Post by the1stwave on Sept 28, 2022 17:50:30 GMT -5
Hey everyone I'm Jonathan (often use 'TheWave' or 'The1stWave' or variations as online monikers). I've been using TNM off and on since about 97 or so but have never been a major contributor to message boards and have never published any ongoing curcuits, though I have read posts and occasionally posted questions. (I did participate in an NWA style combo of circuits with others on the message board of the time, some years ago. I had the WCCW territory in Texas and we had a draft and everything but I didn't stick with it and I think some others didn't either - sorry!) I've started or had ambitions to start 10 or more different curcuits or universes of circuits over the years (a couple of which I've carried on with for a little while - not as long as some of you). I don't have real friendships with most of you though I am involved in stand-up comedy one state over from Snabbit/Ryan's home state so we have a lot of mutual friends and I've chatted with him a bit about TNM once I made the realization that he's the same Ryan Niemiller haha.
Anyway I've started up 2 new TNM projects recently which are very different from each other (practically polar opposites). I wanted to talk about one of them here, the framework of which could be considered a rule set, I suppose. So I'll introduce it in rule set terms, then I'll let you know about my specific one:
It's basically an alternate time line splintering off from real wrestling history, where I start my own circuit on a certain date with limitations imposed by real life. I imagine some of you have done similar things before (sorry, I haven't read everyone's published circuit storylines).
INITIAL SETUP: There is some randomness involved in hiring wrestlers so look at your master TNM database first to make sure to remove anyone you really hate, or duplicates you don't want, etc.
2. Hire the 1st wrestler on the list that meets all of this criteria as of your starting date:
If he meets all that criteria, you have to sign him. You cannot skip a name just because you don't like him or don't want him on your roster.
SUBSEQUENT HIRING: After every card you run, you can try to hire one more wrestler. But you only get 1 try per card. Doesn't matter if they say yes, no, or maybe, you just get the one try, until after the next card is run. And you still have to select randomly from your master database, and conditions/rules 2a through 2d still apply for your first year.
YEAR BY YEAR: If you run this circuit for a full year of game time, congrats! The hiring rules will ease slightly. To be clear, the random list thing is always in place and so are conditions 2a and 2b. The ones that will ease are 2c and 2d. I'm not set in stone on this, I might still tweak it for my own circuit, but this is an example of a 10-year list which will expand your hiring capabilities annually, little by little, until the 10-year anniversary:
Anyway I've started up 2 new TNM projects recently which are very different from each other (practically polar opposites). I wanted to talk about one of them here, the framework of which could be considered a rule set, I suppose. So I'll introduce it in rule set terms, then I'll let you know about my specific one:
It's basically an alternate time line splintering off from real wrestling history, where I start my own circuit on a certain date with limitations imposed by real life. I imagine some of you have done similar things before (sorry, I haven't read everyone's published circuit storylines).
INITIAL SETUP: There is some randomness involved in hiring wrestlers so look at your master TNM database first to make sure to remove anyone you really hate, or duplicates you don't want, etc.
Then pick the year*, a region for your circuit, and its name.
*You could choose your specific date at this point, or just choose the year and then later narrow down the specific date based on available wrestlers. This will make more sense further down.
At this point, it's important to determine what real life companies are 'Major' wrestling promotions during your starting year (all others are 'Minor' promotions of course).
WRESTLER HIRING (hire both men and women if you wish but I'm sticking with he/him/his pronouns below just for ease of communication):
1. Make a random list of wrestlers based on your TNM database. One way is to create a separate email circuit and start to schedule a 64-wrestler tournament, randomly selected, and make that your list. But you could do it some other way as long as it's random and comes from your master database.
a. has already debuted in real life, or will debut no more than a month later (at which point he will be a rookie in your territory);
b. has not already retired due to age in real life (if he was forced out of wrestling at a premature age due to injury, death, substance addiction, etc. - or voluntarily switched professions while still young and healthy enough to wrestle - within the past year, this could be an exception);
c. does not hold any championship title;
d. does not work for a Major promotion.
If he meets all that criteria, you have to sign him. You cannot skip a name just because you don't like him or don't want him on your roster.
If TNM asks if you also want to hire a particular known tag team partner, sorry, you can't do so. If you're lucky enough to get 2 hirable wrestlers of a known tag team on your random list, then you may be able to get them both. In other words, you'll have to form any tag teams you want to use from the initial roster that you get (made up from the initial random list).
It's up to you what unit of time = 1 card, and it is up to you how many cards you sign each wrestler for.
3. After you hire your 1st wrestler, go back to do step 2 again for your 2nd hire, and keep hiring wrestlers this way until you get your 1st rejection. Once that happens, stop. You have your initial roster.
*If you chose only the year above during initial setup, you can now look at your list of wrestlers to hire from and strategically pick the exact date within that year, basically maximizing how many wrestlers you can hire from that random list by finding a gap where many of them didn't hold titles or work for Majors. For instance, my 1st card was held on July, prior to Davey Boy Smith winning the Commonwealth title, which allowed me to hire him. But, you don't have to do it like this. You could just pick your specific starting date early on.
LOSING WRESTLERS: Guess what? You won't necessarily get to keep each wrestler for the duration of his TNM contract. If any of your wrestlers joins a Major promotion OR wins a main championship in a Minor promotion in real life, after your starting date and while he's still under contract in TNM, you lose him and you have to Fire him in TNM. 'Main championship' means the top singles or tag team title in a promotion.
So secondary titles in Minor promotions are the one difference in initial hiring vs. retaining talent: a holder of this kind of title cannot be hired on your initial roster, but can be kept on your roster once already hired (which is why I kept Davey Boy Smith - the Commonwealth title was not a main or primary singles title in Calgary Stampede and I hired him before he won that belt).
Starting at a Major promotion: Sometimes wrestlers work just one or just a few dates for a Major fed in real life, which may not sound like 'joining a Major promotion'. I've decided for mine that even in this scenario, I will lose that wrestler. I figure if in real life he had the opportunity to work even for a little bit for one of the Majors, it would make sense that he'd leave my little startup and go to the bright lights. Plus, I like that it makes things just a bit more challenging. But, you don't have to interpret it this way.
REHIRING: When a wrestler's contract is up and TNM asks if you want to rehire, it's your choice whether you want to keep him or not and for how many cards (as long as he still doesn't work for a Major promotion or hold a main title).
By the way, before attempting to hire another wrestler between cards, I routinely go in and delete a couple wrestlers from my master database that I don't want or realize are duplicates and add a new export. You can do this or not do this, though you can't delete a wrestler that's on your roster.
AFTER 1 YEAR: You may now hire a tag team partner suggested by TNM together with the initial wrestler from your random list.
AFTER 2 YEARS: You may now hire a secondary title holder from a Minor promotion.
AFTER 3 YEARS: You may now hire a single wrestler who holds a primary tag team title in a Minor promotion (and only hire the tag team championship partner if TNM suggests it).
AFTER 3 YEARS: You may now hire a single wrestler who holds a primary tag team title in a Minor promotion (and only hire the tag team championship partner if TNM suggests it).
AFTER 4 YEARS: You may now hire both tag team champions from a Minor promotion if one of them comes up on your random list even if TNM doesn't suggest that partner.
AFTER 5 YEARS: You may now hire a wrestler from a Major fed as long as he doesn't hold any titles there.
AFTER 6 YEARS: You may now hire a primary singles champion from a Minor promotion.
AFTER 7 YEARS: You may now hire a secondary title holder from a Major promotion.
AFTER 8 YEARS: You may now hire a single wrestler who holds a primary tag team title in a Major promotion (and only hire the tag team championship partner if TNM suggests it).
AFTER 9 YEARS: You may now hire both tag team champions from a Major promotion if one of them comes up on your random list even if TNM doesn't suggest that partner.
AFTER 10 YEARS: You may now hire anyone (as long as his name comes up on the random list).
Again, all of the above presumes the name came up on your random list. That random list is a permanent rule, for as long as you run this circuit. You can't just choose to bring in the real life WWF World Champ, for instance, just because you hit your 10-year mark. He still has to come up on your random list.
My rationale, of course, for the year by year relaxation of hiring and 10-year removal of limits is that your circuit is slowly growing more of an audience, increasing its profits, maybe expanding in TV and geography, etc., month by month and year by year. So at the 10-year mark, your circuit is basically one of the Majors - if you make it that long! (And if you don't, and start this and eventually give up on it - well, I guess that means your promotion went out of business.)
Note also that the rules for losing wrestlers from your fed (when they go to a Major or win a title after you hired them, while still under contract to you) would be proportionately relaxed year by year as well. The losing wrestler rules should always be equal to or more relaxed than the hiring rules - it doesn't make sense that you could hire a secondary title holder from a Minor promotion, for instance, and then have to lose that wrestler when he wins a different secondary title in a Minor promotion in real life.
CREATIVE: These rules get you your roster but the rest is up to you. You decide who's a heel, who's a face, what names you want to call your wrestlers, the angles, whether to book your champs and other matches, how much you want to continue of each wrestler's character from where they were before you started, etc.
Please reply if you have any questions - anything I left out, anything that's confusing or contradictory - or any feedback on the rule set itself or on the way I formatted the text (although I worked out the concept a while back, typing it out was done hastily).
CREATIVE: These rules get you your roster but the rest is up to you. You decide who's a heel, who's a face, what names you want to call your wrestlers, the angles, whether to book your champs and other matches, how much you want to continue of each wrestler's character from where they were before you started, etc.
Please reply if you have any questions - anything I left out, anything that's confusing or contradictory - or any feedback on the rule set itself or on the way I formatted the text (although I worked out the concept a while back, typing it out was done hastily).
If you're curious, my circuit is Major League Pro Wrestling, running out of Denver, starting in July 1982. I decided that it would not be part of the NWA or AWA; it would be an independent company, maybe even an 'outlaw promotion' like the Poffos' ICW, though it wouldn't run right in NWA land - from what I can tell, only the AWA promoted in Denver back then, once a month or so. The background is that its founder (I haven't given him a name as of yet) owns and operates a successful regional chain of retail stores, across multiple states, and, as a big wrestling fan, decided to form his own promotion (Denver being one of the markets where he has stores). Because he doesn't have professional experience in wrestling, he has also hired a few pro wrestling veterans to help advise him and work with recruiting, training, booking, etc. (I haven't chosen the particular veterans, if anyone has suggestions, let me know!)
I designated WWF and AWA as Major in 82, as well as Mid-Atlantic (JCP) given that it later became the central NWA territory and was the direct predecessor to WCW. (I didn't think it made sense to designate the entire NWA - every single territory - as Major. There were 2 or 3 other NWA territories that were stronger than others at the time, but I just decided on the above 3 total.) I chose not to label any Japanese or other non-US feds as Major. I recognize that All Japan and New Japan were big in the 80s, but I didn't follow them closely enough, and plenty of US wrestlers would go there for short tours and then come back, so making them Major could be a lot more challenging for my roster.
For my circuit, 1 card = 1 week but I will presume that some other cards/matches can happen besides the weekly cards I run in TNM. That is to say, my circuit may have more than 52 cards for the year, but I'm only booking/running 52 in TNM. For hiring, I use a system of 52 cards for my 1st hire, 50 for my 2nd, etc. (and when I eventually get down to 6, I start over from 51, 49, etc. - this is just a method I've used in various TNM circuits I've run before).
My starting roster:
I designated WWF and AWA as Major in 82, as well as Mid-Atlantic (JCP) given that it later became the central NWA territory and was the direct predecessor to WCW. (I didn't think it made sense to designate the entire NWA - every single territory - as Major. There were 2 or 3 other NWA territories that were stronger than others at the time, but I just decided on the above 3 total.) I chose not to label any Japanese or other non-US feds as Major. I recognize that All Japan and New Japan were big in the 80s, but I didn't follow them closely enough, and plenty of US wrestlers would go there for short tours and then come back, so making them Major could be a lot more challenging for my roster.
For my circuit, 1 card = 1 week but I will presume that some other cards/matches can happen besides the weekly cards I run in TNM. That is to say, my circuit may have more than 52 cards for the year, but I'm only booking/running 52 in TNM. For hiring, I use a system of 52 cards for my 1st hire, 50 for my 2nd, etc. (and when I eventually get down to 6, I start over from 51, 49, etc. - this is just a method I've used in various TNM circuits I've run before).
My starting roster:
Scott Casey
Davey Boy Smith
Yoshiaki Yatsu
Adrian Adonis
Masanobu Fuchi
Dennis Condrey
Jerry Lawler
Jose Lothario
Mil Mascaras
Steve Williams
Bob Roop
Bill Dundee
Billy Robinson
Samu
The Assassin
Sika
Lanny Poffo
Buddy Roberts
Pez Whatley
Kuniaki Kobayashi
Davey Boy Smith
Yoshiaki Yatsu
Adrian Adonis
Masanobu Fuchi
Dennis Condrey
Jerry Lawler
Jose Lothario
Mil Mascaras
Steve Williams
Bob Roop
Bill Dundee
Billy Robinson
Samu
The Assassin
Sika
Lanny Poffo
Buddy Roberts
Pez Whatley
Kuniaki Kobayashi