E-wrestling

E-Wrestling is an internet variation on creative roleplay, based on the world of professional wrestling. The basic premise is that the player (also called a handler) creates a character, and manages his or her career in a fictional professional wrestling promotion, called an E-Federation (or E-Fed).

Its popularity grew in the late 1990s, coinciding with the mainstream successes of professional wrestling promotions such as World Wrestling Entertainment and World Championship Wrestling, and the evolution of what would be termed the Internet Wrestling Community.

The participants are generally similar to the audience of professional wrestling, with the majority of the community being between 14-30 years old and predominantly male.

History

While there is no consensus as to the direct origins of E-Wrestling, the structure of many E-Feds is very similar to that of old play by mail games. The first E-Fed to hit the internet was the WiWF (World internet Wrestling Federation), in June 1991. Many of it original members still fed today. Scott Roma, Ken Stevens, The Phantom, Natural, Dark Warrior, Joey Falcone, Dark Messiah & Graveyard.

Play by mail

The earliest known incarnation of professional wrestling roleplaying dates back to 1985. A play by mail service called the Imaginary Wrestling Association debuted in Wrestling World magazine. The IWA was a pay service where you could create a wrestler and have him booked in matches. . Though more modern forms of the game would come into existence, the IWA continues to exist to this day

Online services

With the advent of personal computers, the opportunities for E-Fed games flourished. Play by mail games evolved into play by email games, and mailing lists such as listserv became a popular medium. On Usenet, the newsgroup rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy was a haven for E-Fed promotion. Online services such as America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Prodigy also spawned numerous E-Feds.

The ease of the text formats as well as the ease of sending mass mails out to your members made these E-Feds widely popular. Often E-Feds could be found recruiting in the popular AOL WWF Chatroom. People who dropped by to talk about wrestling would see text spam about the latest E-Feds.

Peak of e-wrestling

E-Wrestling was at its peak during the mid to late 1990s, at the similar timeframe of the Monday Night Wars in professional wrestling. Some E-Feds grew to spawn 'Interfeds' which are umbrella organizations that feature a number of smaller E-Feds, similar to the structure of the National Wrestling Alliance. There are numerous top ranking sites dedicated to E-Feds.

Decline of e-wrestling

Since 2001, the popularity of E-Wrestling has waned. Many E-Fed promoters began to suffer from burnout, with other obligations edging out the time consuming task of promotion upkeep. Many promotions started to fold and E-Wrestling seemed to lose it's popularity soon thereafter.

Those who remain within E-Feds are most likely either highly skilled, or highly dedicated to the sport of professional wrestling. Some are only involved in due to dedication to a specific promotion. The e-feds that remain are most likely driven by the love of the craft by a number of "veteran roleplayers."

Most E-Feds today have a short life-span, sometimes a matter of weeks or months. Among those which have survived and outlived this typical life-span, debate ensues as to what ensures their survival, due to the volatile and relatively new nature of grassroots internet roleplaying, as opposed to an MMORPG or its lower-tech counterparts of mail-based gaming and newsletters.

E-federation style

There have been several different versions of the e-fed. Some adopt a sports entertainment style similar to the WWE, while others pattern themselves after the styles used by other promotions. Popular formats include a sport style based on Independent Wrestling such as Ring of Honor and others, on Hardcore / Extreme style of wrestling such as Extreme Championship Wrestling, on Deathmatch / Shock Value wrestling such as FMW, on Lucha Libre a Mexican Wrestling style from feds such as CMLL, and Japanese-influenced "strong style" or puroresu such as NJPW and Pro Wrestling NOAH.

E-federation categories

Most E-Federations are categorized based on the method that decides the outcomes of a promotion's matches, championships, and shows. The two most common are Roleplay and Angle E-Feds. There are also Match Roleplay E-Feds.

Roleplay

In roleplay E-Feds, two players assigned to compete with each other will roleplay against one another. The E-Fed's staff compare the resulting roleplays, and decide who wins the match. The results are displayed in the format of a wrestling match featuring the characters involved, along with those who have compelling enough interest in the match to interfere somehow.

If the two wrestlers write well written roleplays, then the match is often very detailed and immersive. On the other hand, if one wrestler hasn't roleplayed, has done very little work or has produced low-quality roleplays in comparison to the opponent, then the match is likely to be a squash. Often, joint roleplays are used in tag team or stables matches.

Angles

In angle-based E-Feds, participants submit story ideas to determine the flow of the overarching storyline (and the winners and losers of individual matches). The placement of segments and matches are based upon the staff's judgment of which handlers have produced the most innovative and compelling storylines. This requires cooperation and maturity to ensure the matches and storylines aren't one-sided.

Most promotions are some degree of a hybrid between Roleplay and Angle. Often, an E-Fed uses roleplays to decide their week-by-week matches, but will give precedence to the ongoing angle for matches key to a particular storyline or championship. Other forms of deciding matches exist, from using trivia competitions to using video game engines or dice.

Match Roleplay

Match roleplay E-Feds are very similar to Roleplay E-Feds, but instead of the staff writing the match. The members write their own matches together. User 1 posts his entrance, User 2 posts his entrance User 1 posts a chunk of match, User 2 posts a chunk of match, etc. The staff decide based on the Match RPs and the Promos, who the winner is.

Other characteristics

Character basis

Some E-Federations only allow player created characters on their roster, usually to keep the characters, storylines and ideas as creative and as unique as possible, while some cite possible copyright violations as the reason. Others only allow players to play as already established wrestlers whether they be on national television with the WWE or on the independent scene. Still others allow both original and real characters.

Web pages

The typical E-Federation website serves as the permanent base of operations, and usually displays the rules, wrestler profiles, and archives of their shows and title histories. There is also some form of forum for roleplay, whether it be a wiki, blog, message board, or CGI/PHP script which allows roleplayers to post their promos onto the site. Some promotions allow players to write roleplays on their own personal websites and link to them through these pages. There is also an out of character forum for non-game chatter.

Other commonly found features may include:

• Columns: Articles commenting on the federation, written in the voice of a columnist, an announcer or a veteran wrestler from the promotion. Types of column include "Top Ten" lists, "Moments of the Month", or news about pay-per-views and special events.
• Downloads section: Material relating to the federation available for download, which may include (but is not limited to) desktop backgrounds, promotionial photos of wrestlers, Flash video commercials for a show or pay-per-view event, or audio reports.
• Executive Board: Listing of the staff who run the federation, their positions and responsibilities, and how to get in contact with them.
• Federation history: Story of how the federation came into existence and events up to the current time, acting as a backstory.
• Hall of Fame: Directory of those who have been recognised by the federation as excellent and influential players of the game, run much as the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), MLB or NFL Hall of Fame are.
• Title history: List of each title's previous holders, indicating the results and duration of their reign.
• Upcoming Shows: List of the scheduled matches for the next card, to enable players to roleplay accordingly and build up heat with an opponent, if required.

Members

Similarly, the hierarchy of the players in a community is important as well. The titles of the positions adopted vary from one federation to the next, but they usually adhere to a structure commonly associated with the type of federation they are.

Roleplay Federations

• Owners of the federation often have the final say in cards and angles, and serve to keep the community up to date, as well as deciding who to allow into their federation. Some federations see ownership change hands over periods of time.
• Bookers run the cards and decide what happens on shows. In most cases, the owner is also the booker. In angle federations, the entire roster helps with the booking of the show.
• Writers actually write the shows, news posts, and other 'official fed' text for the site. Some are sourced from elsewhere, but most of the time the writers are the handlers and/or staff. Other federations may have their shows 'written' by a wrestling simulator.
• News Writers (or Reporters) handle all written work for the federation not related to shows. This may include articles about current events in the federation, press releases from the management, or reports on other aspects of the site.
• Roleplayers are the lowest on the hierarchy, but also the most important part as well, as a certain number of roleplayers are needed for the health of the federation and to make the federation interesting. These people post their roleplays (also known as skits, interviews, flashes or promos) onto the site for other to people to respond to, in order to further the storylines of the federation.
• Legends are roleplayers who have been on a federation's active roster for a long period of time, and/or have contributed behind the scenes on regular basis. They are sometimes afforded special rights that aren't given to other members of the roster, and may be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Most federations do not have enough members to give each role to a different person, so people often take up more than one position. For example, a roleplayer may also be a match writer. Also, the work of some of the higher-level jobs, such as booker and owner, may be shared between two or more people, lending rise to terms such as 50% owner or co-booker.

Angle federations

Structurally, the owner usually acts as Head Booker, while the roleplayers take the place of the writers, and book their own character in accordance to where the Head Booker "places" them on the card.

Since roleplay feds are based on competition with other players (although angles are still important), there is often a bias to writing one's own matches inherent in the situation. In angle feds, however, the focus is more on working together to create stories, rather than trying to outdo an opponent. In theory, this leads to less bias toward one's own character when writing, although this is not always the case in practise.

Hybrid federations

A federation of this type may contain multiple federations within one organisation. The organisation may have a committee or a single person overseeing the site, taking care of technical issues and carrying out upgrades as required. Each federation may then have a supervisor or 'commissioner'. The commissioner would carry out day-to-day patrolling of the federation, booking cards, pay-per-views and general upkeep.

An e-federation's schedule

Normal shows

Most federations run on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, though some exceptions run on ten day or monthly cycles. For this example a seven-day cycle of a typical E-Federation is used.

• The material (match writing, show segments, and/or roleplays) from the previous grading cycle are evaluated, and matches are awarded accordingly to be booked. Most of these matches will be announced, or on the card, while others will be referred to as impromptu matches, or those supposedly booked without any notice. Most impromptu matches cannot be prepared for by the wrestlers themselves, but typically stem from a feud so intense the match has already been 'prepared for' enough that no special hype is needed to generate more heat.
• The card is either refined further or organized between the federation's writers. At this time the official card is posted on the website or forums. Handlers in Angle Federations tend to handle their own characters and help write everything that their character does on the shows. With less focus on competitive roleplaying in Angle Federations, people are more focused on the show and the angles therein. If they do not submit material, their character will suffer and may not appear on the show.
• In a Roleplay Federation, handlers have a designated period of time to write roleplays relating to their matches, while the match writers focus on their match assignments. Some Roleplay Federations also allow for handlers to submit strats. Strats are composed of moves the handler wants performed, an entrance, and their character's mindset. If the handlers are judged as equal with regards to their roleplaying, strats can sometimes become a determining factor.
  • In Angle Federations, off-card roleplays can be submitted at any point in the process. Sometimes, there are cutoff points from week to week, to provide a standard grading period. Usually, an Angle Federation doesn't grade roleplays. Instead, a handler climbs the ranks with their character through their angles and gaining "interesting and thought provoking angles." Handlers primarily utilize off-card roleplays to advance their storylines.
• Handlers have a chance to look back on recent roleplays and look for elements within them to add to their matches and make their work more relevant.
• Matches should be turned in by handlers or finished by the match writers at this point in the cycle.
  • Angle Federations will have these matches already complete when turned in, allowing the head writer to merely string them all together in the show.
  • Roleplay Federations will have them finished to a point, usually excluding the ending. After all roleplays have been submitted, the Owner and/or Booker decides who will win the match and have an ending written for it then by either themselves or the match writer. Some match writers may write two endings to cover both scenarios.
• If not all of the assigned matches were turned in or finished the day before, this day serves as a buffer for handlers to pick up whatever slack remains in the show. The show itself is finalized, proofed, formatted, and made ready for publishing.
• The match results go up, often in the form of a television broadcast. This is a misnomer, as almost all results are written, but they are often referred to as televised events to maintain the illusion of reality.
• Sometimes a late writer will force the show itself to be late, but in most well-run federations, they are typically only late by a day or so. The best method to prevent a late show is to have at least one writer who can turn out quick matches, and hence cover for another writer.

Live shows

Some e-federations, time allowing, actually broadcast their shows through means of a chat room to give the feel of a real wrestling promotion. This is done through the show's writer (usually the owner) texting the action in the chat for the handlers to see as they root for their characters. There may also be another commentator, who could either be in on the results in advance or just comments on what he sees to provide more realism. Several promotions even broadcast their results through an audio format. Those using a video game to simulate the matches can also record and broadcast matches on video if they so desire.

Pay-per-views

Every one or two months (or approximately four to eight shows), federations will hold a pay-per-view (PPV) as a way of providing better-quality results and providing fitting ends to feuds and storylines. Much like the television shows, the term PPV is used to reflect reality, as the events themselves do not cost.

Often the preparation for certain matches in the pay-per-views will start weeks in advance of the show itself, though to prevent confusion and stress, the writers given these assignments so early in advance are often writers brought in only for the pay-per-views, in addition to the regular match writers.

The cards for a pay-per-view are often announced at least a week or two in advance of normal cards, if not sooner, though some less important matches may only be announced in the same week. There is often a main event in the form of a gimmick match that is specific to that pay-per-view.

External link

• E-wrestling Wiki at wikia.com