Created Wrestlers

[jacklarkin]

Been thinking about this for a bit, not sure how coherent I can be though. To me one of the best parts of fantasy feds and simulators,  mine and others, is created and creating wrestlers. However, there are many "problems" with most created wrestlers and the process. Most of them suffer from common flaws.

One flaw is rip-offs of real wrestlers. Sometimes they are parodies, and sometimes they are similar without meaning to be, but often you look at a created wrestler and say "hey thats a rip-off of Lex Luger". I remember one of my favorite feds was the John Fredrickson/Carl Todd world and they had huge rosters etc, and they had some great created wrestlers like Jack Voight or Adam Riggs, they had others that were clearly rip-offs like Nic Cross (Triple H) or Chris Jons (Chris Benoit). In this world I think some of these came out because another fed like NeWA had the real wrestler, so they created their own copy. A subset of this flaw is when the rip-off is based on a real person that is not a wrestler like Vance Steele (accompanied with a pic of Vin Diesel).

Another flaw is that they are just not 3-dimensional enough. They have names like Rick Ruff, or Tommy Gunns, and they are stereotypes or archetypes (Cowboy, Goth, etc) but have no real depth to them. 

Another flaw, and this one is prevalent with e-feds is they have a backstory from before wrestling. I know that in the cartoon WWF you had Sparkplug Holly who was supposedly a race car driver, and things like that but overall we really don't need to know much about their backstory. With e-feds you have "Dave Vipond" and we know where he went to high school, how his first girlfriend broke up with him, his Father left, he failed as a Bass guitarist, and was discovered as a bouncer. He wrestles out of necessity and because he is looking for social acceptance. Yuck. What we don't know is that he is in his 7th year wrestling and what feds he has wrestled for, his development, etc. But we know why Kandi broke up with him in the 8th grade.

To get around these flaws, to create a truly unique and deep created wrestler is awfully tough. And it doesn't necessarily come at the time of drawing it up, sometimes it takes history and development.

However, one thing I have noticed is sometimes you can just hear a name..nothing else....and it just clicks..you get an image that you can run with. I remember one that I think was randomly generated in one of the free sim games "Jody Christmas". I saw that name and just came up with exactly what he looked like, how he wrestled etc. I hate to break my own rules and compare him but yes, he is a bit like Shawn Michaels, Edge, Christian Cage...but he was unique for me from the start. In the aforementioned world from John Fredrickson/Carl Todd I got to take over a mid-western fed, and for the most part I had a roster of names...nothing else really but names. Sam Holliday, Al Collins, Joe Blum, Total Destruction Steve Riley, etc. I did some internet research and asked questions and some guys were real indy guys some were not. So I had to make them up in TNM because I was using that to run the fed. Sam Holliday I had the picture of a long lanky cowboy..a bit of Barry Windham, but also because I had him as a humble face I also drew upon some country stars like Alan Jackson. I even used a picture of Canadian country star George Canyon as his image, and "Ain't Going Down Till The Sun Comes Up" by Garth Brooks as the theme. And then for good measure I started him with half of Hulk Hogan's move set.Al Collins, sounded so old, I decided to make him sort of an older, beer bellied guy..and then game him a trademark "comb over" haircut that he often had to swoosh over during the match. Joe Blum, I either gave him the nickname "Gung Ho" or more likely it was already there so I made him a bit of a Cpl Kirschner type character. Total Destruction Steve Riley based on the nickname I gave him a Goldberg type aura but not the winning streak. So those last 2 examples are flawed in that they were rip-offs of real wrestlers, the example I want to make is how a name can just get you started. I guess thats the opposite of the other way around where you know what the characteristics of your wrestler and come up with a name...and thats when you end up with Tommy Gunns, or Shawn Stryder. 

So for the sake of conversation what are your views of created wrestlers, methods of making them etc. 

And what I was thinking was to make created wrestlers more 3D takes a village not an individual. If I posted a name and started some basic outlines would people find it fun to contribute..a hometown, quirks, moves, etc? 

[KWOAOA]

Sir;

I completely agree with you. It's hard to keep a fictional efed and keep it interesting because you toss on the TV and see the wrestlers of (insert your choice of promotion) and think "my guy can do that". But when you try to do everything fictional everything about him is complete blank. I know with my fed (KWO AOA) which has been running on / off since 2002-ish it's gone through a number of different changes it started with wrestlers who were based off other wrestlers for the longest time and it was just simply wrestlers that I liked or that caught my attention for one reason or another. Then the last few years I decided to go all fictional and sadly that's where I have had my hardest time keeping an interest cause I've often sat and thought "who is this guy ?"

Of course I tend to do things differently than most, I don't do back stories, I don't do story lines or anything like that. Just whenever I choose to go out and do cards is when I do them. I don't have any friends apart of my promotion, I use to at one point in time however it just became frustrating more than anything with myself. So as I said it's just me running a fictional universe and deciding what I do with them and let the game play out the results and see what the results give me and go from there. I have created tag teams randomly and at times it's very very boring I will admit that.
However recently I decided twice to bring back some of the KWOAOA originals and have them face the new guys, well it turns out the originals were no match for the new guys however in my mind the originals had some sort of backstory even though I treated them the same as I didn't do story lines or back stories however they were based on real wrestlers I just changed names some of them were obvious as shit but some weren't:

Dreemer = Tommy Dreamer
Kryptik = Kane
Big Evil = Undertaker
Mazteryouz = Messiah (from XPW / CZW)
Jayme Clash = AJ Styles
Major Mayhem = John Cena
Vampyro = Vampiro
Domination = Nosawa
Hellz Most Wanted = Mexico's Most Wanted
Awezome = Mike Awesome

To give a few examples of both, at times I get really really bored with the fictional world that I do things with and want to just give up on it all. I then at times think of bringing back the originals and doing stuff with them and scrapping the fictional world because it seems more interesting to me..

As for creating them I usually just use the Random Wrestler program that you can create with TNM and let them create people for me, I know it's sad and pathetic but that's how I do it.

I know this isn't the answer your looking for but that's how I do things, I don't think many people come to this board that often anymore. I think many of them have moved on to other things and spend as little around here as possible.
I'm still scratching my head over what to do with my stuff, in a few ways I can see me going back to the Originals and just branching out with some of the newer wrestlers that I enjoy watching on TV. That may allow me to regain interest in it.

[jacklarkin]

Jun 27, 2018 12:39:45 GMT -5 KWOAOA said:

Sir;

I completely agree with you. It's hard to keep a fictional efed and keep it interesting because you toss on the TV and see the wrestlers of (insert your choice of promotion) and think "my guy can do that". But when you try to do everything fictional everything about him is complete blank. I know with my fed (KWO AOA) which has been running on / off since 2002-ish it's gone through a number of different changes it started with wrestlers who were based off other wrestlers for the longest time and it was just simply wrestlers that I liked or that caught my attention for one reason or another. Then the last few years I decided to go all fictional and sadly that's where I have had my hardest time keeping an interest cause I've often sat and thought "who is this guy ?"

Of course I tend to do things differently than most, I don't do back stories, I don't do story lines or anything like that. Just whenever I choose to go out and do cards is when I do them. I don't have any friends apart of my promotion, I use to at one point in time however it just became frustrating more than anything with myself. So as I said it's just me running a fictional universe and deciding what I do with them and let the game play out the results and see what the results give me and go from there. I have created tag teams randomly and at times it's very very boring I will admit that.
However recently I decided twice to bring back some of the KWOAOA originals and have them face the new guys, well it turns out the originals were no match for the new guys however in my mind the originals had some sort of backstory even though I treated them the same as I didn't do story lines or back stories however they were based on real wrestlers I just changed names some of them were obvious as shit but some weren't:

Dreemer = Tommy Dreamer
Kryptik = Kane
Big Evil = Undertaker
Mazteryouz = Messiah (from XPW / CZW)
Jayme Clash = AJ Styles
Major Mayhem = John Cena
Vampyro = Vampiro
Domination = Nosawa
Hellz Most Wanted = Mexico's Most Wanted
Awezome = Mike Awesome

To give a few examples of both, at times I get really really bored with the fictional world that I do things with and want to just give up on it all. I then at times think of bringing back the originals and doing stuff with them and scrapping the fictional world because it seems more interesting to me..

As for creating them I usually just use the Random Wrestler program that you can create with TNM and let them create people for me, I know it's sad and pathetic but that's how I do it.

I know this isn't the answer your looking for but that's how I do things, I don't think many people come to this board that often anymore. I think many of them have moved on to other things and spend as little around here as possible.
I'm still scratching my head over what to do with my stuff, in a few ways I can see me going back to the Originals and just branching out with some of the newer wrestlers that I enjoy watching on TV. That may allow me to regain interest in it.

That's very cool. 

Do you draw inspiration from real life people you know and create them with different names?

Sometimes you see on facebook or what have you a quiz like "find your Jamaican name" or "your star wars name" by using the last digit of your birth month and first letter of your hometown, or whatever, those can be fun. Combine your father's middle name with the model name of the first car you owned, etc.

On wrestlingclassics message board one guy had a thread (nothing to do with fantasy wrestling) to rename the all time greats. He came up with stuff like
Nick Bockwinkel - Orval Tessier III
Ray Stevens = Carl Show
Adrian Adonis = Oz Keitherson

I did that for fun taking his renaming and updating files to more current, threw in some of the more outrageous celebrity exports that were floating around and ran an unbooked fed, like an Island of Dr. Moreau sort of thing, where he was just experimenting with these old school clones against these new superstars. Of course that sort of thing doesn't last long. 

I am not able to run TNM7 anymore but If I was I would love to use the random generator, then by looking at the moves etc come up with a name, hometown etc. That would be fun.

I like where you were going with your post.

[KWOAOA]

When I do fictional wrestlers I use "random wrestler creator" which is a TNM7 addon. I rarely change the names, but at times I change the names of the finishers they use so it's not "piledriver" or anything like that I would have "japanese nerve powerdriver" just to make it sound that much more devastating.

So why arent you able to run TNM7 anymore ? ... no computer ? or just running on linux ?... actually running on linux shouldn't stop you... but I'll let you answer the question anyways.

Sadly it's been a while and I'm still scratching my head about what to do with things, I have recently got back into watching wrestling. I think it's mainly because this month I got the fight network for free so I'm watching it when I can and Impact Wrestling has drawn me in. Which is why I don't know what I want to do, go back to the originals or keep doing new guys. I think the great idea with the new guys and fictional is you don't have those mental limitations.. Although I'm itching to watch Slammiversary which is a odd thing I haven't had that itch in a very long time, perhaps it's because it's also in Toronto. No I'm not from Toronto, I do live nearby though.

Another helper I use for my tnm7 fed is: www.seventhsanctum.com/index.php
It has a ton of generators to help spark ideas.

[jacklarkin]

I have a macbook air and an iphone, both provided by work. I'm also mostly just trying to document my fed and fill in the gaps and that keeps me busy. My iphone is coming up off contract and I have a choice of getting another iphone or going Samsung. I'm also interested in running EHM Eastside Hockey Manager, but now I see that FHM can be run on a Mac so thinking of doing that instead. I'm in Winnipeg BTW.

[KWOAOA]

I'm no expert on the mac, but doesn't it have dosbox or an alternative for it ?.. According to it's website dosbox should work on the mac, why not give it a shot ? .. I get it, it's a work computer but if your already playing EHM then why not also play TNM ? ... I also have EHM however I haven't checked it out yet, been playing OOTP a bunch though have enjoyed that game for many years.

[doughcomic]

So since I have returned to TNM this year I have been focused on an all real wrestler environment. Eventually I will recreate some of my tride and true characters that I developed in my youth and have been using in WWE games on consoles for years. All of my creations have a combination of stars as their move style guide. Example: "The Chaos Bringer" Oliver Matthews is based on a combination of Shawn Michaels & Dean Malenko. "The Extreme Superstar" Everett Creed is modeled off of Steve Austin & Cactus Jack. Malkavian Kaitiff is a combination of The Undertaker & The Big Show. I found that using these characters now for 20 something years I have created a full personality for them and I have an nWo sized roster, but I rarely use them in a fed with real wrestlers, and when I download other peoples creations I would base angles off their names but really I would focus those federations on winning and losing. Using Created wrestlers helped me develop a long standing list of rules that I run most circuits.

[KWOAOA]

I think one of my problems when it comes to running things is rather simple, way back when I started KWOAOA it was back in the great times of wrestling. When WWF, WCW & ECW were all around and quite frankly I was swimming in wrestling and I do mean that because I don't remember who my satellite provider was but this is how the week broke down for me in terms of wrestling:

Monday - Raw
Tuesday - Nitro
Wednesday - Thunder
Thursday - Smackdown
Friday - ECW TV
Saturday - WCW Saturday Night & WWF Superstars
Sunday - Heat &/or Velocity but I barely watched them.

But Monday to Friday I was swimming in wrestling, I then paid attention to a few independents mostly from the USA. My personal favourite was XPW since I liked ECW Hardcore Wrestling.
Then lets face it I don't need to write about it we all know what happened to WCW & ECW... The Invasion angle had me hyped but it wasn't as good as what I wanted, ECW's return sucked balls because it wasn't ECW of old it was them trying to be WWE.. Although they had a few cool characters... XPW also later died off due to legal issues (honestly more porn related but hey whose asking lol)
I still watched wrestling when I could but it became a bit more difficult, not trying to put the blame on anyone but in 2005 my father passed and my mom sat down and stripped down the channels to bare minimum and I do mean bare minimum. Our internet connection has been slow, if it was a snail speed it no doubt was faster. I've tried to keep up with things by reading about them like WWE and Impact. A friend of mine who was big into wrestling at the time told me about TNA followed by his joke of "no it doesn't stand for tits and ass" .. Long story short not long ago my ex who still lives with me at the moment invested in netflix and for those who don't know Lucha Underground is on netflix, I've always been a huge fan of mexican wrestlers. More so masked wrestlers, just something about them it adds more mystery to it.
So I started season 1 of lucha underground then when reading about WWE and NXT I noticed a few wrestlers who looked familiar from season 1 of lucha. However for this month (july) and having bell express vu satellite we have fight network for free, so I've been able to watch a lot of wrestling and I prefer Impact over WWE. I really wanted to watch NJPW however the stuff they showed happens to be old matches from 2007ish from what I seen but I still check them out upon occasion.

So what I want to do with KWOAOA is a big mystery to me, I keep scratching my head about changing it over to real wrestlers, but do I use fictional names or no ? I haven't decided.

My other problem is my current champion Nico The Messiah Voight who currently is a five time champion. I like the name and I don't know if I really want to part with him however he appears to be, kinda like my WCW Goldberg. I'm not saying he's undefeated but it does take him a bunch to loose but he can very very easily defeat others when the gold is on the line, even when it's not on the line. I don't know if I would want to loose him right now.. Although I could always just export him and save him for later if I have to.

I had the idea of having him hand over the gold and walking out, then at the next event have a wrestler show up by the name of Johnny Kayoz (based on Johnny Impact) with a tag team partner Joey Destruction to see if they can take the tag titles and perhaps the world title as well. But like I said right now I just don't know if I want real wrestlers while I keep the names real, or 100% fictional or real wrestlers with fictional names.. At times I think the real wrestlers with real names would be easiest for me since at times I don't have much to think about. I would also have a rule where I can't use any WWE guys, not saying I dislike WWE. But I do remember for a while they were going after efeds a number of years ago... I would also no doubt bring in Cody Rhodes & Ted Dibiase Jr.. Perhaps in the future, I always wanted that million dollar championship in my promotion.

As for my promotion (KWOAOA) at times I run multiple cards in a day, I also have no storylines it's just easier that way since as I said I run multiple cards in a day. I think I mainly do things for me, and even have a website for things as I always have. Speaking of the website I'll no doubt be posting a different website up in due time, one that showcases all of it's history. Well maybe, I don't know right now, I haven't fully decided..

[jacklarkin]

Jul 24, 2018 17:16:39 GMT -5 doughcomic said:

So since I have returned to TNM this year I have been focused on an all real wrestler environment. Eventually I will recreate some of my tride and true characters that I developed in my youth and have been using in WWE games on consoles for years. All of my creations have a combination of stars as their move style guide. Example: "The Chaos Bringer" Oliver Matthews is based on a combination of Shawn Michaels & Dean Malenko. "The Extreme Superstar" Everett Creed is modeled off of Steve Austin & Cactus Jack. Malkavian Kaitiff is a combination of The Undertaker & The Big Show. I found that using these characters now for 20 something years I have created a full personality for them and I have an nWo sized roster, but I rarely use them in a fed with real wrestlers, and when I download other peoples creations I would base angles off their names but really I would focus those federations on winning and losing. Using Created wrestlers helped me develop a long standing list of rules that I run most circuits.

That is an awesome idea. Love it! Do you actually have a visual in mind for each wrestler? I guess if you use them on consoles you must create one or modify one of the two its based on?

[jacklarkin]

Jul 24, 2018 20:25:03 GMT -5 KWOAOA said:

I think one of my problems when it comes to running things is rather simple, way back when I started KWOAOA it was back in the great times of wrestling. When WWF, WCW & ECW were all around and quite frankly I was swimming in wrestling and I do mean that because I don't remember who my satellite provider was but this is how the week broke down for me in terms of wrestling:

Monday - Raw
Tuesday - Nitro
Wednesday - Thunder
Thursday - Smackdown
Friday - ECW TV
Saturday - WCW Saturday Night & WWF Superstars
Sunday - Heat &/or Velocity but I barely watched them.

But Monday to Friday I was swimming in wrestling, I then paid attention to a few independents mostly from the USA. My personal favourite was XPW since I liked ECW Hardcore Wrestling.
Then lets face it I don't need to write about it we all know what happened to WCW & ECW... The Invasion angle had me hyped but it wasn't as good as what I wanted, ECW's return sucked balls because it wasn't ECW of old it was them trying to be WWE.. Although they had a few cool characters... XPW also later died off due to legal issues (honestly more porn related but hey whose asking lol)
I still watched wrestling when I could but it became a bit more difficult, not trying to put the blame on anyone but in 2005 my father passed and my mom sat down and stripped down the channels to bare minimum and I do mean bare minimum. Our internet connection has been slow, if it was a snail speed it no doubt was faster. I've tried to keep up with things by reading about them like WWE and Impact. A friend of mine who was big into wrestling at the time told me about TNA followed by his joke of "no it doesn't stand for tits and ass" .. Long story short not long ago my ex who still lives with me at the moment invested in netflix and for those who don't know Lucha Underground is on netflix, I've always been a huge fan of mexican wrestlers. More so masked wrestlers, just something about them it adds more mystery to it.
So I started season 1 of lucha underground then when reading about WWE and NXT I noticed a few wrestlers who looked familiar from season 1 of lucha. However for this month (july) and having bell express vu satellite we have fight network for free, so I've been able to watch a lot of wrestling and I prefer Impact over WWE. I really wanted to watch NJPW however the stuff they showed happens to be old matches from 2007ish from what I seen but I still check them out upon occasion.

So what I want to do with KWOAOA is a big mystery to me, I keep scratching my head about changing it over to real wrestlers, but do I use fictional names or no ? I haven't decided.

My other problem is my current champion Nico The Messiah Voight who currently is a five time champion. I like the name and I don't know if I really want to part with him however he appears to be, kinda like my WCW Goldberg. I'm not saying he's undefeated but it does take him a bunch to loose but he can very very easily defeat others when the gold is on the line, even when it's not on the line. I don't know if I would want to loose him right now.. Although I could always just export him and save him for later if I have to.

I had the idea of having him hand over the gold and walking out, then at the next event have a wrestler show up by the name of Johnny Kayoz (based on Johnny Impact) with a tag team partner Joey Destruction to see if they can take the tag titles and perhaps the world title as well. But like I said right now I just don't know if I want real wrestlers while I keep the names real, or 100% fictional or real wrestlers with fictional names.. At times I think the real wrestlers with real names would be easiest for me since at times I don't have much to think about. I would also have a rule where I can't use any WWE guys, not saying I dislike WWE. But I do remember for a while they were going after efeds a number of years ago... I would also no doubt bring in Cody Rhodes & Ted Dibiase Jr.. Perhaps in the future, I always wanted that million dollar championship in my promotion.

As for my promotion (KWOAOA) at times I run multiple cards in a day, I also have no storylines it's just easier that way since as I said I run multiple cards in a day. I think I mainly do things for me, and even have a website for things as I always have. Speaking of the website I'll no doubt be posting a different website up in due time, one that showcases all of it's history. Well maybe, I don't know right now, I haven't fully decided..

Yeah swimming in wrestling was how I was too from about 97-02, give or take a year on each end of that. I watched the same as you did Mon-Fri, with ECW being a highlite. I also have to admit to being majorly into the WWE divas at that time, Sable, Torrie Wilson, etc...and blown away by some of the WCW girls that were better athletes, especially April Hunter. And of course during that time it was the explosion of the internet so besides watching the shows I had to follow several websites for spoilers, rumours, and discussion. And then of course there was TNM and those boards on top of that. Looking back at it I probably spent 20-30 hours a week on wrestling. It was crazy.

The WCW buy out of course killed all that. I mean yes WCW was crap right at the end but I was still really loving it. Sure I hated Russo but there was still a sort of unpredictability because of the Monday night wars that died as soon as McMahon took over everything. For a bit TNM sort of took the place of watching a lot of wrestling, as it was fantasy when reality sucked. It's kind of funny but I found that as soon as wrestling hit those doldrums then TNM boards etc really fell off. PEople said the two were connected and the were (as well as technology advances I'm sure) but at first I was like, if the real world sucks then this fantasy world should get even busier. But even for me that didn't happen, when people stopped watching wrestling they stopped with TNM too (including me). I also had a young family so time was better spent on that.

Your champion Voight sounds awesome. Funny but I also had a wrestler I used, a German called Jack Voight, and I always thought of the actor Jon Voight but there was no relation. The created wrestler Jack Voight was just one of many from the WWA/PWA John Fredrickson/Carl Todd universe that I used when I was a member there and also afterward. I loved that world they had. Having a guy at the top like that (your Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Triple H) adds stability and a brand name to your company. I would encourage you to keep him running for a long time frame and evolve him. However, if you are going to have a created guy like that at the top then you can't have all others being real. You either need a mix (which I love but most people seem to hate), or all created. If you go with a mix then I would highly suggest you do not simply rename real world wrestlers. Either keep them as they are or change them enough so you have a created wrestler different then the real one. One thing to consider is scope. Is your fed a world class, selling out arena's fed? If not then what I find is that the indy guys tend to be smaller or if they are big not in great shape. So its easier to take someone like Big Show and make him only 6'6, a lot more realistic for Indy's. 

Funny but I also have the same rule about WWE guys, or at least a version. I do not let myself use any guys that had a big contract at the time in WWE/WCW. My fed has been running since 1980 and I am just filling in the blanks at this point, but I stay to that rule. Occasionally I have edited the history to change it to a created guy that is similar when I have made a mistake. Now sometimes I allow a bit of a overlap like a month of three, but thats about it. So I can use them before they become big (and they just one day disappear even when they are at the top), or I can use them when they are "has-been's". Just yesterday I was working on the card results from May 1995 and I had Sgt Craig Pittman (who I thought was under appreciated) but I checked and he was actually in WCW at the time. Oops...I changed it to a created wrestler named Sgt. Keymon Grant. 

As I progress to about 2010 there will be very, very few real world wrestlers because I have watched so little wrestling by about then that I don't know many of the guys or like them. In fact I am looking forward to eventually (not sure I will make it) going into the future so I can use some of the Champions of the Galaxy guys!

I would love to see your website when you are ready and may even hit you up for permission to use some of your created wrestlers in my world.

Sorry to hear about the Greek Town shootings. It seems so crazy right there, its like Toronto has been taken over by the thug lifestyle. It's very sad.

[LillaThrilla]

"They have names like Rick Ruff, or Tommy Gunns, and they are stereotypes or archetypes (Cowboy, Goth, etc) but have no real depth to them."

Yeah but if it was good enough for WWF it's useful for wrestling. Not every wrestler needs an elaborate backstory.

Rather than simply using a thinly veiled ripoff of a real wrestler, I like doing mashups of real wrestlers or an "elseworlds" version of a real wrestler. A few of the ones I've either seen or came up with on my own:
Triple X - incorporates elements of all the members of D-X
"The Golden One" Jeff Jericho - a mix of Chris Jericho, Triple H, and Jeff Jarrett
Bulk Logan - Hulk Hogan as a megaheel instead of a megaface
Bret Hurt - Bret Hart if he'd had a Calgary cowboy gimmick
"The Mean Dean" Ric Rudd - Ric Rude crossed with Dean Douglas
Bonesaw McGraw - Randy Savage if his gimmick was the one portrayed in the first Spiderman movie instead of being Macho Man

[doughcomic]

Jul 26, 2018 14:55:14 GMT -5 jacklarkin said:

Jul 24, 2018 17:16:39 GMT -5 doughcomic said:

So since I have returned to TNM this year I have been focused on an all real wrestler environment. Eventually I will recreate some of my tride and true characters that I developed in my youth and have been using in WWE games on consoles for years. All of my creations have a combination of stars as their move style guide. Example: "The Chaos Bringer" Oliver Matthews is based on a combination of Shawn Michaels & Dean Malenko. "The Extreme Superstar" Everett Creed is modeled off of Steve Austin & Cactus Jack. Malkavian Kaitiff is a combination of The Undertaker & The Big Show. I found that using these characters now for 20 something years I have created a full personality for them and I have an nWo sized roster, but I rarely use them in a fed with real wrestlers, and when I download other peoples creations I would base angles off their names but really I would focus those federations on winning and losing. Using Created wrestlers helped me develop a long standing list of rules that I run most circuits.

That is an awesome idea. Love it! Do you actually have a visual in mind for each wrestler? I guess if you use them on consoles you must create one or modify one of the two its based on?

I will use data from the console to assist but my main guys have evolved from beyond that.  I am not sure if I loaded them up from 2k18 or not.

[KWOAOA]

Jul 26, 2018 15:19:39 GMT -5 jacklarkin said:

Yeah swimming in wrestling was how I was too from about 97-02, give or take a year on each end of that. I watched the same as you did Mon-Fri, with ECW being a highlite. I also have to admit to being majorly into the WWE divas at that time, Sable, Torrie Wilson, etc...and blown away by some of the WCW girls that were better athletes, especially April Hunter. And of course during that time it was the explosion of the internet so besides watching the shows I had to follow several websites for spoilers, rumours, and discussion. And then of course there was TNM and those boards on top of that. Looking back at it I probably spent 20-30 hours a week on wrestling. It was crazy.

The WCW buy out of course killed all that. I mean yes WCW was crap right at the end but I was still really loving it. Sure I hated Russo but there was still a sort of unpredictability because of the Monday night wars that died as soon as McMahon took over everything. For a bit TNM sort of took the place of watching a lot of wrestling, as it was fantasy when reality sucked. It's kind of funny but I found that as soon as wrestling hit those doldrums then TNM boards etc really fell off. PEople said the two were connected and the were (as well as technology advances I'm sure) but at first I was like, if the real world sucks then this fantasy world should get even busier. But even for me that didn't happen, when people stopped watching wrestling they stopped with TNM too (including me). I also had a young family so time was better spent on that.

Your champion Voight sounds awesome. Funny but I also had a wrestler I used, a German called Jack Voight, and I always thought of the actor Jon Voight but there was no relation. The created wrestler Jack Voight was just one of many from the WWA/PWA John Fredrickson/Carl Todd universe that I used when I was a member there and also afterward. I loved that world they had. Having a guy at the top like that (your Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Triple H) adds stability and a brand name to your company. I would encourage you to keep him running for a long time frame and evolve him. However, if you are going to have a created guy like that at the top then you can't have all others being real. You either need a mix (which I love but most people seem to hate), or all created. If you go with a mix then I would highly suggest you do not simply rename real world wrestlers. Either keep them as they are or change them enough so you have a created wrestler different then the real one. One thing to consider is scope. Is your fed a world class, selling out arena's fed? If not then what I find is that the indy guys tend to be smaller or if they are big not in great shape. So its easier to take someone like Big Show and make him only 6'6, a lot more realistic for Indy's. 

Funny but I also have the same rule about WWE guys, or at least a version. I do not let myself use any guys that had a big contract at the time in WWE/WCW. My fed has been running since 1980 and I am just filling in the blanks at this point, but I stay to that rule. Occasionally I have edited the history to change it to a created guy that is similar when I have made a mistake. Now sometimes I allow a bit of a overlap like a month of three, but thats about it. So I can use them before they become big (and they just one day disappear even when they are at the top), or I can use them when they are "has-been's". Just yesterday I was working on the card results from May 1995 and I had Sgt Craig Pittman (who I thought was under appreciated) but I checked and he was actually in WCW at the time. Oops...I changed it to a created wrestler named Sgt. Keymon Grant. 

As I progress to about 2010 there will be very, very few real world wrestlers because I have watched so little wrestling by about then that I don't know many of the guys or like them. In fact I am looking forward to eventually (not sure I will make it) going into the future so I can use some of the Champions of the Galaxy guys!

I would love to see your website when you are ready and may even hit you up for permission to use some of your created wrestlers in my world.

Sorry to hear about the Greek Town shootings. It seems so crazy right there, its like Toronto has been taken over by the thug lifestyle. It's very sad.

I've been away from the board for a bit, started not to feel well. First thing I will address is the new site, the original site I had created I did up with expressions web which ultimately had every single thing in terms of history on it... When I started with things I was running on Zeus Pro so I had all those outputs on it, I then changed up to TNM7 then to AWE then back to TNM7 so I had every single thing listed on the site. But honestly the site got to me after a while, I thought it looked so basic looking like it was created in the 90s that I didn't like it. I recently bought a program through Steam called Xara Webpage Designer Pro, it allowed me to create the sites I have up now but the downfall is it's very limiting so I can't bring in all my old stuff so needless to say it puts me on the fence about how to go forward, do I go back to my old site design where I basically have unlimited ability and could do anything I wanted and all in lovely html format or do I use what I am currently using which makes the site look a bit more professional.. I think what caused me to buy the program I use is that my other one wasn't getting any views but I have had the thought of going back to the last one I had cause I like the flexibility of being able to do anything I care to. Since if I don't know how to code a certain thing then I know I can find out how to do it online and I've surprised myself a few times with it. So that's where the website stands at this time, then when I started not to feel well it put everything on pause for me.

Anytime I tried to do a mix of real & fantasy, to put it bluntly.... Nico has no issues kicking everyones teeth down there throats.. People that I didn't think he would defeat he would defeat.. For the most part if you look at the history, anytime he lost the title it was more so a elimination match and either everyone ganged up on him at first or he was the last eliminated so he has zero issues standing his ground.

I don't know how to class my fed, I don't know if it would be a world class one or indy's. Over the last few cards I've incorporated more of a hardcore mode so if I chose to print full results (more on this in a bit) you would see use of weapons as I was checking out a lot of CZW and old school ECW/XPW lately. So I like the idea of the weapons..
As for printing out full results, some of my older cards I have full results printed however when I first created a site for things I used Tripod or Angelfire for hosting since honestly I don't like paying for hosting but the limitations for them are small so I was always forced to bounce around to find other hosts.. At one point in time I actually owned kwoaoa.com I bought it out of boredom one day.. Was kinda surprised and laughed at myself for doing so.
A year or two ago I bought KWOAOA.space which was much cheaper than the .com I once had, I still laugh at myself for buying it but in my eyes the domain kinda came free is how I look at it.. I sell a bunch of video games on ebay (ps2,ps3,xbox 360) and I do admit I make a little bit from it, nothing like being able to live off of it or anything like that but I have managed to buy a few games with it and two domains with it one for my efed and one for a publishing company...

At one point I actually use to create custom music for my wrestlers, but this was a number of years ago when getting a media player on one's site was more of a pain in the ass than anything since everything wanted $$$ where as if I did it now it wouldn't be so bad. I would also do mashable videos for certain wrestlers in my fed surprisingly the host is still up that I posted it with, I figured by now it would have been shut down for some reason but:
www.dailymotion.com/kwoaoa
If your interested, I didn't know what I was doing. Just an idiot goofing around with things and for a while I kept thinking "hey of the they can do it, why can't I ?" I would no doubt use the same thing for uploading music on I would just have to try and remember my login info...

I don't have my latest roster listed on the site, keep meaning to do so but as I said just haven't gotten around to it. But yes if you want to borrow anyone by all means I would gladly send people your way. Or if they're based on real life people I would let you know who so you can easily create them yourself, the odd person I would make adjustments to.

I wasn't much into the Divas at the time of things starting, I can see what would draw people into looking at them. But I kinda looked at most of them as a joke back in the day. As of late I've kind of taken a respect to them which has lead me to open a womans wrestling promotion: KVW - Kayoz Vixxxenz Wrestling ... I think the link is: kvw.kwoaoa.space

Greek town shootings, I know I said I'm from Toronto but I'm more so an hour away, kinda in the middle of no where... I usually mention a major city close to me rather than exactly where I'm at since most people would scratch there heads and ask "where is that ?" ... But yes it seems as of late Toronto is becoming very gang related city which is becoming very bad

But back in the day in terms of wrestling I ran a small wrestling news & interviews site, I would do email interviews. I thought about bringing it back but sadly a bunch of the guys I would want to interview I don't think I would be able to since a few of them have passed. But I believe most times like if they're with WWE I would have to get WWE permission to do interviews with them. Everyone I interviewed through email was independent wrestlers or valets I had a few "holy shit" moments but I was much younger than I am now (obviously) and just a cocky kid trying to get his site off the ground.. I thought about recreating the site to see if anything would come of it since I think I still have all the files but some of my cool moments were:

Messiah - from XPW, I was busting my ass to trying to get an interview with him and even ran up my telephone bill since one of the guys from CZW hooked me up with his number but told me because of recent stuff he's difficult to get ahold of since he screens many of his calls... At the time he just got jumped by a bunch of guys inside his apartment you can read more about it here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Messiah_(wrestler)#Personal_life

Percy Pringle - Yup none other than Mr Paul Bearer, I was in touch with him through email, he was a very nice man for the bit that we spoke and told me he would love to do an interview with me... I was gathering up questions and had even announced it on my site, but then I got a follow up email I think 3 days later.. The interview had to be cancelled he got signed on to the WWE again so for the interview to go forward I had to get in touch with them... So close, it was a cool moment for me for sure.

I think I was talking to new jack as well, I don't remember if that one happened or not.. I think I still have all my old interviews around..

But the one that really got me a ton of hits was one night I got talking to indie wrestling valet by the name of Cassy Strayer. She was very friendly she would just randomly message me just to say "Hi" I thought it was nice, then we got talking one night and I started to ask her about her wrestling history etc.. Some of the things that she did in wrestling that she felt never really made much sense but she was looked at as eye candy, so I commented with a line of "I can understand that, your a beautiful woman" she then commented with "yea it doesn't help me having these DD's on my chest" which got us talking a bunch more and she told me some of the sexual storylines and stuff that she was apart of. I asked her if it bothered her and she told me "sex sells" of course being a complete idiot at the time we got talking further and for some reason we did a sexual interview which was rather raunchy to say the lease.. I did a bunch of interviews after that but the site later just sat quietly before it vanished out of existence or I deleted it, I don't remember what happened.. For a while I thought about bringing it back, since I'm sure it's much easier to get ahold of many wrestlers now, however with 99% of sites doing video &/or phone interviews I didn't think that a old school text interview would go that well...

Anyways in case anyone cares the site I am talking about was called "Too Explosive For Ringside"

[KWOAOA]

Since both of you seem rather eager to look at how the old site looks I put up a demo site of how the old one looks. It may not be as updated as what the newest one will be but it'll give you a glimpse on how things was before I changed to a different program

current site is: kwoaoa.space

demo site is: kwoaoa.tripod.com/

not all the results are posted online for the tripod site since it has very low limitations for files but I wanted to list it to show you the difference between the current looking site and the old site. The old site certainly has a whole lot more information to it. But if you have a preference over which you like better I'd like to hear your thoughts, I'm sure it would take me no time to change everything back if I had to..

[jacklarkin]

Aug 2, 2018 13:29:17 GMT -5 KWOAOA said:

Since both of you seem rather eager to look at how the old site looks I put up a demo site of how the old one looks. It may not be as updated as what the newest one will be but it'll give you a glimpse on how things was before I changed to a different program

current site is: kwoaoa.space

demo site is: kwoaoa.tripod.com/

not all the results are posted online for the tripod site since it has very low limitations for files but I wanted to list it to show you the difference between the current looking site and the old site. The old site certainly has a whole lot more information to it. But if you have a preference over which you like better I'd like to hear your thoughts, I'm sure it would take me no time to change everything back if I had to..

Just my opinion, but going old school .html if that means ability to upload more is the way to go. I mean the whole simulator concept is old school anyway. To me its more important to have all that history available. I find that part of it to be much cooler to look at then bells and whistles.

Percy Pringle used to have a forum at wrestlingclassics which I love. He answered some PM's for me back in the day. Yeah, those were the days, I can totally see you email interviewing these wrestlers, trying to be professional, but also totally marking out at the same time.

[KWOAOA]

One of the main reasons why I kicked myself to the new look (.space) is what many people who don't create sites never pay attention is when your sitting at a pc you have up to 100 different monitor sizes, not to mention laptop screen sizes, tablets and phones.. It's difficult to make a site that supports every single frame size but certain programs such as:
Wordprss
Wix
Xara Web Designer

to name a few make the change between one size and the next very easily done. Needless to say it stressed me out to no end when it came to creating the site, although it went through various looks before the old school look that is up now. But that's the big reason for the change up, it won't take me any longer than 5-6 minutes to upload the site to the .space site.. In fact I'm working on it while I'm typing this.

Thanks for your feedback, but wanting to display my entire history is why I always liked using the old site, it may not look the nicest but it allowed me to display my entire history from the start of things and have a bit more command over it, even though it didn't look like a professionally designed site. But honestly I don't think anything about me is overly professional.

[KWOAOA]

Jul 26, 2018 15:19:39 GMT -5 jacklarkin said:

As I progress to about 2010 there will be very, very few real world wrestlers because I have watched so little wrestling by about then that I don't know many of the guys or like them. In fact I am looking forward to eventually (not sure I will make it) going into the future so I can use some of the Champions of the Galaxy guys!

I would love to see your website when you are ready and may even hit you up for permission to use some of your created wrestlers in my world.

That was one of the ideas I had, sadly it will never happen for the past guys, unless I dig deeper into things to see if I have things stored elswhere.. I don't like to talk badly about companies but the original idea I had was to output and zip up anyone that retired so that anyone who uses TNM7 could borrow the wrestlers I had. However at the time I was on a hosting company called byethost and everything was going good. I had multiple sites with them but everything was within the boundaries they set, I even had one site I did up for a friend of mine. However I bought a .ca for her and had it setup where if the site went down for extended period of time I would get an email so I could give an answer to her about it if she asked.. Well one night I was fighting to stay awake and laying in bed with my tablet near me all of a sudden I heard:
ring
ring
ring
(pause)
ring
ring
ring

each ring would symbolize a email coming in, I was like WTF ?... So I sat up (similar to Kane &/or Taker) grabbed my tablet and at 2am I noticed that the site I did for a friend of mine vanished, so having various other sites with that same company I checked all my sites, everything was down.. I panicked, I jumped out of bed and rushed to get everything online, my hosting site of choice as a fallback was tripod or angelfire however they had a 5mb max upload size.. Things were going well for my other sites till I hit uploading kwoaoa when I got a bunch of errors since for a while I did full match outputs cause I liked reading everything and wanted to have that option opened to anyone who read things.. So that screwed me up largely but I also had a good number of tnm7 outputs hosting on my own site like I wanted for others to use.. Well not thinking since it was 2-3am I deleted all my tnm7 exports that I had on that website then I later learned those may not have been the files that was causing the errors but the full results by TNM7 (as mentioned earlier) so I quickly scoured the web and came across AwardSpace, which is where I'm currently at.

I think I lost all my outputs but I have a few randomly on my computer I might look at adding them to the site.. I haven't fully decided yet, I kind of want to put a few up. But at the sametime I'm confused if I want to do it or not. Since it won't really be anyone that interesting. However I know any wrestler that I have based on real wrestlers I know who I used and if I made any adjustments to them or not so that I can easily help with.

But that might be something that I look into, just to get a few online and see how it goes, since with not paying for hosting I know at times things can be limited before I have to move to a different host or not.

I'll look more into it, in the morning since we're under thunderstorm watch as I type this so I want to get things shut down and crawl into bed for the time being.

[BeerGeek]

I mostly (occasionally) use created wrestlers to work as jobbers, otherwise I mostly just use all real wrestlers. I used to use created wrestlers a lot, but I find it's harder to come up with decent storylines for them like it would be for someone like say...AJ Styles, The Miz, etc. Plus as the OP said, a lot of fantasy wrestlers tend to be based on actual wrestlers even if it's not intentional. Back when I was into death match wrestling (mostly Japan, not CZW) I had created an export of myself, and didn't realize how similar my character/style was to Raven's ECW character. Only difference was the finishing move, as I used a choke sleeper called the Hardcore Nightmare.

I've also noticed how much some fantasy wrestlers are based (sometimes intentionally but often not) on video game characters as well.