Question about Road Agent Notes

[Feral Fox]

There are 3 road agent notes that i'm curious about, Protect, Script, and Overbook. When should i use these and on what kind of wrestler should i be using them on?

[Ladz]

[QUOTE=Feral Fox;183062]There are 3 road agent notes that i'm curious about, Protect, Script, and Overbook. When should i use these and on what kind of wrestler should i be using them on?[/QUOTE] The bad ones

[D-Lyrium]

Protect means that the worker is kept out of the serious action as much as possible, and not allowed enough ring time to let their weaknesses show. It's mostly used for workers with very poor stamina, or very poor in-ring stats in general, in tag team matches. You often see it in action in tag team matches, where the stronger partner fights the majority of the match, and the weaker partner has a few minutes of offense and then tags out again. Sometimes it's for psychology reasons, but some times it's to give the weaker worker some exposure without exposing his obvious weaknesses. It's also used in three/four way matches, where one worker gets put through a table or badly double-teamed or something, to give him a reason to be out of the match for a long period. Script is for when all/the majority of workers involved have poor psychology. The Road Agent takes over the scripting of the match, to make sure everyone knows what they're doing, so as to minimise the amount of blown spots, workers not knowing what to do, and doing things that ruin the story of the match - such as having their leg worked for ten or fifteen minutes, then running around as if nothing had happened (like RVD ALWAYS does, in EVERY match. "zOMG, my leg is in pain..." *runs to turnbuckle, jumps to the top of it* "FROG SPLASH OMGOMG. Oh yeah, my leg is supposed to hurt. Ooops."). That's not a particularly good example, because you can't really counter that with scripting, but that's the general idea. Preventing bad things from happening due to poor psychology. For a real example of absolutely dire psychology, I reffer you to a certain Raw intergender Tag match featuring Bradshaw and Trish vs Nowinski and Jackie Gayda. In practice is best to let the road agents script matches between two young wrestlers with poor psychology (if one worker has good psychology, he can call the match himself most of the time). The opposite of Scripting the whole match, is calling it entirely in the ring, which if both wrestlers have great psychology, can lead to a better match than they'd normally put on. The downside is, it can also go horribly wrong. You often hear the matches being called on TV, especially by Triple H (not that he's especially bad at it, you just tend to hear his calls more than others). The most infamous example of this was in a match involving Jeff Hardy and Rico a few years back. You blatant hear Rico yelling "For ****'s sake, Jeff!" when Hardy is late for a spot, leaving Rico standing on the turnbuckle looking stupid. The latter isn't really "calling the match", but breaking kayfabe to yell at a wrestler when a call goes wrong ¬_¬. Some calls aren't verbal, but using signals. I've noticed quite a bit in TNA recently that certain workers use certain signals to call certain spots. Billy Gunn will slap his thigh when he's about to hit a Fameasser (or whatever it's called now); which is both a signal to the worker concerned, and a signal to get the crowd going. Overbooking is the Paul Heyman trademark, where you have two workers that are very boring in the ring, so you throw as many twists and spots and weapons shots, blood and run-ins into the match, to distract the audience from the fact that they two wrestlers blatantly can't work a match. The idea is to cause as much chaos as possible. The down side is, you can cause too much chaos, and lose the plot entirely, thus confusing the crowd and ruining the match. It's best used when you need to use two wrestlers, but they suck. The resulting match will generally be a tad better than a match they'd normally put on. But it can still all go horribly wrong.

[T-Jay]

Nicely done D-Lyrium..... mind you Billy Gunn has been doing that for years.... way back since the Original DX days.... probably before that.... there are many that do similar things though....

[Remianen]

hehe leave it to D-Lyrium to notice the signalling system. Another good example of matches called in the ring was the Elimination Chamber from a years back with HBK, Cena, etc in it. At several junctures, I saw HBK calling spots to Cena. Also, usually when you see two workers bring their heads together (in conspiratorial whisper fashion), they're discussing what spots are due next. As for the script note, in my view, it should be used for any match in which at least half of the participants don't have at least B Psychology. So 1 person in a singles match, 2 people in a tag match, 3 in a 6 man tag, etc. When I take chances going against that rule (except with dark matches), things tend to 'go horribly wrong'. The protect note is awesome once you know the general idea behind it. Take this example: Dan Stone Jr vs Giant Redwood, who gets the protect note? :p When I'm running NOTBPW, there's only like 3 people who don't get a protect note when working their top folks (and those 3 people happen to BE their top folks). Protect combine with 'Keep Strong' can help elevate a young talent by turning what should be a totally one-sided, boring squash match, into something that actually captures the fans' attention ("Hey, this no name rookie is going toe to toe with SEAN MCFLY and actually doing something!"). And D-Lyrium's RVD example was great. As much as he sells his finisher actually hurting HIM, you'd think he could sell leg damage a bit better than shaking it all off and launching into his trademark spots with no difficulty.

[mvargus]

another good example of the calling in the ring is to watch before suplexes. Almost all the wrestlers have some kind of motion they will do to let the one being thriwn know the timing. Also headlocks are often used to help work out the sequence. Watch during a match and usually during a headlock one or both wrestlers is talking.