Lopez passed away and left $56,609 to the Liga de la Legión de Lucha.  The chances of my sending my Owner Original Luchadora broke just went down a tad. 

I assume Ms Crazyia Catlady-Lopez liked the fact my chief referee is Gato árbitro (who in no way is Lucy Hooper in a Cat mask)

 

Edited September 3 by alpha2117

[Bad Collin]

32 minutes ago, alpha2117 said:

Look at the lucky smug guy above.  He put on one show.  It got above 25.  He then went to  http://www.brockjones.com/dieroller/dice.htm and rolled a d54.  Rolled an 8.

Suddenly we went from $282 to $56891 after Ms. Crazyia Catlady-Lopez passed away and left $56,609 to the Liga de la Legión de Lucha.  The chances of my sending my Owner Original Luchadora broke just went down a tad. 

 

Such a good roll to get early on

[alpha2117]

4 minutes ago, Bad Collin said:

Such a good roll to get early on

Incredible roll it staves off the worry about bankruptcy.

I've decided to do a Diary

TEW 2016 was the last time I did one but I'm enjoying this and am sort of getting in on the ground floor of this version of the game so why not.  I've really been enjoying your one with Three Lions and Squires.   

 

[lr10540]

12 hours ago, Bad Collin said:

Hmm, fair point. 

I messed mine up too. We worked out that it is 1 point gained for every five shows and now we get 5 points for going up in size so mine should be 22 from shows and 15 from rises = 37. I'm on 46 at the moment which makes sense because there were two booking achievements I didn't account for, i'll drop it to 36.

I think for the next run i'll try a zero loyalty save where I take the booking stat increases and apply for any available job with a bigger company.

Okay so if I did this correctly, I've booked 87 shows total + small company, so rep is 27 and booking skill is 6 now after removing the 50 points for 5 rolls. I hadn't yet changed from the +10 to the +5/+5 due to the aforementioned busy last week and a half and not much playing. 

I got 31, 52, 2, 31, 37. For roll 2, went with cage specialist and had 2 workers that both had 66 hardcore (Deacon Darkhold & Texas Hangman) and I went with Deacon since he was classed as a hardcore style wrestler. Also, strong friendship doesn't exist as far as I could tell, so I went with Deep Friendship. Seems like it would be the same? For both 31 rolls I put all 10 points into Charisma for 20 total bringing me up to 98. That coupled with 37 gave me 5 star quality and I'm now figurehead material, so when Cornell inevitably gets stolen in a few years, I'll be the face that runs the place. Hopefully I don't overshadow Cornell until then. Actually though of using some of the points for mic over charisma to help with that but figured he'll be gone in a few years regardless and I'd rather be ready myself. The extra pop feels pointless but cool I guess. Does musician do anything for the UC? Might be a famous musician by the end of this challenge!

[moststay]

Ok with the new rules allowing Rolls for Booking Achievements now, I have decided to only keep two of my achievements for Booking Skill and Booking Reputation and the rest for Rolls.

With the Rolls I got 33, 34, 41, 58. I was hoping for a boost to in ring skills but I can't be to mad to have a 92 Star Quality now and also get the Tag Team Specialist and Big Match specialist so it seems my future 100 rated match will likely be a tag team match.

 

[Jaded]

On 9/3/2024 at 4:00 AM, Jaysounder said:

Mission accomplished. It did take an inspiring speech and a creative finish, but we got there. I will definitely pick a different product next time. British Sportsmanship has too many upsides and never booking a single storyline over an 8.3 year save just felt wrong. 

Awesome, congrats!

[Ippon]

Hi all! First time attempt at an RTG, thought it would be a fun challenge to undertake whilst I get to grips with the new mechanics and gameworld. I've enjoyed the first year and feel like I'm making some progress, even if the end goal seems such a distant achievement.

I went with a company called Gasparilla Pirate Wrestling, which is all theme and doesn't involve many pirates. However, I will be hiring the Dread Pirate as soon as he is financially viable and hopefully available. I brought in Pablo Rodriguez as the Owner, asked him to be a color commentator as well as utilizing him in the booking team and a promo companion for my user character. Is there a consensus on who you select as your owner? Or can you select freely? I'll likely be doing more than one run at this so if I given myself a step up in a sense I'll get it right next time.

Anyway the character i've gone with is Brandon Garcia, pretty boring and I mistakingly put his debut as 2020. Doh!

I followed suit with the min/maxed approach, a flashy brawler who I thought would in well with the theme of the company and AI assisted graphics. Started out small with a six man roster for the first six months, just throwing out a free show every month in Florida with Young & Wasted, Ricky Turner, Buzz Reid, & Harvey Robbenfield. I split Bret Kyle & Taylor Norton up, turning the latter and had them feud over our main championship - Davey Jone's Locker Key, for most of that period, just managing to avoid a penalty for repetitive matchmaking. After six months I expanded into other regions and transitioned into 2x Very Cheap shows, one being my tour show Last of the Buccaneers held primarily in the Mid South but I have visited other regions, and my future PPV, themed shows held in the South East, my home region. I expanded the roster from the first visit to the Mid South, most notably adding Texas Hangman, Jules Night & Juggernaut Jones. Ended the year with Garcia turning heel on his tag partner Robbenfield after winning the inaugural Jolly Rogers Invitational and becoming number contender, costing them the tag team championship. He won the primary title from Bret Kyle at A Christmas Plunder, and not sits atop the company with Jules Night & a debuting Hammer Hadley at his side. Hadley being someone I had to wait and hire after Pablo Rodriguez gave me some relatively soft ball owner goals, that also ruled out several cheap free agents from coming on board.

Thankfully they didn't really hinder me. We ended the year with 9 popularity in the South East and 5 in the Mid South, which I'll continue looking to prop up with the future in mind.

I'm quite happy with the finances as well. I feel like we will hit the five digit debt around the time we start seeing a profit, but we should be able to afford a few more interesting wrestlers in 2023 and a certain Pirate will undoubtedly be making his mark. I am on the verge of getting my merchandise to level 3 (95%), something I could have been more aggressive with in hindsight.

As for my character's growth, I hit a lot of the goals I've achieved early, rolling Trusted Companion with the 50 rated match grade. I gave it to Ricky Turner as he was my head trainer initially, but that role has since been passed to Xavier Reckless after he came on board. Both men have done a good training, but Turner's personality did result in a couple of negative pre-event training sessions. I wasn't sure where to take the loyalty, with it no longer being an option, so I interpreted it into 'Being like family'. Which may have been strong, but if anything I've probably tied myself to keeping the guy for longer than I would've. The other rolls were retrospective with some decent improvements to my physical attributes and thankfully my psychology. He's quickly becoming one of the better workers but Bret Kyle is by and far the star of the show as a solo act. I'm running British Strong Style as my product and he absolutely shines in it, I'm just leaving the technical masterclass to somebody else. I'll also note as well that I had him become Toned, and changed him to be Impactful rather than just a Regular Wrestler.

Plan for Year Two is to probably mix up the roster a little, as the match ups are getting stale, continue with the dual event strategy and become more aggressive in the merchandise growth. Hoping to have hit Tiny and progress toward being debt free by the end of the year.

[Evilman]

On 9/3/2024 at 6:00 AM, Jaysounder said:

Mission accomplished. It did take an inspiring speech and a creative finish, but we got there. I will definitely pick a different product next time. British Sportsmanship has too many upsides and never booking a single storyline over an 8.3 year save just felt wrong. 

Damn, congratulations!

 

I am currently going in April 2025, Small in size and just managed to hire Tommy Cornell Jr. Guess that is the cheat code here. Been travelling most of the time the game has been out so hasn't had much progress here.

 

 

[Charasmatic Enigma]

After a number of test runs, I have restarted with what hopefully will be my final run. I decided to restart my last run, partially because I realised running a female user character made the end game a lot harder, and partially because of how quickly I became profitable using my 'touring' strategy.

I've restarted with a male version of my previous character, called Sailin' Jack - who has a pirate gimmick. Like last run, I've essentially hired two rosters - one to run shows in the Great Lakes and one to run shows in the South West. The difference this time is I've hired much stronger rosters - still thin in number, but high in quality. Ernest Youngman and Logan Wolfsbaine are heading up my Great Lakes roster, and Frankie-Boy Fernandez and Cali Slick are the stars of my South West roster. I've also abandoned all pretence of storytelling, using a British Sportsmanship product and focusing the booking on improving my characters stats and pop as quickly as possible.

At the end of the year, my promotion has 9 pop in both the Great Lakes and the South West, and by focusing on upgrading my merchandise from day 1 I'm now at Level 4 and was able to get back into the black in December - we're now making ~1,000 a month, although that may drop back slightly as both Ernest Youngman and Frankie-Boy Fernandez have asked for big pay increases.

In terms of my User Character, with his top notch training team we've seen good improvements across the board. The high quality opponents have also allowed me to tick off the achievements list at record speed - getting a 50 rated match in my first event, and being dragged to a 78 rated match to win the main title against Ernest Youngman in the Season Finale in December (with the help of an Inspiring speech and a Creative Finish)

I took the Booking Skill/Experience for the optional rolls - I'm not sure which is the better option here. So I had three rolls:

50 Rated Match - 36. 'Master of Wit & Repartee'

75 Rated Match - 23. 'Quick Learner'

End of Year Roll - 16. 'Hit The Bricks'

Some decent rolls, and after all of that my user character looks like this:

My aims for year 2 are to grow to Tiny, and then ideally jump to a Small promotion (which is why I'm taking the Booking points), but we'll see what comes up. I'll continue to invest in good trainers in an attempt to speed run my skill development, with my focus being on improving Psychology and Selling.

[Ippon]

Year Two is in the books, and I hit most of my targets. We only grew to Tiny with our last event of the year but managed to maintain the two event system and progressively make some money. I have learnt that I need more discipline with the roster though, I have grown it to be over 20 guys, and made a few enemies along the way, including the Dread Pirate himself. I was so hyped to bring him on board, but he immediately wanted to double/triple his appearence fee and I had him walk the plank after I got his debut in the Jolly Roger Invitational out of the way. The merchandise growth was an interesting one too, my game world has both the economy and industry as very weak so that may be part of the reason I struggled to get incoming merch sales to align with the expenditure of aggressively expanding it. I am, however, only around $5k in debt going into the third year so I should comfortably be out of debt by the end of the third year.

As for my UC, the year ended with him debuting in the Power 500, sitting at #469, just beneath Kaarg the Insidious. I managed several 75+ rated matches, many of them revolving around Garcia teaming with Jules Night in his Black Corsairs stable and he is pretty much the star performer in the company now alongside Bret Kyle. He had a lengthy reign with the primary title, dropping it to Texas Hangman before regaining the championship near the end of the year, only to then immediately drop it to longtime rival Bret Kyle, who was fresh off of beating Hugh De Aske in the Jolly Roger Invitational Final. His stat progression is moving along nicely, with only one roll actively changing them this year. Speaking of rolls, I had four for the year, one gained my Groundswell of Support, and another a Hot New Catchphrase (this was only acquired at the end of the year), which should hopefully aid towards triggering that 75+ Event Card that I have narrowly avoided up until now. I rolled another Run Forest Run which was fine, and my last roll was Internet Sensation just as I had gone up to Tiny, which was great timing. However, the random roll for the wrestler once AGAIN landed on Ricky freaking Turner, the AI must have soft spot for this guy. I won't complain though, as he was mostly putting other workers over and his pop increase will only help with that.

As I mentioned earlier, the finances are okay and on an upward curve, although I don't seem to have hit the kind of money some of you were making at a similar time. I definitely readjusted the booking on some of the months, making the touring show Last of the Buccaneers more of a squash card that featured my main players and the "PPV" event being the main show. I'm at a point where I can disribute DVD's of events, so in my head canon, I can include those as some additional features! In terms of growth, I don't see me getting another job any time soon, so I am primarily focusing on growth of the company and going to explore another free monthly show in my third year. Making the touring show & the primary event paid events, and holding an additional free show in the South East will hopefully ensure I get growth each month and could also allow me to move the pricing to normal. I'm not sure if it will end up costing more, so I will start the year with this in place and see how it goes. I will probably ease back on the merch push as well, until I'm firmly out of debt. I think I can afford that pause at the moment. My size in other areas is okay, I've got Mid South to 12 which gives me a foundation to build on when the push for Medium comes around. I'm hoping to have grown to Small by March in year four, so there is not an immediate need to go heavy on focusing solely on that region. I achieved all three owners goals as well, so Pablo gave me a nice pat on the back at year end and should enjoy the time he gets on the shows before he decides he wants paying! The new goals are very easy going and won't hinder me in the market either, which is always good. Allows me to hopefully progress through year three hurdle free.

I doubt I'll see many rolls this year, so it is likely going to be one to push through, but hopefully I can achieve the 75+ event. Hope y'all don't mind the length of these posts, I'm currently off work so I have too much time on my hands. Likely won't have as much to discuss with some of the years to come as well. I may have to make Ricky Turner my world champion, just to make the RNG gods happy.

[moststay]

Is there a reason everyone is dumping acting is it the least important entertainment skills in the game?

[alpha2117]

15 minutes ago, moststay said:

Is there a reason everyone is dumping acting is it the least important entertainment skills in the game?

Look I think in the game itself it normally depends on what sort of product you are doing - something like RAW it's super useful.  In general the ultimate aim of the RTG challenge is getting a 100 rated match which means getting there and acting is probably the least important of the performance stats to do that.  Mic skills and charisma get you higher on the card, Menace is super useful in angles and now that eye candy is for everyone early in the game sex appeal can get you over and get some of the better very early game match scores in the right sort of product.  Acting can be used in certain angles but in general it's the most specific and therefore the least broadly useful skill.

[Self]

Maybe there's some research to be done on the new angle system. Previously you specified which stat you're graded on (Microphone, Acting, Menace) but now the terms are more descriptive (Cutting a Promo, Working the Crowd, Character Development). Maybe Acting is a big part of some of those. Maybe it isn't. As you're the booker, I'm sure you could specialise in Acting and use it just like Microphone/Menace/Sex Appeal. You really only need one of those though, and it feels wasteful for try to do several.

Maybe players think of bad WWE sports entertainment segments when they think of 'Acting' and it feels less important than 'Microphone' for those classic promos. 

It also feels like something that wouldn't be important until several years in. You're not going to be called on for dramatic pre-tapes when you're wrestling in front of 20 people. And hopefully once you're profitable enough to afford a big screen, you'll have learned some Acting skills by cutting promos and working crowds with people better and more experienced than you are.