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The Wild World of e-Wrestling

(Note that this is an archive page, not being maintained, but here for historical reasons. Don't expect the links to work, although some do.)

What is e-Wrestling?

Well, for the purposes of this page at least, e-Wrestling is professional wrestling simulated by any one of a number of different systems, usually run by email.

[The Mighty Ric Flair] Usually, it involves first creating a wrestler complete with persona and some sort of statistics to resolve matches and then "managing" his/her career. The usual mechanism is to arrange matches with other players, and then (often weekly) the gamemaster (usually referred to as Federation Head) resolves the matches. Repeat as needed.

Of course, a good portion of the fun comes from the player interaction as the players develop feuds and alliances, arrange special matches, write insulting (often) and witty (sometimes) interviews and/or "video" clips which are then posted out by the Fed head.

There is a newsgroup, rec.sports.pro-wrestling.fantasy, which covers e-Wrestling, and the FAQ for that group is archived right here.

e-Wrestling breaks down into two large and general categories: booked and non-booked.

Booked feds are those in which winners are chosen directly. That is to say, in a true booked fed, there is no random element. Winners of matches are decided based on the quality of their interviews, the type of angle being pursued, and, in some cases, fed-head whim. As you can see, in many ways this must be a subjective judgment call.

There is no general concensus about what to call non-booked feds. The term "simmed", short for simulated, might work, but many people take "simmed" to mean specifically "simulated by a computer program", to distinguish it from "diced". Of course, many "dice" feds are actually run via computer programs, so the distinction is somewhat artificial. The term "gamed" might work. The common element, though, in all non-booked feds, is the introduction of some random or explicitly competitive element, whether it is physical dice, computer random number generators, or some kind of scissors-paper-rock type of game. To rephrase, a non-booked, or "gamed" fed, has some explicit and well defined gaming mechanic involved while a booked fed depends upon the decision of the booker or booking comittee. This is not to say that a gamed fedhead cannot skew a match just as a booker may choose a winner based some bias of his own - corruption and bias are not limited to a single type of federation.

Both booked and gamed feds have many variations. For instance, a gamed fed may have some mechanism by which a superior role-player may gain an advantage in the match resolution. Likewise, a case could be made that a "booking comittee" that actually votes on a winner is no longer purely booked.

How Do I Get Started?

Take a few moments and browse some of the individual federation's web pages and find a few that interest you. Then contact those fed heads directly and see if they have any openings. You can also check out the Usenet newsgroup rec.sports.pro-wrestling.fantasy, where many feds advertise for new players.

Umbrella Organizations

As e-Wrestling developed, federations often found it helpful to organize into groups, allowing easier transfer of characters, some common background and so on. The Summit Wrestling Alliance was the first such organization, but others quickly developed.

[SWA Logo]The Summit Wrestling Alliance

[NWC Logo]National Wrestling Council

[UWP Logo] United Wrestling Promotions

[WWA Logo] World Wrestling Alliance

There are also quite a few independent federations.

These are some related web-sites

Gone but not forgotten.

Miscellaneous Links

Rules Sets and Programs for e-Wrestling
Comments are welcome.
If you hang a link to this page, I'd love to know about it.
If you have a link that you think I should add to this page, drop me a line.
All pages that wish to be linked must have a link back to the e-Wrestling Home Page on the page you wish linked. If the page is not a relatively static resource, (eg. a simulator download, the essay archive, etc) but is something which ought to be kept updated, (eg. a news site, an Umbrella Org page, etc) it must also have a date stamp. The reason for the date stamp is to allow me to remove inactive pages, and thereby increase the utility of the page. Pages that have not been updated, as indicated by the date stamp, for three months will be removed from the list.

This page relocated to avigne.org on April 8, 2002, since geocities became far too annoying.

Jeff Berry / nexus@panix.com / Updated 8 April 2002