Just started my first RP in this new E-fed...

And my girlfriend is already moaning about it and trying to spoil my mood! FUCKING BITCH!!

There's nothing like that sense of domestic bliss is there?

"Bitches ain't shit but ho's and tricks"

- Mahatma Gandhi

Got a feeling I'm not going to be in this E-fed for long. The admin and the moderator ignore my questions about the fed. They're valid questions as well, such as "Where is this fed based? UK or America, as the shows seem to vary their location from one to the other?" and "Who are the interviewers and backstage staff?" I've asked both those questions, and had both ignored. Oh, and the community of the forums is a little dull. The OOC chat is at a minimum, and It's pretty boring on the forums until people start posting their RPs (which is about 2 days before the deadline). They have two weeks to post their two RPs, but choose to post them both at the last minute.

Do they operate a roleplay limit then, or a "you must post X amount of roleplays in Y time" rule? I hate those. I can't work like that.

They have a limit of two RPs per match, and you have a deadline of Friday for the first RP, and Sunday for the second. Bear in mind that the shows are on Sunday, so people can post their second RP the day the show is supposed to be posted (It doesn't usually get posted until Monday afternoon at the earliest though). Yep, it makes very little sense and gives people the opportunity to post both their RPs very late in the week, even though they have two weeks to post these two RPs up in. Supposedly, you don't have to post a second RP, but you're encouraged to do so.

I always preferred the way we did it with TXA. Write how much/how little you want, your own character development is up to you. The way I see it is that people are only there to have fun and for their own enjoyment. When you start putting restrictions on how much you can contribute, doesn't seem so fun.

Precisely. People need to be able to have fun with it, and placing limits on number, scheduling, or length always seemed to me to be counter-productive to producing a good story and encouraging people to get involved.

I agree with you both, and I think that's why I always lose interest in these feds soon after joining. I liked he TXA, CWA, and TXI! way of doing things. You could do things at your own pace, and not have to work around time and RP limits. Every fed I see now days has these limits and deadlines in place, and the E-fedders of today try their best to use these deadlines to their advantage. All they want to do is win matches, regardless of how they develop a storyline or if they develop one at all. There's no story driven feuds anymore. It's all about racking up the wins and holding the championship belts.

I really do miss the old days when E-fedding was simpler, and in my eyes more effective and a whole lot more fun.

When people became obsessed with winning the matches rather than telling the story, that was always when E-feds ran ito trouble. I think we were very lucky in that we got a good core of people who were actually interested in the process of writing and developing characters, then using them to tell good stories. Of course we had the odd Ian Poole and Joanie Lee, but for each of them there was a Steve Awesome, Justin Marsham, Paul James, Mike Rocket, Myron Fox, Joxide, Giznap, J-Dub, etc etc and that provided the driving momentum.

Mind you, when you look at the wrestling business now, everything is done at the last minute with no real storyline arc, so its hardly surprising that e-feds are following that trend.

The initial launch of TXA was probably my favourite e-fedding period I've been a part of. We had loads of members (even if a few did turn out to be one person), a good OOC forum, that eye-friendly blue colour scheme. I even got Community Gold for that board too with my first Tesco paycheque. It's a shame that board went the way it did.

Hahaha, Ian Poole, what a character. I distinctly remember having to exchange a few *sigh...* emails with him. "Ian...... Just NO"

Does anyone remember the "original" Roller Deuce? He popped up once or twice in TXI! for a few stints. I recall his RP's used to be one long sentence like, "roller deuce's music hits as roller deuce walks out as he walks down the ramp as he gets in the ring. roller deuce grabs a microphone as he begins to speak", although mine weren't a lot better, I used to wonder how his character had so many accolades. I found out a bit later he had legions of e-feds, gave himself all the belts and if anyone joined they got buried.

When I think about it now, we were extremely lucky to have a community of good e-fedders to keep things fresh and ticking over while the less developed of us honed our skills to a decent level.

I think what was great is that we had guys who were willing to adapt and develop as writers. Who were willing to change the way they were doing things, take on new ideas, and produce better stuff as a result. Your writing got SO much better over time, as did Rob's and Wheato's, and Steve's for that matter.

Mine stayed at the same level of mediocrity :0)

But its great that you were willing to put the effort in to do that.

I hate reminiscing, because after you've remembered the good times, you realise how bad the current times are.

Maybe we should all invade this new e-fed of yours in a hostile takeover, keep banging out quality stuff for a couple of months, and force everyone else to change their ways to our style.

Then we can eventually take over the running of the place.

.....oh no, been there, done that.

I think back to the old days, being able to do as much as you want or as little as you want, the freedom was a big gain for the roleplayers and readers. There were some very good days we all had.

I then move forward to the time I spent in XHF, and more importantly to the topic, the end of it. It was then everything changed. A lot of the guys you saw RP'ing were people in and around my age, and all of us had the same problem. Life. Life was beginning to get in the way of everything. To be able to sit down and put the time and effort E-Feds need and deserve wasn't possible on a weekly basis. So people were putting in less shifts, and the places began to die.

The fix? Limits. Nobody really liked it before, and many still don't like it now. However it does offer a way to make things fair on everybody, because lets be honest, it always comes down to being fair. People are naturally competitive, and because of these busy lives, if you can only put in a couple good RP's a week, knowing others can double that, you know you will lose. The only way to eliminate crys of fair withing a competitive e-fed is limits.

Personally, if I were to ever go back to it, it would have to be under limits, because whilst I believe in the storytelling, I'd also want to make a proper go of it, and have the extra drive to do so. Given the choice, ideal world...just like the old days, of course.

On another note, I really am looking to do some RP's here sooner rather than later, its just having the odd hour to really just do it!

Great idea Dave! We can invade and change the name to:

CWA: The 17th Coming

I think Joxide is due a catch-up roleplay soon. It's been closing on a year since the Reunion.

Mjolnir wrote:

Maybe we should all invade this new e-fed of yours in a hostile takeover, keep banging out quality stuff for a couple of months, and force everyone else to change their ways to our style.

Then we can eventually take over the running of the place.

.....oh no, been there, done that.

Only because the owner of that E-fed (If we're talking about the same one) let you...

Seriously though, I'd love for you all to get some storyline going with me in a competitive E-fed. A rebirth of that stable managed my Nathan Wallace would be cool, or something along those lines.

Oh, and Ian Poole... LMAO! I remember Shane Hunt's first match in CWA was against Poole, and it was a squash match in which Shane Hunt destroyed him.

Actually Wheato, I was talking about the CXA, but yes, the RWF would count as well.

And Rob, I can see the point you are making. However, I think its possible to demonstrate fairness in a competitive e-fed without measures which could stifle creativity and freedom. I know it might raise a few eyebrows for me to say this, but I don't think it has to be the case that "more" equals "better" either in number of roleplays or the length of them. To return to Ian Poole - he wrote a large number of roleplays, but they weren't necessarily any good. By contrast I wrote maybe one a week (though I admit they tended to be long). Myron tended to write shorter ones and yet tell a really good story with his characters.

Regardless of whether you have limits or not, fairness really comes down to the person running the fed and taking the decisions being able to see past pure quantity and look at the quality of what is being produced, and how well it tells a story. If you run ac ompetitive fed, you should reward those making the effort to write well every bit as much as those writing often. I do take the point, however, that that doesn't always happen the way it should.

But having said all of this, I think that competitive "I have to win" "I should have won" "I produced X more roleplays than he did" mentality is the problem with e-feds these days. I'm not sure why e-feds have to be competitive in that way at all TBH. Hey, I know I won e-fed titles and I enjoyed the success, but really it was all far more about having fun with the story. It actually amuses me, and I find it ironic, that people obsess so much about winning in e-feds when the very purpose of them is to imitate a "sport" in which there actually is no competition and all the results are pre-determined.

Whilst I agree, the problem is finding the roleplayers who only do it for the enjoyment. They are a rare breed. The motivation to do it is in the winning really, as is with anything people do. I didn't mean to suggest more is better as such, my point was if you had two equally talented guys, if one guy could only get time to do half of the other, he would be penalised and therefore loses. Which is where the appeal for limits comes in, especially as people are so busy nowadays.

But yeah, I'd rather be in the better days, they're just so hard to maintain. I wouldn't be adverse to going somewhere like nCw, as it suits my lifestyle a lot more at present, maybe later in the year when my flat purchase goes through and I'm a lot more settled, we'll see.

Rob, if you join NCW later in the year can you let me know. I may be tempted back into NCW if you and Steve were both there.

Agreed, it is hard to find a group who just want to do it for the enjoyment of telling the story, and as I say I do take you point - I just don't want to also penalise the guy who does have the time and ability to write more and perhaps tell a better story. I like the idea of keeping the options open at both ends. But I agree that for that approach to work, you need to be in an environment where competition doesn't matter as much.

I know I couldn't work in somewhere like nCw, as I would never stick to their rules.

were actually trying something new now.

1 rp for regular weekly matches.
2 rps for ppv matches and grudge matches
3 rps for all title matches.

This way, its less work for the matches that dont mean as much as say a feud blow off or a number one contenders match. And its a little extra work for the matches that have more invested in them.

But, see, 2 roleplays for a PPV or grudge match? Could we really have told that excellent Shand/Awesome story and shown Shand manipulating and pushing Awesome in two roleplays each? Frankly, it would drive me insane to be entering into an angle with someone and feel my hands were tied in that way. Supposing they came out with something to which you could write a really good follow-up which would cap the angle nicely, but you've already used up your two roleplays for the match. To me, that means the angle suffers and isn't as good as it could or should be.

Do you have limits on character development roleplays as well?

This is why the couple of times I've looked at nCw I've decided its not for me. I'm not that sort of writer.

I'd actually like to get back into e-fedding, but more for the writing than the competitiveness. Since I don't watch or follow wrestling much anymore I don't think I could write consistent promos as I just don't have the inspiration but maybe sometime down the line I'd give it another shot. I dunno.

Like Rob said, real life gets in the way, too. I haven't roleplayed actively in a fed for years and I don't think I could make the commitment without becoming disillusioned/going AWOL or something.

I like the sort of thing we did with the reunion - having a show to shoto towards, but we can take our time to get there, do what we want to do, and its over a short set space of time.

Perhaps that's what we need to do - make it an annual reunion show where we catch up with the characters. Allows people to keep their hand in and tell the story, but they don't have to commit huge chunks of time.

In all the feds I've been in over the past few years, they've not had a cap on developmental RPs. You can develop you character to your hearts content, but I don't think the developmental sections are looked at often by anyone. All most E-fedders are into is the competitive side.

I have the problem with two RP limits, where I see something I want to reply to but can't because I've already posted my two RPs. It's annoying, and probably what keeps driving me away from E-feds again and again.

I'm not sure if I'd wanna do the Reuinion again, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it. I just don't know if I'd wanna do it again.

For starters, other than a re-match with My-Ron there isn't much else for Rob to do, it wouldn't make sense to face Shand right now, I know something could be worked out, but yeah, I'm oddly apathetic to it all. I think I'll feel more positive about it once I do the series I have planned, by that time I should be moved into my flat too...or close to it anyway!

Development is a funny one, I'm a fan on it, obviously, but not too much of it, I think it's only needed once in a while, and done as a proper aside thing, which is why XHF suited me, as that was the general feeling over there. With nCw though, I'd be disappointed if there was no encouragement for it at all.

If we did another Reunion I'm sure Joxide could take a few minutes off from current endeavours to kick Rob Arnold in the shins for 10 minutes

In NCW, you can put developmental stuff in your competitive RPs, but from my experiences there it seems frowned upon. If you don't put enough competitive stuff in your RPs you never get anywhere in the fed.

basically....

the limit is based on competitive rps.

at the end of the day its still a game and even though winning matches and titles arent everything...its still pretty fun. to determine the winner of a non worked match, we go off the two competitive rps. It's basically to avoid the one thing i hated in xhf. you write a decent rp, go off somewhere and when you comeback your opponent who has no life just buried you with five more rps. The rp limit just keeps a fairness factor when deciding a winner.

but there is a developmental board and in that there is no limit. Got more to say or write about one week? Overflow it into the devo section. Busy week? You only really have to do one or two rps.

Damn it! I'm really tempted to join NCW again now. I've got Crystal Hilton's handler saying I should return, and I've got people on here talking about NCW. I've even seen someone in NCW who I'd happily feud with.

I think you should mate, in your position I probably would too!

No, I wouldn't. They are all scum and unworthy of the supreme talents of a former TXA star.

I wouldn't either.

REAL cool kids make their own feds. You could call it Wheato's Wrestling Federation (or WWF for short)

I need Chi back so we can make CDW again! Our wrestling fed ruled.

I remember Crimson Dawn Wrestling. It lasted a while then if I recall correctly, Brummy got butthurt that you used his BCWA board to host the fed and deleted it all

Yeah, that's right. We were starting to do really well with it, when he did that. What a twat!

CDW got Keeling'd

Shame really. I enjoyed running that place with Chi.