Running a Fed: Lesson 2-Stop Lying to Yourself About Booking

[Mongo the Destroyer]

Stop Lying to Yourself About Booking

I see you’ve either decided to forgo my advice to not open a fed or lack the self-awareness to understand that you probably shouldn’t open a fed. Either that or you’re reading for fun and/or want to open a fed still even though I’ve made it sound hard. Cool, let’s continue.

When you start your fed you want it to be perfect- but it goes without saying that perfection is not something to actually be achieved. To that though, many prospective owners take it upon themselves to formulate an objective judging setup so that (unlike all the feds they were in- especially the one that made them so upset they decided to open their own fed) for once rps will be judged fairly.

Hahahahaha. You’re deceiving yourself.

Efedding is at its core competitive creative writing. And so you’re weighing two (or more) people’s creative powers and writing skills in order to decide who’s “best.” But “best” is extraordinarily subjective- and the sooner you admit that the sooner you’ll be better able to handle the complaints your decisions will absolutely get. Even the best systems are filled with logical inconsistencies and difficulties. But let’s take a look at some different approaches to rp judging and see how they worked out or sound when you say them out loud. It should go without mentioning at this point that we’re looking exclusively at rp judging so if you’re running some sort of angle/rng-based fed this probably is less-applicable to you.

Case Study 1: BDDWF- Let’s get objective!

I’ve seen many fed owners tout some sort of “objective” booking system. Considering you’re judging fan fiction that can mean one of two things: 1. You have no idea what objective means or 2. You’re gonna police grammar and spelling. Guess which one the BBDWF did?

So the BDDWF (Brain Doggy Dogg Wrestling Federation) was the predecessor to my iteration of the XHF (Xtreme Hardcore Federation). I had acquired the rights to the XHF name from its original owner (and the board, wooo) and was traveling from fed to fed running invasion angles that consisted almost entirely of myself. We ran this angle twice on the No Mercy Board (back when WWF was cool with letting high schoolers admin official sites). First was WRWF, where I picked up a few of their members to join my XHF stable. After that fed tanked BDDWF opened up and the XHF storyline got HUGE- as in like we cut the fed in half huge. Things were great. BDD, despite naming the fed after himself was an alright owner and was big on storylines. His admins were sort of self-pushing pricks but at least he was there to make it cool.

Then he wasn’t. He had some real life stuff come up and had to ding-dong-ditch his fed (again, named after himself) and left his admins….in….charge. Crap. Right away one of them stepped up- we know him as Fishy/WholeFnStarfish but his main character was Chris Sanders and he maybe ended up playing football irl? You’d have to ask Scorps. So Fishy wanted things a certain way and he was pretty clear on it. He moved BDDWF off of the No Mercy board and onto their own so they could expand, which was smart because the roster was growing due to the awesome XHF storyline (history is written by the winners so I can make myself look as good as I want). He pitched an idea to reset everything but that didn’t go over. What he did push though was a more standardized rp system and an “objective” grading system. Now, again, as we know, creative writing is a subjective material- but that wasn’t the worst of his system.

Fishy’s system involved the usual stuff like creativity and whatnot, but two areas that were very strongly weighted (like together they were maybe half if not more of the score) were spelling/grammar and formatting. Yes, formatting. You know, like the html used in the posts. He was highly pro-color and other format stuff. Now I’ve been a black-and-whiter for most of my career, even in my rps I only colorize the names just for a little splash. And back then you didn’t get to do that easily from the preview section- no you had to actually go look up ezcodes or html in order to make your posts pretty. And so besides spell-checking before Word knew how to spell millennium (for real) you needed to code the crap out of your promos if you didn’t want to job.

I think you can imagine how this went over. I mean, we’re not called the BDDWF Network now are we? [Note: Though that’s unrelated, it just makes a good joke.] There was immense pushback and ultimately it was a good thing the other admins (which now included me and two XHFers) didn’t really buy into it so he wasn’t able to enforce this seriously silly idea.

Now, I use this example because it’s so extreme- but I’m very strong on saying that you shouldn’t try to add in objective areas. If you’re reading an rp and checking for correct grammar and spelling and giving a guy demerits for typos then you’ve got way too much time on your hands and could probably write more matches or segments for your shows. There’s a difference between a few mistakes and “this is unreadable”- but that line might be different for different people; so even the most objective of things is still fairly subjective. I don’t even notice most spelling/grammar issues when I read so take that for what it’s worth.

Case Study 2: Early XHF- Let’s get a consensus!

So as I mentioned, after BDD left the fed he named after himself (for real guys don’t do that) I was promoted to figurehead as in-character Mongo took over the company (BDD turned heel on the company named after him- efedding everyone, lol). Along with that came two competent members of the roster, one from BDDWF- Destruction/Game/Carlos (haha, oh and he was secretly a tag team for the XHF too, whoops) and one from the XHF- Slain/Ishnari. So that was four admins and one fake admin (me).

The storyline came to a head at the first Xtraction. BDDWF was fighting to stay a fed and XHF was fighting to take over. This was a big deal both in-character and OOC because a lot of the XHF guys straight up didn’t like how BDDWF was run and were hoping that me being owner was real (it wasn’t). The final match was the Xtraction match itself (written by me- it was awful) in which the winning team would become the dominant company. And so we booked the match….

Fishy and the other incumbent BDDWF admin Millennium (see why it’s important we knew the spelling?) voted team BDDWF to win- duh. Dessy and Ish voted XHF because they wanted things to change. There was a tie. Well I guess if I was already fake adminning they might as well get my opinion. Yes, they went to the in-character owner who’d become the figurehead boss of everyone as long as this storyline continued to break the tie. I didn’t even have to read the rps to make that decision (hard to say if I even did or not). Anyway the XHF guys took over and I was the real boss now. Ish, Game, and I decided that one of the biggest problems with BDDWF’s booking was putting things to a vote instead of properly discussing winners. Therefore at some point (maybe after Millennium flaked the main event of NoC?) we decided that all decisions would be unanimous. That way when people complained we could say “well all of us agreed on _____.” It was a great idea. Having everyone one the same page made us a united force and a stronger admin team. Nothing could ever go wrong with this plan.

Something went wrong with this plan. Ish, Game, and I were really close and talked pretty much all the time we were online- which was impressive considering Ish was British. We’d hash out match results we didn’t agree on and push for various storyline elements we wanted to see. But eventually, somewhere along the way this system started to fall apart. Maybe we couldn’t get the third member when we needed him, maybe we were split, maybe admin turnover resulted in less people being close. The point is that it was impossible to keep this system going in any sort of an efficient way.

There’s one booking in particular that sticks out in my mind. And I want to remember it as William Spencer vs his irl brother Apollyon but I think it was actually a different match (though the booking for that was a whole other mess). Anyway what ended up happening was we had a deadlock. Ish had dug in his feet on this main-event level match (as he often would) and one of the bookers completely followed him. I was less invested in his booking- but since I was less invested as an owner at the time I went along with it. The other admin (not sure who) wouldn’t budge- and we wouldn’t finalize the match until we could get a consensus. Then they did budge- right out of the admin team. Suddenly we had a consensus because we lost an admin. That’s a bad thing if you’re keeping score.

What I’m getting at is although an “everyone needs to agree” system is absolutely probably the fairest way to do things and will give you full backing vs any complaint, it’s simply not plausible. RPing is subjective and so is booking. Although taking a vote killed the BDDWF as a fed, it also helped their company move in the right direction and gave the best result. So don’t try that method.

Case Study 3: ICW- Let’s get objectively subjective!

Haha, yeah I didn’t want to harp on ICW more but this one stuck out in my head and was the reason for me wanting to write this particular article. So the owner of ICW wanted everything perfect. I accused him several times of possibly starting the fed out of spite but he very loudly told me otherwise. And yet his rubric for perfectly judging rps in the most subjectively objective way begs to differ….

I go by this scale, and WILL ALWAYS go by this scale. It proves to sort out the good from the great.

I grade roleplays in 3 categories. As stated in the regulations. It is weighted however.

1-10 for Content/Creativity
-This is the most important chunk of the score. It is the most subjective too however. It is simply how creative I view the roleplay and the actual "content" that is in it. Unique, interesting and creative roleplays score high in this category. Brett Stetson for example scores high in this consistently. So does Sebastian Steele. Many of you do well here, but those 2 are the most consistent in scoring high in this category. Jack Diamond does pretty well here too.

1-5 for Character Development/Match Relevance
-This is a simple score of how you evolve your character, what changes about him/her and how you are adapting to given storylines and current status in ICW. Also, your match relevance and your opponent being talked about goes with this. Lots of people do well here. Just enhance and make sure your character's traits stand out, and tie it into your match. I get lots of 3s and 4s in the scoring for this one. Some 5s.

1-5 for Effort
-This is specifically referring into effort you put in. How well it reads, spelling, grammar... etc. The word length you put into it without it becoming stale or forced... and any pictures/coloring you might use. Using a bunch of pictures doesn't give you a 5/5. Using a couple pictures that tie into your roleplay very well with nice colors will give you 1 point at best. That is it. The main thing here is the grammar, spelling and the word count. It takes effort to type out a long roleplay, using nice colors and maybe a pic or 2 that tie together.


That is it. This is how I score roleplays here. I think it is a fail-safe system. When you add it all up, you have a long roleplay close to the maximum word length, with nice colors to hold attention and mood, or just trademark the feel. Maybe a picture or 2, great writing without many errors that reads easily and well, with a good font. Creative and tells a great story. It's simple. It's not a complicated process really.

Ah….ha. So let’s break this down section by section and see where the various problems come up. Again, officially ICW was not started out of spite because of losing in another fed (even though the owner once totally complained about losing in another fed because of bad booking).

Content/Creativity: Right off the bat we see a weird logical inconsistency of somebody trying to give a number to how creative you are. This is literally impossible to judge because how creative somebody is has a lot of variables, such as their character, gimmick, and style. Like sure, do we want something fun to read every time? Absolutely. But sometimes a writer gets a good smack talk rp in their mind and just wants to jump in front of a camera and old-school it like Dusty. Hard times? That’s like maybe a 5 tops for content and I’ll give a 1 to creativity because he didn’t do anything except point at the camera and say “hard times” over and over. So you get a 6 there, Dusty Rhodes and I’m being nice. Why can’t you be good at rping like Jack Diamond?

Character Development/Match Relevance: So I partly like this section. I think it’s important in a promo for a match to actually mention the match. I think I scored one of Seth’s promos like a 0 in AWF when guest booking because he didn’t mention the match at all. Now that sounds harsh but I’m actually nicer than a lot of bookers. I’m ok with like just a short reference like “Oh man I should probably be training for my [INSERT MATCH DETAILS HERE] match.” Some bookers want the match to be the focus of the entire promo. Where I get upset is the character development booking. Again this is applying a number to a subjective subject. Dusty Rhodes got in front of the camera and talked about how he was going through hard times due to losing a title and somehow that also was reflected in America going through hard times. It was hard times, guys. That’s maybe what, a 3 for character development? “Guy is sad over losing title.” Literally that’s it. But what do you expect? A character can’t have full growth every single time they’re on camera. Stone Cold made a career on never changing. Goldberg literally never changed ever. Meanwhile we make memes because Big Show continues to grow as a character, at the cost of his alignment. SEE, WE’RE IN THE WRONG HERE! BIG SHOW OUTSCORES DUSTY RHODES. Why can’t you be like better rpers, Dusty?

Effort: Lmao. Like seriously bro? Suddenly we’re back to Fishy’s rubric from the first case study. I get that we want promos to look nice but we should be letting rpers grow in a style that they’re comfortable with. Pictures isn’t everyone’s deal and neither is certain coding styles. A couple years ago I was boasting about the freedom of the XHF in this- but then Rob Arnold mentioned that there felt like there was an unspoken preference for the way DT and the Borgs promo (with pictures for characters speaking). And there might have been- but it wasn’t official because making something like that official is more creatively limiting than all the censorship I try to enact.

Anyway I don’t feel like adding up the score but literally any Jack Diamond rp beats Dusty Rhodes’ “Hard Times.”

Case Study 4: XHF (Again), AWF, and the XHF Network- Doing our best

So although I noted that the idea of trying to get a consensus was probably a little naïve, the XHF bookers did come up with some good ideas that I still stick by. We decided up front that title match bookings would be as subjective as we wanted. And I’ll break down what that means. When booking a title match in the XHF (then, not now) we’d look at a few different areas. 1. The RPs- they needed to be close enough for us to fudge one way or the other if needed. 2. Push/storyline- would a title retention or changing of hands suit the storyline better? 3. OOC- straight up, we didn’t want our titles on jerks. Almost all the titles (but especially the World Heavyweight, United States, and Eurpean championships) were booked this way.

However, in deference to the BDDWF, it’s Ultimate Championship- and later the X*Crown were booked exclusively by what we thought of the rps. In fact, if you go look at the X*Crown list and the XHF World Heavyweight Championship list you’ll notice that there’s a lot of different guys between them. That’s because quite a few of the X*Crown guys could never win the world title. And since it was the secondary main event championship, we didn’t really care if the X*Crown champ flaked out and got stripped of the title- but we wanted a strong XHF Champ. It’s why all the old guys talk about Reeshi- he was booked like Hogan because he was consistently good and had a great ooc attitude. People could accept him as champ even if his rps didn’t quite beat his opponent’s (subjectively speaking)

I bring this up because I think people get real curious about the AWF. AWF books closest in format to the XHF. That is to say they put up a booking card in their secret forum and write in their picks and reasons etc. This means that the Network Admins get to look in and see how they do it. I think the AWF’s booking system is solid. Period. I know it’s fair and they have rules that we established in the XHF (like no voting if you are in a match or feel like you are biased about the outcome). One booker though (Kuroi) tends to sometimes (not always) overthink things as though he were booking for XHF. I’ve read at least once or twice where he’s said “I feel like this guy did better, but for some reason I think so and so should win.” And you know what? That’s his reasoning, he is usually really clear on it- and the rest of the admins can either agree or disagree. Sometimes Kuroi gets outvoted; sometimes he’s in the majority. It’s a solid system, though; even if you don’t agree with one of the bookers there’s enough checks and balances to keep it clean.

Which brings us to the XHF Network and how we currently book global shows. I’m sure you guys are curious. Do we assign numeric scores to rps? Sometimes, yeah. I don’t like doing it personally but I know DT will err on that side in order to keep track of stuff. During the Rumble we came up with a new system to help us organize 5 very different viewpoints in order to choose our winner. Last year we did something different. Maybe we’ll do something different again next year (though I thought this system worked so maybe not). But in the end you’ve got several guys with different preferences looking at a whole bunch of promos and trying to decide what’s best.

….Well, not what’s “best.” “Best” doesn’t exist in any objective way. During the Rumble some rps made me laugh, some made me think, some were cool, some were not what I wanted to read at all, and some were like real promos you’d see in WWE- but didn’t jive with how efeds work. Best ends up being extremely subjective- so I think it’s better to say we’re picking what we like best or our favorite promos. And I think for the most part the voting between the different opinions can flush out a winner most folk will agree on. And that’s what booking really is- coming to an agreement with your team on who’s probably gonna get the most “well that makes sense” from the roster and rewarding that guy (or gal) for putting on a fun to read rp.

Conclusion

You will never be the world’s greatest booker and your booking system probably sucks. Alright, that’s a little mean. But really, booking is incredibly subjective- and the sooner you admit it to yourself and your members, the more time you can focus making your fed better. I could spend hours explaining why objectively Jack Diamond is always better than Bobby (Sorry, this is a running ICW joke) but Bobby is still gonna think his rp was better. And that’s fine- some people will probably agree. So when people come to me and ask how I judge promos I just give them the truth: it’s subjective. I know what I like, DT knows what he likes, Kanyon votes the way he wants to, Vasty has a whole different view than we do, and Dylan is Dylan but we love him anyway. At the end you get 5 subjective opinions and that’s probably good enough to give you the next X*Crown or Tag match winner. So stop lying to yourself, prospective owner: your opinion isn’t objective no matter how badly you want it to be. And any rpers reading this should keep that in mind too- trust me, you’ve read above, you don’t want us to be objective, lol.