Booking an E-Fed

[amsterDAN]

Dudes. So lately I've been gearing up to start running my first publicly viewable e-fed, and figured it'd be a good time to seek some counsel. I'm not a complete and utter novice to booking, as I used to run a bunch of those old-timey RP-based e-feds with awful Angelfire sites and ad-infested free forums back in the 90s and early aughts. But this will be my first FirePro-driven e-fed and since I can't just write whatever the hell I want anymore, I was wondering if any of you more experienced e-fed owners have any tips, tricks, and pointers for how to work within the limitations of the game and make an engaging e-fed.

One thing I particularly seem to struggle with is keeping my champions relevant and giving them work between title defenses. I don't like my champions defending their belts more frequently than about once a month, and it's those weeks between title defenses that give me a hard time. It feels like whenever someone wins a title in my world, they just drop off the map for a few weeks until their next defense. Lately, the new in-ring interview mod has been helping me out tremendously here since I can at least give champs a weekly appearance and trash-talk session, but I still feel like apart from that all I can really do is throw singles champions into meaningless tag matches to give them work. I hate putting singles champs into non-title singles matches, so that's just a no-go for me. I had an idea to make a referee copy of a champion so he could special guest ref his own number one contender match. Obviously I can't go pulling that trick too often or it'll lose all its impact, but that's the sort of ideas I'm looking for to keep champions in the spotlight without making them constantly defend their belts or work a ton of meaningless matches. How do you schedule your champions' time between title defenses?

Apart from that specific question, I was just looking for loose little bits of wisdom, maybe just a brief rundown of how you like to go about business with your e-fed. How far in advance do you like to plan things? How do you like to determine your number one contenders? And so on and so forth. And anyone else looking for e-fed advice, feel free to tack on your questions too. 

[takuan]

I generally use tag matches to give singles champions something to do, but the key is to make them Not Meaningless. Have them team with their friends and allies, put your champion and another singles wrestler against the people they're currently feuding with to help build the singles matches. Just try to find some connection between people to try to justify the match.

If they're defending their titles once a month, assuming you're running weekly, you can run 1 tag match, 1 title defense, and 2 promos, and that can fill a month.

[LankyLefty17]

Agree with Takuan. Generally establishing the champs next opponent and booking tags, having them both cut promos in between big shows has been my general strategy. My current (and first) champ Doc Wyatt generally hangs around the house shows- maybe to cut a promo, maybe to get involved and interfere in a match.

My general strategy- I dont book winners, I let the matches play out and create story lines accordingly. I will often book with a direction in mind, but with "options" on where to go depending on who wins. This lets me sit back and be a fan as well as control the direction at the same time.

My only other advice- don't book more than what you think you can keep up with. I think the easiest mistake you can make is trying to do elaborate weekly shows with promos every other day. This is just asking for burnout, and you wont make it more than a couple months (unless you have a ton of free time, then by all means, have at it :)). I stick to monthly shows, and bi-weekly house shows, both with relatively small cards. The pacing works to where I have fun and don't feel like its too much work to keep up with.

[amsterDAN]

Oct 10, 2018 17:48:27 GMT LankyLefty17 said:

Agree with Takuan. Generally establishing the champs next opponent and booking tags, having them both cut promos in between big shows has been my general strategy. My current (and first) champ Doc Wyatt generally hangs around the house shows- maybe to cut a promo, maybe to get involved and interfere in a match.

My general strategy- I dont book winners, I let the matches play out and create story lines accordingly. I will often book with a direction in mind, but with "options" on where to go depending on who wins. This lets me sit back and be a fan as well as control the direction at the same time.

My only other advice- don't book more than what you think you can keep up with. I think the easiest mistake you can make is trying to do elaborate weekly shows with promos every other day. This is just asking for burnout, and you wont make it more than a couple months (unless you have a ton of free time, then by all means, have at it :)). I stick to monthly shows, and bi-weekly house shows, both with relatively small cards. The pacing works to where I have fun and don't feel like its too much work to keep up with.

 Particularly pleased to hear from you, Lefty! For my money, you got the best e-fed going, it's one of the only ones I properly follow. Avoiding burnout is definitely a big concern for me because that's why I stopped running roleplay feds in the first place, writing elaborate results ended up consuming my whole life until I just quit. The reason I haven't been running an e-fed already is because I've had trouble finding the time to commit to it, but I believe I've found a format that will work well for me: short cards of 2 to 4 matches each week (I was thinking like Lucha Underground, or AXS's abridged coverage of NJPW) and a monthly supercard for title matches and feud resolutions. I'm actually considering running it like a little mini-series instead of a continuously rolling e-fed, like a 6-to-12-episode season that closely follows a handful of angles and has a somewhat tightly-plotted story arch. 

And I totally agree with your strategy of not booking winners. Even though I have the match booking mod I feel almost honor bound to not use it unless I absolutely must, like I could not live with any other outcome. I've found a lot of joy in having to explain away the unexpected outcome of a match through storylines; to me that's what running a fictitious universe in Fire Pro is all about. I know my edits well enough that I generally have a decent idea who will win a match, or know when it's gonna be a good ol' 50-50 shoot, so I try to book accordingly, like throwing slightly weaker opponents at new champions to extend their reigns (while not being at all upset if someone shockingly steals the belt), and ramping up the level of competition as title reigns grow longer. 

[LankyLefty17]

Oct 10, 2018 18:12:00 GMT amsterDAN said:

Oct 10, 2018 17:48:27 GMT LankyLefty17 said:

Agree with Takuan. Generally establishing the champs next opponent and booking tags, having them both cut promos in between big shows has been my general strategy. My current (and first) champ Doc Wyatt generally hangs around the house shows- maybe to cut a promo, maybe to get involved and interfere in a match.

My general strategy- I dont book winners, I let the matches play out and create story lines accordingly. I will often book with a direction in mind, but with "options" on where to go depending on who wins. This lets me sit back and be a fan as well as control the direction at the same time.

My only other advice- don't book more than what you think you can keep up with. I think the easiest mistake you can make is trying to do elaborate weekly shows with promos every other day. This is just asking for burnout, and you wont make it more than a couple months (unless you have a ton of free time, then by all means, have at it :)). I stick to monthly shows, and bi-weekly house shows, both with relatively small cards. The pacing works to where I have fun and don't feel like its too much work to keep up with.

 Particularly pleased to hear from you, Lefty! For my money, you got the best e-fed going, it's one of the only ones I properly follow. Avoiding burnout is definitely a big concern for me because that's why I stopped running roleplay feds in the first place, writing elaborate results ended up consuming my whole life until I just quit. The reason I haven't been running an e-fed already is because I've had trouble finding the time to commit to it, but I believe I've found a format that will work well for me: short cards of 2 to 4 matches each week (I was thinking like Lucha Underground, or AXS's abridged coverage of NJPW) and a monthly supercard for title matches and feud resolutions. I'm actually considering running it like a little mini-series instead of a continuously rolling e-fed, like a 6-to-12-episode season that closely follows a handful of angles and has a somewhat tightly-plotted story arch. 

And I totally agree with your strategy of not booking winners. Even though I have the match booking mod I feel almost honor bound to not use it unless I absolutely must, like I could not live with any other outcome. I've found a lot of joy in having to explain away the unexpected outcome of a match through storylines; to me that's what running a fictitious universe in Fire Pro is all about. I know my edits well enough that I generally have a decent idea who will win a match, or know when it's gonna be a good ol' 50-50 shoot, so I try to book accordingly, like throwing slightly weaker opponents at new champions to extend their reigns (while not being at all upset if someone shockingly steals the belt), and ramping up the level of competition as title reigns grow longer. 

Wow thanks man, I really appreciate it, and I'm glad you're enjoying the fed.  And I totally agree- I feel like if you understand your edits and test sim matchups, you get a good enough sense of how matches will play out.  And if they don't?  Well that works out to be a fun twist to write myself out of.  I had absolutely no plans to book my avatar into a title match last month (that edit is really meant more to put over main event guys) but the #1 contender match had such a good finish I just rolled with it, and I really like the overall story that came with it (seemed oddly fitting that a critical let me write him off for a few months).

I've enjoyed your stuff in the creative section going back to the old site- really curious to see what you put together once you're ready to launch.

[Senator Phillips]

Lefty's advice is golden. I'll throw a few simple bullet points together on what I'd recommend, with not a little overlap with his advice:

-Book primarily for yourself
Don't go out of your way to try to get audiences/followers. If you're enjoying what you're doing, and notify the community, you'll get them at some point.

-Always have a plan B if you're using "live" results
Already been covered, but I try to never book myself into a hole, if it can happen, it will, so I always ensure that I'm ready for alternate results to what I wanted. Best example here is that I once booked a 15 minute Armbar challenge between Thiago Gracie and Stanford Bradley, Thiago being a ground ace, and Stanford being a chump. Thiago HAD to win that, but he almost let Bradley survive. That was bad booking.

-Rotate your roster from time to time, and don't be afraid to book outsiders at times.
You don't want to have a case of having the same matches over and over, and it's nice to be able to place your fed in the context of others in the community for a shared experience. If you have an injury system, that can help, too, in terms of mixing up the roster from time to time.

-Figure out ways to make your fed stand out
Figure out what you do best, whether it be writing excellent promos, great production values, commentary, creating interesting characters who sim well. Figure out a niche that sets your fed apart, Hybrid S3 has the vintage shoot style setting, Romantic Misery has The Pen, a fed set in a prison with comic book promos, ZIP Japan has a decade plus old legacy and great edits, and so on and so on. And you don't have to go out of your way to stand out right off the bat, either, just finding the favored style of your edits can go a long way.

A whole lot of prattle without too much cohesion, I'm guessing, but I figured I'd throw my two cents in the ring, anyway.

[xstraightedgedavex]

Hi, I'm running a Njpw fed with the current roster & a couple of personal faves thrown in.

As mentioned above I let the results play out for themselves.

I keep it simple with shows, usually one or two road to shows filled with multi man tags & the occasional young lion singles match with about 6 matches per 'Road to show.'

I try to give the tag matches meaning by booking the people who have matches on the big show, tag matches against each other with their respective team members. This is made easier with Njpw being based around factions.

I started by crowning The iwgp Heavyweight champion & tag team champions via 8 man & 8 teams respectively

Then set up matches for my first big event of the year (New beginning) Using results in the tournaments.
I've since had a new japan cup & one other big show & now I'm more comfortable I'm adding a jr Heavyweight championship via a tournament.

[DM_PSX]

Added to the above^

Now that the run ins are working, make sure to have your wrestlers properly factioned up, and with the right alignments. They often come out in costume 4, so make sure those are street clothed, or whatever state you want them to be in when they run in. Clothes work best, because they don't have a sudden era change in the middle of the show.

Use proper referees for different scenarios. My old post is gone, but there is a difference between an opening match ref, a main event ref(lots of leeway), and an authority figure referee (no leeway, kills the heat). I just recorded a whole PPV for a forum I post on and I found that the best ref settings for that scenario were fast everything, but slow on the things that let the heels get heat. No one really wants to watch 20+ minute fire pro videos.

Make your heels actually wrestle like heels, not just their persona. And furthermore, give everyone their proper roles. Wrestling is an ensemble cast theater production. You need your hero, your villian, your cowardly heels, your comic relief, etc... Your top 3 heels and top 3 faces should still all differ from each other. That gives (3x3) 9 different match types before RNG sinks in. Not just a half dozen bad asses following the exact supposed 'best fire pro logic'.

Same with tags. Heel tag teams keep the match in their corner, do lots of beatdowns, make frequent tags, cheat etc... Face teams have a starter who takes a huge beating until finally making a hot tag at the last minute to a fresh guy who comes in and cleans house. Have a tag specialist ref that will let the heels get heat, but count quick falls so these don't become 60+ minute broken records.

Buy a cheap set of gaming dice (D4,D6,D8,D10,D20), or use an app (real ones are funner) and use DND system to check for things. Roll that dice, then add the wrestler's skill to determine the outcome of something.

Did you get critical'd? Roll a d6 and add the durability of that body part as a bonus. Number to beat is 5.
BODY PART WEAK = -1
BODY PART NORMAL = 0
BODY PART STRONG = +1
So if (D6 ROLL) + (DURABILITY MODIFIER) => 5, no injury.

If there is an injury, roll another dice and add the modifier. Use a different dice depending on how much less than 5 the above roll was. If it was 4 use a D4, 3 use a D6, 2 use a D8, 1 use a D10. That is how many months or weeks they are out.

Did someone cut a promo? Use a dice + their charisma score.
E -2
D -1
C +0
B +1
A +2
S +3

Also, don't be afraid to fudge the numbers up in the name of improving the drama. It's DnD tradition. Maybe that injury just leads to your wrestler being a manager for a few weeks, or not being tagged in as a precaution. A promo can be so bad that it becomes a meme and the wrestler can ride that wave. Some people get over by sliding down the ramp and going under the ring ;).

You don't need to run a show every week! Just do the important shows. Post a paragraph of text above each match video to let us know how we got there. Use screenshots maybe to show off key moments from the build up. Doing every show just leads to burn out, and requires too much commitment from viewers.

[WMDBFX]

WMD unsanctioned shows was mostly created as an " alternative " outlet for other edits that weren't booked by current bookers during the FPCPP days to showcase themselves. It is in reality a way for me to help to ease the bookers burden at that point as the shows card were still FPCPP booker approved at the time despite it was being labelled as unsanctioned.

Then the separate shows evolved into a " rebel " fed within FPCPP / WARENA universe going against them. Again, it was meant to help with continuity of storylines when we had that void of shows. I took over responsibility of booking the ANARCHY title and made it the focus of the fed and drew inspiration from how Shane Douglas kicked off ECW and how Kevin Owens carried the NXT title when he faced Cena treating Cena's championship title as merely a lower level title compared to the NXT title.

I would like to share that during that run ( working on kicking start the new set of shows.. real life sux ) I used a common theme and shared it with collaborators and at the same time are open to their ideas on making it work. I would draft storyline like I would draft comicbook storylines with an arc that first began with establishing the ANARCHY title the ANARCHY games and then later it's current and longest champion Mick Garland. Then I would use the struggle of his challengers trying to challenge him as focus when I was low on ideas for him.

From there, other storylines and booking opportunities appeared ( sharing talent with Dragon Azteca, WMD's fued with Eisenheim, Flippo Jaeger's undefeated streak, Ogopogo's becoming the darling / Daniel Bryan of the shows and eventual fued angle with Vulcan, Bai Hu and NDI's return, Kristofferson's fight against android working in the business etc ).

Working a schedule of 5 " weekly " shows and 1 " big show " every cycle is murder to your creativity. Be prepared for clash of ideas and always ready plan B or C when you are working other edits handlers and always keep a handful of low card edits for thow away matches and card fillers. Having their handlers input, promos helped a lot in the booking direction.

Just adding to what is already said and shared..

[Spunk]

Be flexible.

Have a general idea of what you want to accomplish, but be prepared to do whatever works best.

Know your characters. This is a big one. If you're doing straightforward wrestling where who-beats-who matters most and you aren't planning on doing much character work, that's fine, sometimes through sheer force of will you can get characteristics to come from these situations. But knowing who your characters should be in advance plays a big part in how you build your shows. Does this character have a weird quirk that they do in the ring? Is there something about their life that would appeal to an audience? Try to think of them as three-dimensional people, not just sprites on a screen doing wrestling moves.

Remember that wrestling shows are unique in that you get to tell multiple stories in a night. Try to think up something, even if it's little and vague, for everyone. You'll always have your main stories to focus on, but don't forget the rest of your show as well.

As for keeping your champions involved and relevant, as many have said, tag matches work wonders. I also always like to have someone aligned with at least one other person, not just for tag matches, but for situations where a challenger or opponent can go after the friend. It helps to flesh things out.

The best advice that I can give you is to do what you enjoy. Look around and see what other people are doing, if you like it, cool, try to do something similar, if not, you learned something from it. Figure out what you want to gain from this and go from there.

[Aris]

Oct 10, 2018 15:13:45 GMT amsterDAN said:

Dudes. So lately I've been gearing up to start running my first publicly viewable e-fed, and figured it'd be a good time to seek some counsel. I'm not a complete and utter novice to booking, as I used to run a bunch of those old-timey RP-based e-feds with awful Angelfire sites and ad-infested free forums back in the 90s and early aughts. But this will be my first FirePro-driven e-fed and since I can't just write whatever the hell I want anymore, I was wondering if any of you more experienced e-fed owners have any tips, tricks, and pointers for how to work within the limitations of the game and make an engaging e-fed.

One thing I particularly seem to struggle with is keeping my champions relevant and giving them work between title defenses. I don't like my champions defending their belts more frequently than about once a month, and it's those weeks between title defenses that give me a hard time. It feels like whenever someone wins a title in my world, they just drop off the map for a few weeks until their next defense. Lately, the new in-ring interview mod has been helping me out tremendously here since I can at least give champs a weekly appearance and trash-talk session, but I still feel like apart from that all I can really do is throw singles champions into meaningless tag matches to give them work. I hate putting singles champs into non-title singles matches, so that's just a no-go for me. I had an idea to make a referee copy of a champion so he could special guest ref his own number one contender match. Obviously I can't go pulling that trick too often or it'll lose all its impact, but that's the sort of ideas I'm looking for to keep champions in the spotlight without making them constantly defend their belts or work a ton of meaningless matches. How do you schedule your champions' time between title defenses?

Apart from that specific question, I was just looking for loose little bits of wisdom, maybe just a brief rundown of how you like to go about business with your e-fed. How far in advance do you like to plan things? How do you like to determine your number one contenders? And so on and so forth. And anyone else looking for e-fed advice, feel free to tack on your questions too. 

With your champions dropping off of the map, that can actually be a good thing and can be used to sell their injuries from that defense. If I did a weekly show as opposed to a Road-To format, I would do that, especially considering the almost King's Road aspect to my world title scene (think being put over in defeat.) The Road-To format also explains what the champions do in between defenses, tag matches against the factions of their challengers (I agree with Takuan here), even at the PPVs due to the Title Set system of those PPVs. 

I plan things out most of the time between one and 18 months in advance, I remember I once planned a entire storyline out over 2 years before I had to scrap it. Number one contenders are determined by challenges, defeating a champion, or in rare cases, real-world occurrences (this was how my Omega/Cody trilogy started)

[thelodger]

This is super useful, folks. Thank you so much.

[Deleted]

I've always wanted to do an e-fed, but with massive time constraints on my life I feel I cannot put too much content out there apart from a small series of shows over the course of a year.

However, with so much good stuff already out there the only idea I have is doing a comedy based e-fed that only runs for a handful of episodes. And I'll only use a very small roster of 8 edits and build it up from there when I can.

I have around 60 edits ready to be ported from the first GBA Fire Pro(I've only ported 3 so far) to World, but they are not exactly comedic. At the moment I'm just researching the idea.

This is a great thread.

[TheDenizen]

my personal fave way of keeping a champ busy without having to book him in a bunch of meaningless non-title matches is to use my "match archive". Since I've been running my e-fed for so long, I have tons of retired edits...so if I have a current champ who was around back in the day, I'll showcase him in a match "from the tape library/archives" against someone who is retired. That way if they win, you can sell it as "even back as a young lion, they showed the spirit that made them champ today", but if they lose, it's no big deal.

Of course not everyone has the luxury of 13+ years of back story to draw on, but there you go.

Also, booking singles champs in a tag team match never hurts if you want to keep him visible on the card, especially against a team which includes one of the guys he's currently feuding with.

[Pandakid]

I'm gonna chime in for the always have a back up. No matter how many times the person you're pushing wins in testing they'll lose when you're live. If you go the live route