Our next guest blogger is none other than Al Larcher. Say what you will about him, but he's one of the most old-school guys that there is in PTC-land, and he's certainly not afraid to tell you what's on his mind, especially in the following entry. I must put the disclaimer out there, these opinions are all his own. They don't necessarily reflect what I believe in full (although I find myself saying "hell motherfucking yes" at a few of these passages). So, without further ado...
For the Blog
by Al Larcher, special guest to RRoaEL
A hobby of hypersensitive hypocritical computer addicted adults has over run a hobby that used to flow with imagination and creativity. A game that took so many of us out of reality and into this world of wrestling most of us grew up with, has been replaced by a fucking library. Oh and not a very good one at that. As a matter of fact its more like the bargain bin of Harry’s Book store. Sure you may find a steal if you dig deep enough but that’s a lot of shit to dig though just to find that one gem.
Most of the writing out there is boring, repetitive, and just flat out bad. Oh, do I have your attention now? Hello, I’m Mr. Williams aka Hoyt aka Duke aka Al aka Asshole aka The Malice Man aka the straight shooter aka Karma aka Aldo aka Alvis aka the guy you love to hate.
Somebody called me an Internet heel which made me laugh. I don’t seek out trouble. I just don’t like to curtail the truth and, if that makes me a bad guy then I am what I am. As a matter of fact I removed myself from the general e-wrestling discussion in PTC well over two years ago. As mama once said if you don’t have anything nice to say go buy an ice cream cone. Well hell, I’m all out of ice cream and mama’s dead so listen up to what I have to say. I’ve been in this hobby for over 12 years consistently. I’ve been fired once and that was by Pete and PRIME which is enough for me to say to hell with the game. Am I a grumpy cynical jag off? You bet. But what I say is truth.
There used to be an excitement that went along with the hobby. If you were home and you rped or posted something occ you would find yourself hitting refresh every five minutes to make sure you didn’t miss anything. Guys ribbed other guys, rps were answered with other rps, and community was vibrant and real.
Nothing was off limits either as guys took us from space to hell and back again. The only rule was respect the other characters right to be that character. In other words don’t use something that isn’t yours regardless if its another character or somebody else’s writing. It wasn’t out of the question to have a guy vaporize on a show as long as everybody was ok with it. Yet even with this free range, the game was grounded in realism.
The only goal back then was to have fun and create something in the process that we the players in that fed enjoyed. The federation was a lump of clay and we all had a hand in crafting something, yet never knowing what it was we were making. E Pluribus Unum the Masonic motto of the United State translated from Latin means, “One of Many” also holds true to our hobby.
Yet today the hobby is filled with well organized and well meaning fed heads who lack any semblance of creativity. Oh sure, a few exist but they are few and far between. Nobody is willing to take chances anymore and have fun because it may GOD FORBID disrupt their four month lay out. Give me a break, hell give us all a break. Imagine if sex had to be that rigid and planned out?
Where are the matches in shopping malls? Where are the matches that take us beyond where a real fed can go? Where are the space hookers in bras? Where is are the chance that we just have to follow? Stifled and simple not in the plans.
PRIME is a great example of a fed that was cutting edge and care free. It did what it needed to do, not to impress anybody but those with in it’s wall’s who were having fun. It allowed me to grow my character and understand who my character was. The talent was always’s there but soon the names moved in, and PRIME skyrocketed. Then Sebs had to move on with his life, and PRIME was handed off. Now it has all the names yet it just seems to be going through the motions to get the shows up on time instead of having fun and bringing us something fresh.
Now I respect that its a double edged sword, where if the shows are late the fun starts to fade fast. But for Christ sake I beg all the fed heads to relax and go back to have fun and creating fresh ideas rather then just existing.
A 312 page book is fairly average for a professional writer. Yet in today’s game the average rp is about 6 pages, at about 1 per week. That’s 312 pages of writing a year. Guess what, only about 4 guys in the game are capable of consistently writing that much material that it could be published. YET EVERYBODY IS TRYING.
What you are writing is probably not very good. You may disagree, and what is good is in the eye’s of the beholder. But the fact is it probably isn’t very good. However I’m willing to bet you're a creative person who can produce something that is entertaining. AHHHH entertaining!! That is what’s been lost in the writing.
Last night I saw The Good Shepherd which was a two and half hour snorefest. Great actors, a long and presumably well written script, and Robert DeNiro directing. So what went wrong? It was simply not entertaining. I sat there for the two and half hours and I have to admit what I followed as far as the story goes, was interesting, but definitely not entertaining. I bet Rocky which has less stars, less script, and less budget is probably far more entertaining.
To entertain dosn’t mean to make laugh but rather to provoke an enjoyable emotion. Old Yeller makes me cry yet it’s enjoyable. High Noon has no humor, a predictable ending, and story we’ve all seen before, however its one of my favorite movies. A football game is enjoyable and entertaining. STOP TRYING TO BE WHAT YOU'RE NOT. Shoot to be entertaining not a writer and you will do so much better.
The problem I find with most of the RPing in e-land is the characters are there, the words are there, but the entertainment aspect isn’t. Dude, I bet your girlfriend’s diary is more interesting and enjoyable then what you are producing. Why? Real life is fascinating and with the ability to exaggerate and expand, it becomes even more fascinating. The best stuff I’ve read in e-wrestling comes from truth stretched by an imagination. Never from an imagination by itself.
The biggest void in our hobby comes from this isolationist approach to our writing. We now tell solo story’s that lack interaction in a hobby based on playing a role in a world created by another person playing a role. Instead we just play with ourselves then masturbate over our work. Great. So really e-wrestling has turned into writers' guild.
My last bitch and moan before I go off to masturbate since that sounds like a good idea is our lack of criticism. Nobody is allowed to say anything negative about anybody else’s stuff, since it came from their heart and god forbid we offend them in the process and make them feel bad. So instead nobody says anything good or bad about anybody else’s stuff, since it came from their heart and god forbid we offend them in the process and make somebody feel bad. So once again we move toward isolationism instead of community.
Its a shame but then again what do I know I’m just one guy with one opinion.
=w=
Showing posts with label the old school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the old school. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Happy Festivus: The Airing of Grievances
It's late December again, and you know what that means... Christmas Festivus for the rest of us! Yes, for a second year, I will air a grievance in the manner that Jerry Stiller's character on Seinfeld has laid out, and this year, that grievance is the shoddy treatment of the wrestling promo RP, specifically in the PTC community.
It seems that there's a condescending air and this insidious undercurrent of venom when it comes to the traditional wrestling promo. It's like that if you do that kind of thing, or if you're in a fed where that's the common practice, you're not as evolved as other e-fedders are, and those places should be looked down upon. To tap into themes that my guest bloggers have been exploring, it's like there are two different games nowadays. The PTC game has been hijacked by writers, while wrestling fans still have control of FW. The writers believe that "trash talk" is uncivilized and better left to special events, fun things that have no bearing on fed matters, like what's going on here.
Because it's now all about the writing, about crafting these fine stories, the art of the promo, at least in RP form, isn't really considered as much an art as it is something you do on the side. If you ask most people where "trash talk" or a wrestling promo belongs, it's on a show write-up. That's where wrestlers cut their promos in real life, right?
But if you look at some of these show write-ups, you aren't going to find a whole lot of promos. Outside of a few people (the lads in Fuck You, Darcy Crisis and Jack Murphy for example... all of them cut in-ring promos and are damn good at it, if you ask me), no one really uses segment work to cut promos on people. They're for the most part backstage segments used to futher storylines.
So if promos have no place in RPs, and people feel compelled not to do them on write-ups, where do they belong? Surely, you're not going to cut out the time-honored tradition of laying the verbal smackdown on your opponents completely, right? I mean, that's half of what wrestling is about. Half the time, you're talking smack on your opponent and the other half, you're in the ring beating up on your opponent. Okay, maybe those numbers are a bit skewed nowadays, seeing that there are plenty of backstage segments, skits and angles that populate wrestling television. Still though, the art of the promo has not been lost. I caught the last hour of Smackdown this past Friday and I saw JBL deliver a fine promo against Teddy Long. People still do it in real life.
Plus... if something is undeniably more fun, why stop doing it? I hear from people all the time that "I wish there was more of a harkening back to the old-school" or "that trash talk thread is the most fun I've had in awhile." This is a hobby... shouldn't it be fun? Why should we turn our noses up to the promo when you can get into it so much? Who cares if the writing isn't as good as if you're doing a zomg important story?
Once again, I can't stress enough that I don't think what most of PTC does for RPs is bad. I like that style and I think it has a place. I was talking to Dave Cook, Jason Snow's handler, last night, and he said that the PTC style of RPing helps people with their writing. I agree with that. I'm very interested in reading stories about wrestlers outside of the arena setting. I like writing those kinds of things too. It has a place.
I also don't think all of PTC thinks the way I described above. I mean, why else would Nova compete in NFW, and why would Pete grade a Lindsay Troy wrestling promo on the same grade as something such as a VJ masterful story epic? There isn't a total disdain for the promo. But it's there in an enclave of the community, and it's present enough to rear its ugly head.
Look, I'm not saying that wrestling promos should be instituted in place of backstage segments and non-traditional RPs. I'm just saying that non-traditional RPs shouldn't be done in lieu of wrestling promos either. There has to be a balance. This hobby has to have some kind of connection to wrestling, and it can't just be through wrestling matches. The spirit of the promo is the thing that gives eW its soul, in my opinion. To take it away is to strip the hobby of its essence.
And stripping the hobby of its essence is a major grievance to me.
It seems that there's a condescending air and this insidious undercurrent of venom when it comes to the traditional wrestling promo. It's like that if you do that kind of thing, or if you're in a fed where that's the common practice, you're not as evolved as other e-fedders are, and those places should be looked down upon. To tap into themes that my guest bloggers have been exploring, it's like there are two different games nowadays. The PTC game has been hijacked by writers, while wrestling fans still have control of FW. The writers believe that "trash talk" is uncivilized and better left to special events, fun things that have no bearing on fed matters, like what's going on here.
Because it's now all about the writing, about crafting these fine stories, the art of the promo, at least in RP form, isn't really considered as much an art as it is something you do on the side. If you ask most people where "trash talk" or a wrestling promo belongs, it's on a show write-up. That's where wrestlers cut their promos in real life, right?
But if you look at some of these show write-ups, you aren't going to find a whole lot of promos. Outside of a few people (the lads in Fuck You, Darcy Crisis and Jack Murphy for example... all of them cut in-ring promos and are damn good at it, if you ask me), no one really uses segment work to cut promos on people. They're for the most part backstage segments used to futher storylines.
So if promos have no place in RPs, and people feel compelled not to do them on write-ups, where do they belong? Surely, you're not going to cut out the time-honored tradition of laying the verbal smackdown on your opponents completely, right? I mean, that's half of what wrestling is about. Half the time, you're talking smack on your opponent and the other half, you're in the ring beating up on your opponent. Okay, maybe those numbers are a bit skewed nowadays, seeing that there are plenty of backstage segments, skits and angles that populate wrestling television. Still though, the art of the promo has not been lost. I caught the last hour of Smackdown this past Friday and I saw JBL deliver a fine promo against Teddy Long. People still do it in real life.
Plus... if something is undeniably more fun, why stop doing it? I hear from people all the time that "I wish there was more of a harkening back to the old-school" or "that trash talk thread is the most fun I've had in awhile." This is a hobby... shouldn't it be fun? Why should we turn our noses up to the promo when you can get into it so much? Who cares if the writing isn't as good as if you're doing a zomg important story?
Once again, I can't stress enough that I don't think what most of PTC does for RPs is bad. I like that style and I think it has a place. I was talking to Dave Cook, Jason Snow's handler, last night, and he said that the PTC style of RPing helps people with their writing. I agree with that. I'm very interested in reading stories about wrestlers outside of the arena setting. I like writing those kinds of things too. It has a place.
I also don't think all of PTC thinks the way I described above. I mean, why else would Nova compete in NFW, and why would Pete grade a Lindsay Troy wrestling promo on the same grade as something such as a VJ masterful story epic? There isn't a total disdain for the promo. But it's there in an enclave of the community, and it's present enough to rear its ugly head.
Look, I'm not saying that wrestling promos should be instituted in place of backstage segments and non-traditional RPs. I'm just saying that non-traditional RPs shouldn't be done in lieu of wrestling promos either. There has to be a balance. This hobby has to have some kind of connection to wrestling, and it can't just be through wrestling matches. The spirit of the promo is the thing that gives eW its soul, in my opinion. To take it away is to strip the hobby of its essence.
And stripping the hobby of its essence is a major grievance to me.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Guest Bloggings! Snow on New Blood
Our next guest bloggings comes from David Snow (I don't know his real last name :p), who handles Jason Snow. He writes on a subject that's near and dear to my heart, and I have to say, it's a must-read.
Now and Then
by David "Snow," Special Guest to RRoaEL
Upon returning to e-wrestling after a three year hiatus, I was staggered to see the differences in the game. First of all, it seems that angle feds turned out to be just a fad after all, and the RP fed once again reigns supreme. Second, people are much more mature, but I suppose that comes along with the fact that it’s mostly the same people, only now we’re all way too old for this game. Third, the game itself has lost a lot of steam.
Around the time I left in 2003, eW was electric. Forums were buzzing with activity, and there were chats going around the clock. No matter what time of day you were able to stop in, there was always something going on to get your eW fix.
It’s not like that now.
The forums are, for the most part, looked at, but not used. The chats are reserved for rare occasions.
Originally, I just thought the game had changed; that people just weren’t as into as I remembered. But when I got into the community, I saw that wasn’t the case either. You only need GTT6 for proof of that. Even during the most active time that I was involved in eW, I’ve never seen anything generate buzz like GTT6.
I’ve talked to many people about the state of eW today as compared to the time I left, and nearly all of them said the same thing - eW will rebound when the wrestling industry rebounds. I agreed. It sounds logical, right? More wrestling fans mean more people will trickle in to eW, populating our game with new blood. The over all numbers are down, but I think everyone will agree, the bulk of the difference is in how many “new” guys are around. In 2002/2003, there were a lot of guys who’d been involved in the game for less than four months - less than two months, even. Since my comeback, I don’t think I’ve talked to one.
But that’ll change when wrestling gets popular again, right?
Well...
Rating for WWE RAW (September 30, 2002): 3.6
Rating for WWE RAW (October 7, 2002): 3.8
Rating for WWE RAW (October 14, 2002): 3.8
Rating for WWE RAW (September 29, 2003): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 6, 2003): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 13, 2003): 3.6
Rating for WWE RAW (September 25, 2006): 3.7
Rating for WWE RAW (October 2, 2006): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 9, 2006): 3.8
Lets face it. The golden age of wrestling was over a full year, or perhaps two, before the golden age of eW began.
In preparation for this article, I decided to look around at other feds. I found one of those Top-100 sites and starting going through. I was very surprised. When you look through the “geocities” and “angelfire” feds, almost nothing has changed. These feds seem as active as ever, if not, I daresay moreso. I know what you’re thinking: “I saw one of those Top-100 feds sites too, and a lot of the feds had long-since died.” All I can say is you might be looking at 2002/2003 through rose-colored glasses, because that’s what those things always looked like. Small feds rarely made it to their six month anniversary. The point is, people are still creating the feds.
I found out recently that my first ever fed has come back from the grave - not only has it come back, but it’s now bursting with activity. It has a roster of over thirty members, and that’s a conservative estimate. They’re all very active. And yes, the fed still uses real pictures and several of it’s RP’s happen in a ring.
Looking through these feds, I came to two conclusions. You can think they’re wrong if you like, but I believe that these are cold truths that we should accept.
Conclusion #1
The decline of e-fedding is an illusion.
Conclusion #2
We have hi-jacked the hobby.
Who are we?
We are the writers.
I am, perhaps, more guilty of this than any of you. I don’t watch wrestling; I haven’t watched wrestling since roughly 2002. I don’t know who the WWE champion is, and in casual conversation, I still refer to it as the “WWF.” I don’t know who the faces and heels are. If I’m flipping through the channels and I happen to see an old face from my childhood, I’ll stop to watch. Other than that, the most it will get is a quick pause, and then I’m onto the next channel.
I’m not alone. In fact, I don’t even think I’m in the minority. That’s not to say I don’t like wrestling. I think that each of us involved in the game has, at some point or another, been captivated with the sport. It is, after all, the closest thing there is to a soap opera made for males. But to say I’m a fan? No... I’m like the guy who’s favorite baseball player has long since retired. He likes the sport - you might even say he has a love for it - but it is very hard to call him a fan.
But eW isn’t about wrestling anymore - lets face it. It’s about intriguing stories that may or may not be loosely based on wrestling. The characters in eW are not really characters at all, save for a few. Ask around.
“What’s your character?”
“Oh, I handle John Smith in GWF (Generic Wrestling Federation).”
“Oh yeah, what’s his gimmick?”
“He’s a guy that was born into a terrible family where his father abused his mother. Now he’s in the middle of a plot to blow up his city because an evil congressman is trying to divert attention away from his unnatural lust for young boys.”
You know who has the best “gimmick” in that? The congressman with the unnatural lust for young boys. What we call gimmicks today aren’t really gimmicks - they’re circumstances that surround the main character. A gimmick is who the character is, not what’s going on in his life.
Again, I’m probably more guilty of this than the rest of you. That’s because I’m in the game for the writing, and often times, the most interesting characters are pretty ordinary ones that get caught up in an unordinary situation. Why? Because we’re writers, and those are the kinds of characters that people can relate to.
And damn it, have we ever gotten good.
There are a handful of people involved in PTC right now that have the talent to write a novel. They might even have the talent to write professionally. And just behind them, there are several more e-fedders who are developing at a pace that will have them in that group shortly. There are guys that I would wager large amounts of money that, given enough free time, could make it as authors. And without e-fedding, they’d probably have remained above average.
But where does this leave the average wrestling fan?
They come to PTC, looking for a good wrestling game to get involved in. They see the posers, read the news columns, check out some rankings... they’re excited. They want to get involved. But then they come to the RP section, and they find that it’s not a wrestling game at all. It’s a writing game that simply uses wrestling as its platform. They’re not interested in a writing game.
And you know what’s funny? I’ll bet many of you would have been in the same boat when you got into the game. 99% of us got into it for wrestling - I know I did. Many of us were decent writers to begin with, so as the game evolved, we didn’t have much trouble adjusting. Many of us weren’t great writers, but through practice, became good writers. Many of us were terrible writers, but because of sheer competitiveness, or perhaps simply to continue having fun in the game, we got better. Maybe it was even an accident.
I’m not being critical - I want that to be known. I’m just pointing out that this really isn’t a wrestling game anymore, and that’s probably the biggest reason for the decline.
And when I say “we’ve hijacked the hobby,” I really only mean we’ve hi-jacked the major leagues of the hobby. Because it seems that in the feds that we used to call “indy” feds, where it’s still all about the wrestling, things about the same as they always were.
It’s not about making changes, it’s about accepting the way things are. We’ll probably never get back to the heights of the “Ron days,” simply because the game has changed now. Being a wrestling fan isn’t enough to thrive in PTC now. You have to have the unique combination of being a wrestling fan/like wrestling, and being a fairly talented writer or better. That combination is a lot harder to find, and thus, new blood continues come in at a trickle.
Now and Then
by David "Snow," Special Guest to RRoaEL
Upon returning to e-wrestling after a three year hiatus, I was staggered to see the differences in the game. First of all, it seems that angle feds turned out to be just a fad after all, and the RP fed once again reigns supreme. Second, people are much more mature, but I suppose that comes along with the fact that it’s mostly the same people, only now we’re all way too old for this game. Third, the game itself has lost a lot of steam.
Around the time I left in 2003, eW was electric. Forums were buzzing with activity, and there were chats going around the clock. No matter what time of day you were able to stop in, there was always something going on to get your eW fix.
It’s not like that now.
The forums are, for the most part, looked at, but not used. The chats are reserved for rare occasions.
Originally, I just thought the game had changed; that people just weren’t as into as I remembered. But when I got into the community, I saw that wasn’t the case either. You only need GTT6 for proof of that. Even during the most active time that I was involved in eW, I’ve never seen anything generate buzz like GTT6.
I’ve talked to many people about the state of eW today as compared to the time I left, and nearly all of them said the same thing - eW will rebound when the wrestling industry rebounds. I agreed. It sounds logical, right? More wrestling fans mean more people will trickle in to eW, populating our game with new blood. The over all numbers are down, but I think everyone will agree, the bulk of the difference is in how many “new” guys are around. In 2002/2003, there were a lot of guys who’d been involved in the game for less than four months - less than two months, even. Since my comeback, I don’t think I’ve talked to one.
But that’ll change when wrestling gets popular again, right?
Well...
Rating for WWE RAW (September 30, 2002): 3.6
Rating for WWE RAW (October 7, 2002): 3.8
Rating for WWE RAW (October 14, 2002): 3.8
Rating for WWE RAW (September 29, 2003): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 6, 2003): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 13, 2003): 3.6
Rating for WWE RAW (September 25, 2006): 3.7
Rating for WWE RAW (October 2, 2006): 3.4
Rating for WWE RAW (October 9, 2006): 3.8
Lets face it. The golden age of wrestling was over a full year, or perhaps two, before the golden age of eW began.
In preparation for this article, I decided to look around at other feds. I found one of those Top-100 sites and starting going through. I was very surprised. When you look through the “geocities” and “angelfire” feds, almost nothing has changed. These feds seem as active as ever, if not, I daresay moreso. I know what you’re thinking: “I saw one of those Top-100 feds sites too, and a lot of the feds had long-since died.” All I can say is you might be looking at 2002/2003 through rose-colored glasses, because that’s what those things always looked like. Small feds rarely made it to their six month anniversary. The point is, people are still creating the feds.
I found out recently that my first ever fed has come back from the grave - not only has it come back, but it’s now bursting with activity. It has a roster of over thirty members, and that’s a conservative estimate. They’re all very active. And yes, the fed still uses real pictures and several of it’s RP’s happen in a ring.
Looking through these feds, I came to two conclusions. You can think they’re wrong if you like, but I believe that these are cold truths that we should accept.
Conclusion #1
The decline of e-fedding is an illusion.
Conclusion #2
We have hi-jacked the hobby.
Who are we?
We are the writers.
I am, perhaps, more guilty of this than any of you. I don’t watch wrestling; I haven’t watched wrestling since roughly 2002. I don’t know who the WWE champion is, and in casual conversation, I still refer to it as the “WWF.” I don’t know who the faces and heels are. If I’m flipping through the channels and I happen to see an old face from my childhood, I’ll stop to watch. Other than that, the most it will get is a quick pause, and then I’m onto the next channel.
I’m not alone. In fact, I don’t even think I’m in the minority. That’s not to say I don’t like wrestling. I think that each of us involved in the game has, at some point or another, been captivated with the sport. It is, after all, the closest thing there is to a soap opera made for males. But to say I’m a fan? No... I’m like the guy who’s favorite baseball player has long since retired. He likes the sport - you might even say he has a love for it - but it is very hard to call him a fan.
But eW isn’t about wrestling anymore - lets face it. It’s about intriguing stories that may or may not be loosely based on wrestling. The characters in eW are not really characters at all, save for a few. Ask around.
“What’s your character?”
“Oh, I handle John Smith in GWF (Generic Wrestling Federation).”
“Oh yeah, what’s his gimmick?”
“He’s a guy that was born into a terrible family where his father abused his mother. Now he’s in the middle of a plot to blow up his city because an evil congressman is trying to divert attention away from his unnatural lust for young boys.”
You know who has the best “gimmick” in that? The congressman with the unnatural lust for young boys. What we call gimmicks today aren’t really gimmicks - they’re circumstances that surround the main character. A gimmick is who the character is, not what’s going on in his life.
Again, I’m probably more guilty of this than the rest of you. That’s because I’m in the game for the writing, and often times, the most interesting characters are pretty ordinary ones that get caught up in an unordinary situation. Why? Because we’re writers, and those are the kinds of characters that people can relate to.
And damn it, have we ever gotten good.
There are a handful of people involved in PTC right now that have the talent to write a novel. They might even have the talent to write professionally. And just behind them, there are several more e-fedders who are developing at a pace that will have them in that group shortly. There are guys that I would wager large amounts of money that, given enough free time, could make it as authors. And without e-fedding, they’d probably have remained above average.
But where does this leave the average wrestling fan?
They come to PTC, looking for a good wrestling game to get involved in. They see the posers, read the news columns, check out some rankings... they’re excited. They want to get involved. But then they come to the RP section, and they find that it’s not a wrestling game at all. It’s a writing game that simply uses wrestling as its platform. They’re not interested in a writing game.
And you know what’s funny? I’ll bet many of you would have been in the same boat when you got into the game. 99% of us got into it for wrestling - I know I did. Many of us were decent writers to begin with, so as the game evolved, we didn’t have much trouble adjusting. Many of us weren’t great writers, but through practice, became good writers. Many of us were terrible writers, but because of sheer competitiveness, or perhaps simply to continue having fun in the game, we got better. Maybe it was even an accident.
I’m not being critical - I want that to be known. I’m just pointing out that this really isn’t a wrestling game anymore, and that’s probably the biggest reason for the decline.
And when I say “we’ve hijacked the hobby,” I really only mean we’ve hi-jacked the major leagues of the hobby. Because it seems that in the feds that we used to call “indy” feds, where it’s still all about the wrestling, things about the same as they always were.
It’s not about making changes, it’s about accepting the way things are. We’ll probably never get back to the heights of the “Ron days,” simply because the game has changed now. Being a wrestling fan isn’t enough to thrive in PTC now. You have to have the unique combination of being a wrestling fan/like wrestling, and being a fairly talented writer or better. That combination is a lot harder to find, and thus, new blood continues come in at a trickle.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Slow news week
I know that my posts about the FW feds have been few and far between, but that's for good reason. The feds have all been kinda slow. I know a lot of that has been my fault. I still owe NFW a playoff match that I feel horribly about. Right now, it seems like all the activity has just died down. (Although UCW recently posted a show). I know that I've been the biggest proponent of being patient because everyone has a life, but with every fed being on a downturn, it seems like old-school, wrestling promo based RP feds are going the way of the dinosaur. Of course, this isn't the case, seeing that for one, the desire to promo in "our" style is still there very much, and two, there are more than a few great old-school RP feds offsite (A1E, MBE and NAPW being three of them).
Still though, it's kinda disheartening that the oldest and one of the best old-school hubs is as dormant as it is. I mean, what can be done to rectify this? Well, all of us can hit the lottery, retire early and then dedicate our lives to e-fedding. The average age on FW land is probably in the early-to-mid 20s, and that's the age where you sort of put things like this aside and start to focus on real life. Or, you try to juggle real life with the hobby, and you end up promising a lot of things that you can't pull through on because the desire is there but the time isn't.
Then, there are more logical solutions. One, you've got the MBE solution. Short-form the TV shows and write out the full PPVs. Personally, I'm ambivalent towards this. On one hand, the cards are easier to write, and you give people a condensed form of the matches when people tend to skim over the matches in the first place, unless you're a hardcore match-fanatic, which means you're probably a tSC alum ;). On the other hand, angles can get lost in the shuffle in one extreme where you include angles and segments in short-form (like MBE does), or on the other extreme, segments can dominate the show and literally bog it down. Even in AWC, a fed where they do write out the matches fully for every show, angles and segments dominate that show and can make it too long to read in one sitting.
Then the other solution is an influx of new talent. This can happen one of two ways. One, TNA can magically start giving VKM some competition and drive a new wrestling upturn. That may never happen. The other is for people from the PTC who've been clamoring for a return to the old school for awhile to migrate over to FW (or A1E, MBE or NAPW, the last of which is looking for tag teams!) and take a stab at helping the system work better. While the writing intensive style of PTC has a place in the hobby, so does the wrestling intensive side. Both sides need to be healthy. I mean, the desire is there. I've gotten a lot of inquiries about A1E, MBE, NEW and EPW, and Al Larcher had even thought about starting an old-school thread over at PTC. Whatever happened to that? I was looking forward to it. Especially with HSW and UWF going on hiatus and/or closing, there's definitely a spot for a new fed on PTC, one that fulfills a different demand.
Look, I'm not asking people to drop the long, character development driven RP style altogether. I know some people don't like to write in our style. I know some people think it's beneath them. I know it's not for everyone. But if the hunger to do something that has more to do with wrestling stories, angles and stuff on-screen is there, why not capitalize on it?
Y'never know. It could be... fun! :)
Still though, it's kinda disheartening that the oldest and one of the best old-school hubs is as dormant as it is. I mean, what can be done to rectify this? Well, all of us can hit the lottery, retire early and then dedicate our lives to e-fedding. The average age on FW land is probably in the early-to-mid 20s, and that's the age where you sort of put things like this aside and start to focus on real life. Or, you try to juggle real life with the hobby, and you end up promising a lot of things that you can't pull through on because the desire is there but the time isn't.
Then, there are more logical solutions. One, you've got the MBE solution. Short-form the TV shows and write out the full PPVs. Personally, I'm ambivalent towards this. On one hand, the cards are easier to write, and you give people a condensed form of the matches when people tend to skim over the matches in the first place, unless you're a hardcore match-fanatic, which means you're probably a tSC alum ;). On the other hand, angles can get lost in the shuffle in one extreme where you include angles and segments in short-form (like MBE does), or on the other extreme, segments can dominate the show and literally bog it down. Even in AWC, a fed where they do write out the matches fully for every show, angles and segments dominate that show and can make it too long to read in one sitting.
Then the other solution is an influx of new talent. This can happen one of two ways. One, TNA can magically start giving VKM some competition and drive a new wrestling upturn. That may never happen. The other is for people from the PTC who've been clamoring for a return to the old school for awhile to migrate over to FW (or A1E, MBE or NAPW, the last of which is looking for tag teams!) and take a stab at helping the system work better. While the writing intensive style of PTC has a place in the hobby, so does the wrestling intensive side. Both sides need to be healthy. I mean, the desire is there. I've gotten a lot of inquiries about A1E, MBE, NEW and EPW, and Al Larcher had even thought about starting an old-school thread over at PTC. Whatever happened to that? I was looking forward to it. Especially with HSW and UWF going on hiatus and/or closing, there's definitely a spot for a new fed on PTC, one that fulfills a different demand.
Look, I'm not asking people to drop the long, character development driven RP style altogether. I know some people don't like to write in our style. I know some people think it's beneath them. I know it's not for everyone. But if the hunger to do something that has more to do with wrestling stories, angles and stuff on-screen is there, why not capitalize on it?
Y'never know. It could be... fun! :)
Sunday, July 23, 2006
You want old school?
This message goes out to EVERYONE, but...
It seems that the buzz on both EWN and especially on PTC is that people wanna go back to the old school. Back when RPing meant trash talking and not writing page after page of storyline stuff. I keep trying to say that there's a whole world out there dedicated to old school, where in their minds, time has stood still, right here at FW Central.
Well, if you guys really want to hit up the old school, there isn't any better time to do it than now. Chad Merritt and Sean Edmunds are giving out the chances of a lifetime in their respective feds, the granddaddy of them all, the CSWA and the newer school NEW. They're holding ALL COMERS WELCOME events with gold and shots at gold on the line. I hate to sound like a used car salesman, but that's right, you can walk right off the proverbial street and come away with a piece of CSWA gold or a shot at the NEW World Heavyweight Championship.
On the CSWA front, it was announced that the fed's landmark event, Anniversary would have only two matches, but these two matches would comprise of an event called the Gold Rush. The in-character description of this is that there's going to be five rings, set up so that there are four outer rings and one inner ring. It's basically going to look like the five on a die. In the middle ring, UNIFIED Champion Troy Windham stands alone. On the four outer rings, any and all comers will compete. In three of the outer rings, there will be the three CSWA singles Champions below the UNIFIED holder (Jericoholic Anonymous, Greensboro; Jay Phoenix, Presidential; Kin Hiroshi, United States). In the fourth ring, there will be no Champion. Now the winners of each battle royale in each of the outer rings will advance to the midle ring. In each of the three rings that has one of the secondary Champions, the winner will also come away with that title belt. In the ring with no Champion in it, the winner will receive a sort of "Money in the Bank" that he can use as a shot to ANY CSWA Championship if he doesn't succeed in the second part of the match.
Now, in that aforementioned second part of the match, it's a five-way dance amongst Windham and the four winners for the biggest prize in all of e-wrestling, the UNIFIED Championship, which represents not only the CSWA but about 50 other leagues from the old-school Prodigy days.
Does that sound tempting enough for you? No? You want something a little mor straightforward? Well then, have I got the solution for you!
NEW's BattleBRAWL, which is like their Royal Rumble, has opened entries to all-comers as well. If you win, you get a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, currently held by Jonathan Marx. It'll be you vs. 29 other competitors, some of the best the FW world has to offer. Add that to the fact that Edmunds is a terriffic fedhead who's gotten some pretty big name talent from across the spectrum to compete for him. Not only does he have the FW elite, he's also got Kyle handling Turk, the LoC Underground Champion, there in the short term as well as Sean Williams, who you may know better as Seymour Almasy, Thanatos, Kenjiro Ito or Logic, handling a sumo named Ozeki.
And on top of that, Edmunds will be doing something that I think takes a lot of patience and passion for the game to do. He's going to a "live broadcast" of the BattleBRAWL results via an AIM chat room. He's set up seperate screen names for all of his announcers and he's going to do it like it's a real live wrestling show in a chat room. I think this is woth joining and following just for that.
Seriously folks, you can't go wrong entering either event. I know I'm going to have a ball with the Gold Rush, and I would be having one with BattleBRAWL, but I'm not participating. Why? Because I'm going to be in the NEW World Title match at BattleBRAWL. So there's another added bonus. If you win BattleBRAWL, there's a good chance you might be facing ME for the NEW World Championship, and I know there's more than a few of you out there who'd like to take me down a peg or two ;)
So if you really want to go old school and you want a chance to win some gold, try Gold Rush, BattleBRAWL, or what I strongly recommend, both! Trust me, you'll have a blast.
It seems that the buzz on both EWN and especially on PTC is that people wanna go back to the old school. Back when RPing meant trash talking and not writing page after page of storyline stuff. I keep trying to say that there's a whole world out there dedicated to old school, where in their minds, time has stood still, right here at FW Central.
Well, if you guys really want to hit up the old school, there isn't any better time to do it than now. Chad Merritt and Sean Edmunds are giving out the chances of a lifetime in their respective feds, the granddaddy of them all, the CSWA and the newer school NEW. They're holding ALL COMERS WELCOME events with gold and shots at gold on the line. I hate to sound like a used car salesman, but that's right, you can walk right off the proverbial street and come away with a piece of CSWA gold or a shot at the NEW World Heavyweight Championship.
On the CSWA front, it was announced that the fed's landmark event, Anniversary would have only two matches, but these two matches would comprise of an event called the Gold Rush. The in-character description of this is that there's going to be five rings, set up so that there are four outer rings and one inner ring. It's basically going to look like the five on a die. In the middle ring, UNIFIED Champion Troy Windham stands alone. On the four outer rings, any and all comers will compete. In three of the outer rings, there will be the three CSWA singles Champions below the UNIFIED holder (Jericoholic Anonymous, Greensboro; Jay Phoenix, Presidential; Kin Hiroshi, United States). In the fourth ring, there will be no Champion. Now the winners of each battle royale in each of the outer rings will advance to the midle ring. In each of the three rings that has one of the secondary Champions, the winner will also come away with that title belt. In the ring with no Champion in it, the winner will receive a sort of "Money in the Bank" that he can use as a shot to ANY CSWA Championship if he doesn't succeed in the second part of the match.
Now, in that aforementioned second part of the match, it's a five-way dance amongst Windham and the four winners for the biggest prize in all of e-wrestling, the UNIFIED Championship, which represents not only the CSWA but about 50 other leagues from the old-school Prodigy days.
Does that sound tempting enough for you? No? You want something a little mor straightforward? Well then, have I got the solution for you!
NEW's BattleBRAWL, which is like their Royal Rumble, has opened entries to all-comers as well. If you win, you get a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship, currently held by Jonathan Marx. It'll be you vs. 29 other competitors, some of the best the FW world has to offer. Add that to the fact that Edmunds is a terriffic fedhead who's gotten some pretty big name talent from across the spectrum to compete for him. Not only does he have the FW elite, he's also got Kyle handling Turk, the LoC Underground Champion, there in the short term as well as Sean Williams, who you may know better as Seymour Almasy, Thanatos, Kenjiro Ito or Logic, handling a sumo named Ozeki.
And on top of that, Edmunds will be doing something that I think takes a lot of patience and passion for the game to do. He's going to a "live broadcast" of the BattleBRAWL results via an AIM chat room. He's set up seperate screen names for all of his announcers and he's going to do it like it's a real live wrestling show in a chat room. I think this is woth joining and following just for that.
Seriously folks, you can't go wrong entering either event. I know I'm going to have a ball with the Gold Rush, and I would be having one with BattleBRAWL, but I'm not participating. Why? Because I'm going to be in the NEW World Title match at BattleBRAWL. So there's another added bonus. If you win BattleBRAWL, there's a good chance you might be facing ME for the NEW World Championship, and I know there's more than a few of you out there who'd like to take me down a peg or two ;)
So if you really want to go old school and you want a chance to win some gold, try Gold Rush, BattleBRAWL, or what I strongly recommend, both! Trust me, you'll have a blast.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Looking into the future [FW.com]
Sean Williams, handler of Seymour Almasy among others, recently applied to NEW. One of the reasons why he joined was to "get back to the roots" of the hobby, ie, short, "wrestling promo" styled RPs rather than the 10-page novellas that he normally writes for GCW PPVs or for tourney matches like in GTT5. When I asked for feedback about my Suleimon RP for the next AWC's Bloodlust PPV, and Josh Young, handler of Red Rock, said that he liked the RP because it focused on wrestling, and "not many people these days focus on the wrestling part of EW." In the same token, when I first showed up to PTC and showed the kind of work I had been doing in other feds, people remarked that it was "what the hobby used to be to them."
I'm concerned with what I was hearing/reading. If the FW.com/A1Wrestling/ENN multi-verse of e-fedding was the "past" to those in the PTC world, does that mean we're destined to become what PTC and PTC feds have become now? I wonder if it's a natural evolution of the hobby or whether it's another sign of the slow death that professional wrestling and the online culture it supports seems to be undergoing.
Either way, it scares the shit out of me.
I mean, don't get me wrong... I love being a part of AWC and the greater PTC community. I wouldn't try to be an integral part of it if I didn't, but a part of me can't understand how people can post RPs that have nothing to do with wrestling there or try to run angles that have nothing to do with wrestling. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to be in e-fedding, you should like to both write and like wrestling and doing wrestling angles. I don't think it's too hard to combine them if you're truly passionate about wrestling.
I can never understand how someone can come into a tournament and write an RP for said tournament that didn't a) mention the tournament, b) mention the opponent, or c) even mention wrestling at all. Virgil Ambrosi's first offering in GTT5 hit that trifecta. And he still advanced over Maggot.
I know now that my RP was kinda shitty. It was the first one I had done in that sort of style. But at least I had a wrestling mindset.
But the thing with GTT5 is that it's not really a wrestling tournament. It's an RPing tournament at heart, because they don't even provide the results in any kind of wrestling format. The results are the judges' detailed explanations of why they picked the match they picked.
So I guess the format fits. But it distresses me that it's that way.
But I won't sit here and tell the folks over there how to do things. It still makes me uneasy, but they do what they do, and people like to do it that way.
I still shirk at the thought of there not being a place on the Internet where we do things the A1/FW way. To have no place on the web where people cut wrestling promos or do old school wrestling angles would be criminal.
I don't want our little corner of the e-wrestling world to change too much. No change is bad. So's drastic change. If we can change in different ways that wouldn't affect our basic style, I'd love it. But I don't want us to be another PTC.
See, I have a very strict yet very broad view about what I think e-fedding should be like. It's strict in the fact that I think it should be run much in the same way a real-life wrestling fed is run. But it's broad in that we need feds run like A1E and like NFW and like AWC and like ACW all at the same time.
So what can I do to preserve this? Well, I will continue to mark for folks who do wrestling. I will continue to run all my characters with an emphasis on wrestling, no matter where they are.
And hopefully, this blog has a little something to do with keeping people in-line with wrestling.
Either way though, I am only one person. I can't change the future by myself.
So I can only hope that things at least stay somewhat similar to the way they are now.
I'm concerned with what I was hearing/reading. If the FW.com/A1Wrestling/ENN multi-verse of e-fedding was the "past" to those in the PTC world, does that mean we're destined to become what PTC and PTC feds have become now? I wonder if it's a natural evolution of the hobby or whether it's another sign of the slow death that professional wrestling and the online culture it supports seems to be undergoing.
Either way, it scares the shit out of me.
I mean, don't get me wrong... I love being a part of AWC and the greater PTC community. I wouldn't try to be an integral part of it if I didn't, but a part of me can't understand how people can post RPs that have nothing to do with wrestling there or try to run angles that have nothing to do with wrestling. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to be in e-fedding, you should like to both write and like wrestling and doing wrestling angles. I don't think it's too hard to combine them if you're truly passionate about wrestling.
I can never understand how someone can come into a tournament and write an RP for said tournament that didn't a) mention the tournament, b) mention the opponent, or c) even mention wrestling at all. Virgil Ambrosi's first offering in GTT5 hit that trifecta. And he still advanced over Maggot.
I know now that my RP was kinda shitty. It was the first one I had done in that sort of style. But at least I had a wrestling mindset.
But the thing with GTT5 is that it's not really a wrestling tournament. It's an RPing tournament at heart, because they don't even provide the results in any kind of wrestling format. The results are the judges' detailed explanations of why they picked the match they picked.
So I guess the format fits. But it distresses me that it's that way.
But I won't sit here and tell the folks over there how to do things. It still makes me uneasy, but they do what they do, and people like to do it that way.
I still shirk at the thought of there not being a place on the Internet where we do things the A1/FW way. To have no place on the web where people cut wrestling promos or do old school wrestling angles would be criminal.
I don't want our little corner of the e-wrestling world to change too much. No change is bad. So's drastic change. If we can change in different ways that wouldn't affect our basic style, I'd love it. But I don't want us to be another PTC.
See, I have a very strict yet very broad view about what I think e-fedding should be like. It's strict in the fact that I think it should be run much in the same way a real-life wrestling fed is run. But it's broad in that we need feds run like A1E and like NFW and like AWC and like ACW all at the same time.
So what can I do to preserve this? Well, I will continue to mark for folks who do wrestling. I will continue to run all my characters with an emphasis on wrestling, no matter where they are.
And hopefully, this blog has a little something to do with keeping people in-line with wrestling.
Either way though, I am only one person. I can't change the future by myself.
So I can only hope that things at least stay somewhat similar to the way they are now.
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