Chupa's Guide to Game-Based E-Fedding

[The Chupster]

The Chupster's Guide to Game-Based E-Fedding
or,
How to Not Look Like an Insane Crack Monkey
by
(you guessed it)
The Chupacabra

A good few years back, me and the more experienced guys in OCW did a roleplaying 'helpful hints' guide for those that were having some trouble in their promos. I did another set for some guys in XMW, before they folded (*snicker*), even though it was largely ignored, but hell, I figure it's time for a rewrite.

This guide is dedicated to the guys that keep the good efeds running, through work or participation, and is presented to those who need some help, whether they know it or not. God knows there's a lot of you out there.

Please bear with me, because I'm going to cover a lot- and I mean a LOT- of material here. If you read what I put down here and take it to heart, you'll quickly find that not only will you have more fun, but the people who work programs with you will have more fun as well. It's also highly likely that, if you're in a fed that actually values good members, you'll find people more willing to work programs with your characters and you might even get a push or two. At the very least, they won't think of you as a worthless dumbass anymore (LOL), and that just makes for a better overall experience for everyone in the long run. So let's get to work!

If you already know of a problem area that you'd like to address, please feel free to use the table of contents, but I recommend giving this a full read-through at least once. Sometimes, you just don't know what you are or aren't doing wrong. Also, please keep in mind that this is a set of suggestions; every efed is different, and this guide is geared specifically towards game-simmed wrestling efeds, so the same rules will likely not apply in, say, a role-playing fed or an online-only fed.

And finally, if you have a comment, question, suggestion, or just have an addition you'd like me to make, drop me a line and I'll consider it. Anyone contributing to this guide will naturally get credit.



TABLE OF CONTENTS:
I. Your Reason for E-Fedding
II. General Etiquette
III. Promos and Their Writing
IV. In Conclusion (least till the update)




I. Your Reason for E-Fedding

What is your reason for joining an efed? Is it because you have a specific story that you'd like to tell? Or do you have a passion for wrestling that you have no other way to express? Maybe you're just bored. Or maybe you just really like the interaction with other people. If you're not sure, take a day or two and think about it. Think about whatever it is that you're doing efed-wise and why you want to do it so much.

If you've joined a game-simmed efed to tell a specific story, you might very well be in the wrong place. A game-simmed efed typically relies heavily on promos for character interaction and for providing the storyline framework that the matches on the card will fill. It is for story-telling- just not necessarily your story. The best promos develop from your character's interaction with other characters; if you're just telling your own little story, you're likely wasting your time, because at least 7 times out of 10 people won't even want to read your promos. If this is the case, your best bet is probably a role-playing efed, where everything is done via promo including the matches, or perhaps running your own private efed and posting the results on forums somewhere.

A quick rule of thumb about efeds, and it's at times horrible but true: most efed members will not bother to read a promo unless they think (or in some instances, know) that a character of theirs is involved, or can become involved.

The reasons for this are varied, but it usually boils down to one of a few reasons:
1: People don't come to a game-based fed to read someone else's story- they come to participate and essentially play with others. So they read the promos that are related to them.
2: If people don't like your writing style for whatever reason- if your promos are difficult or, even worse, painful to read, then after a while, they simply won't.
3: They've never had to, because they've never been compelled to. A lot of efedders won't look past the end of their own nose unless they're basically told to.
4: Sometimes a member is too hurried, either due to life in general or because they're in a multitude of efeds at once.

If you're in an efed to quell your passion for wrestling because you can't do it in real life for whatever reason, congratulations, you're in the right place. If you love wrestling and like contributing and working with others, you're in the right place. If you're just bored, however, it could go either way.

If you're in an efed just to get a belt on your character(s)- just to get bragging rights- then you're definitely in the wrong place. This attitude doesn't benefit anyone, and you will quickly earn yourself a bad reputation. People like this usually play in several efeds at once, and as such their efforts get spread thin, so instead of concentrating in one or two places and putting out quality work that everyone enjoys, they work in spurts and tend to vanish for weeks at a time- especially if they've gotten a championship out of it. If this describes you, expect to earn yourself a bad rep doublequick, and don't be shocked when people start kicking you out or holding you down on the bottom of the proverbial ladder, if you even get accepted into the fed to begin with. This behavior is not cool in any way, shape or form.

Anyway, evaluate what you're doing and why. If you want to efed, knock yourself out, but a good efedder is a person that makes the experience fun not only for himself, but for others as well.



II. General Etiquette

Everyone is different and everyone has their own way of behaving and doing things, and if you're in an efed (or on the internet in general), chances are that you're going to get on someone's nerves for some reason or another at some point. Hey, it happens. But you should always do whatever you can to prevent this. Troublesome members often find themselves without a fed, sometimes repeatedly, because of their actions. Here are some quick pointers to keep you in the good graces of your fellow players (and oftentimes, the owners of whatever fed you're in):

*Learn the fed hierarchy. This can prevent problems later. There's nothing worse than applying to a fed, getting accepted, and then mouthing off to the wrong person and getting instantly canned because they were an administrator.

*Recognize the difference between roleplaying and actual conflict. Most feds operate under the general premise that, in the roleplaying section, anything goes. So if someone insults your character without an OOC (out of character) tag, you should assume that they didn't mean anything personal. If someone starts something with you outside of the roleplaying section, then you actually have a problem.

*Be nice, be polite, be gracious. No one earns friends by being a jackass. Remember, when you start out, usually no one in your efed will know who you are, whether you're experienced or not. First impressions can be everything. If you're polite, you'll find that others are often polite in return. And being gracious is the key to longivity; no one likes a sore loser, but a sore winner can be even worse. Avoid arrogance at all costs. (Except in promos; wrestlers aren't usually known for being very gracious. Heh.)

*Seize- but don't demand- opportunity. If a fed gives you a solid shot at a championship, then they have the confidence in you to give you a shot at carrying the ball by promoing well and often, should you win that championship. Sometimes you may be asked or forced to work with someone you don't like; this is the price of victory. You're expected to do what's good for the company. Winning a belt and then not promoing, or worse, leaving the fed, will earn you some serious hate points in everyone's eyes; generally speaking, don't do it. Also, asking for a shot at a belt is fine, but don't do it often or you'll quickly wear out your welcome. No one likes to be pestered, and you have to remember, the people running your fed aren't being paid to do so. Finally, don't demand anything- any fed worth their weight in salt will drop you like a bad habit. No one needs a diva, and at the end of the day, the fed doesn't need you, but you WILL need a fed. Quality feds are few and far between, and very, very hard to come by, and if you screw one over, they will likely spread the word to others.

*If they're available, read all of the fed's rules. The more you know, the fewer mistakes you'll make. Additionally, asking questions (that AREN'T covered by the fed rules) is usually encouraged, but don't ask about every little last thing- again, pestering can be a career killer.

*One feud at a time. Feuds will typically culminate at a pay-per-view match of some sort, usually something big if you've built up a feud well. Requesting matches and title shots and bouncing from feud to feud week after week (or worse, all in the same week) will lead to some major bad juju. Concentrate on one thing at a time (at least, for each individual character that you run) and do it well, instead of jumping around like a spidermonkey on crack. Efeds are not a speedy business, much the same as wrestling isn't- if you have one show a week and three or four shows to tell a story before the pay-per-view match, then you've got to get in as much story as you can, while you can. But trying to cram a feud that anyone at all is going to care about is going to take more than a couple of weeks. Hopping around won't get you anything but ignored.

*Please and thank you. They're just as useful online as off. If you don't know how to use them, please, for the benefit of everyone around you, learn.

*If you get kicked out or banned for whatever reason, for God's sake, don't try to sneak back in. For the life of me, I cannot understand why anyone on this planet would want to go somewhere where they aren't wanted. If you want back in, let it go for a while. Objectively examine what you did wrong and work to improve it. Wait a few months and contact an administrator and ask if it would be all right for you to try out again, and if the answer ends up being no, just let it go and head elsewhere. After all, there are a lot of efeds out there that could use someone that's actually trying to do better.



III. Promos and Their Writing

When you write a promo, no one is asking you for Shakespeare. However, a basic working knowledge of the English language- or whatever language your fed is being ran in- is a key to making your promos presentable and making everything not only click, but pop out at people and demand their attention. Again, some pointers.

*Less is more. No one wants to read a novella, bottom line. Try to cover all of the key points that you need and want to in your promo without going overboard. This isn't a book manuscript, and anything past what is actually needed is just going to contribute to people ignoring your post(s) completely.

*Similarly, "less" doesn't mean "little". If you fire off a promo that's little more than a line of dialogue, you'll be lucky if it even gets counted as a promo. If it's just a response, that can be fine, as long as it's appropriate. Typically though, you'll need more than a paragraph or a couple of lines of dialogue to keep your player in the game. Don't tell a massive story, but don't leave people scratching their heads, thinking "WTF was that supposed to be?", either.

*Formatting. Formatting is your friend. Learn HTML or BBCode tags (or use built-in posting tools) to make your promos cleaner and more legible. This can include putting actions in bold print and dialogue in regular print, or italics, whatever. Use different colors for different characters. Don't overdo it- you want it to look like a promo, not like the circus came to town- but make it presentable. It takes a little extra time, but it also makes it look like you can about what you're writing. Which, naturally, you should.

*Spellcheck. If your browser doesn't have a built-in spellchecker, copy and paste your promo into a word processing program of some sort that does. If you can't spell worth a damn, or type too quickly to be accurate, then spellchecker can make your promos look better and contribute to people actually reading them.

*Avoid shortening things too much. Using a character's initials before their dialogue can be acceptable, but in a medium-to-longer length promo, it can get confusing. Also avoid netspeak crap, like using '2' when you mean 'to' or 'too' and junk like that. If you can't take five seconds to make your promo look good, then you shouldn't be writing a promo.

*The most common annoying English mistake: The apostrophe. ' is used to denote a contraction (cannot into can't, do not into don't, etc.) or possession (Chupa's hammer, the Rage's Big Mac), NOT plurals. "Ball's" does not equal more than one ball; it says that the ball owns something. Yes, this drives some people insane.

*Content. Try to change up what you do with your promos. Remember, you're supposed to be describing what's happening. If you write the same "[Insert name here], I'm gonna kick your ass" every week, no one is going to want to work with you. Ditto if you just recap what happened to you in the past week and add a line to two to it. Recapping can be a great tool for the opening of a promo- "Lemme tell ya, Mean Gene, last week all my Hulkamaniacs saw the Genius kick my bald ass"- but you have to go somewhere with it. Otherwise, people just want to strangle you. So try this: when you're writing a promo, every time you come to a stopping point, stop and imagine the scene in your mind's eye. Can you imagine this being on TV? Can you imagine your character actually saying the dialogue you've written for him? Or does it come off looking really, really stupid? If there's a difference between what you're imagining and what you've written, then you need to rewrite it. This ESPECIALLY goes for efeds where you're playing the part of a real wrestler. If you break character, you lose face in everyone else's eyes.

*If you're using someone else's character in your promo, make SURE that you have their permission to do so. Also make sure that you have the ability. Nothing kills a promo faster than having someone reply "but my guy doesn't act like that!". If it comes down to it, write your part and let them fill in the rest.

*Don't go around beating the hell out of everyone in your promos. Your character isn't Steve Austin. (Usually.) If you're going to beat down someone, make sure they know about it in advance or you could be in for a reaming and possibly some punishment. Conversely, don't be afraid to let your character get smacked around some. Pushing others can only help your standing in the fed.

*As a general rule, if you can't take it, don't dish it out.



IV. In Conclusion (least till the update)
Overall, e-fedding is just you and a group of guys, hanging out and playing a game. And while it's only a game, most people don't like playing games with people that aren't good at the game. So play the game, practice it, enjoy it, and work at doing what you can to become better at it, and before you know it, you'll be flying with the big boys. Thanks for reading, I hope this helped you out in some way.
If you have a subject that I haven't touched on, or that you'd like to see expanded, drop me a line at [e-mail]. You can also reach me via PM on the OCW forums at ocwfed.proboards54.com - just PM SupaChupa.