Post by Das Admin on Feb 10, 2014 19:27:23 GMT -6
This is here as a guideline for you to get a better idea of what we look for, roleplay wise. We're different, we know that and it might be different for you as the roleplayer to adapt to our style and we don't expect it to happen right away. A lot of people have been in numerous feds where cutting your opponent down and spending hours writing long RPs was the thing to do: but here we're the difference maker.
"Burial' is what a lot of people don't understand.
If you're a heel don't have to kiss their ass but its NOT about saying 'I cut you down you cut me down' nah uh, never ever has the promo been that way. Because the end result is that you want these people to come to the arena to pay tickets to see your match. If you're a heel you want them to come to boo you to hell and back and want to see you get your ass kicked by the good guy. Maybe your gimmick is a superiority complex where you think you're better than everybody else, that's fine. You express plainly that 'I'm the best there is' [avoiding 'Best In The World'] as most do but it's developing on that.
You don't want to make your opponent look like a quarter of a cent on the dollar, though. You know? You still want it to be entertaining. If you're a face, you build. You acknowledge how dangerous or how good your opponent is but how you'll stop at nothing to set things right and prove them wrong.
The face can take many different routes and don't have to kiss ass to the fans either, this is just a rough idea.
The heel has many routes you can take but sometimes people think it's OK to completely cut your opponent down to a point where it makes it hard for the face to come back because you've made them look so bad with your words. But then the face does come back, building, and hyping, and getting people pumped... and you stop it because you cut it right back down again. It's counter to counter, not who can make each other look the worst. That's not the point. Nobody needs to come out of promos looking bad. You can say you're better than somebody but still make them look good. But you never EVER as a heel want to make your opponent look like the worst wrestler that has ever stepped foot on the planet. If you do that what hype is there? Where is the build?
Say you've been around for a little while, and this guy comes up and he's new to this fed. People don't know him, fans don't know him and you cut him down (since that's what you think you're supposed to do, heel or face, but you're wrong) how is this guy supposed to even get his foot in the door when all you've done is half of the equation, all you've done is make them look bad. your match isn't hyped because if this new guy is garbage, nobody is going to want to see it and they'll treat it like a main roster divas match. It's gonna be their piss break and you'll be looked at as the cena vs orton feud.
So a burial is cutting them down with every chance you can get but not hyping up your match. Some of the greatest promoers of all time are the rock, stone cold, sting, jericho, ric flair, hulk hogan, and macho man, and of the modern era samoa joe, austin aries, cm punk. There's so many others but you get my drift. Not once as a face do you see them cutting their opponent down to smithereens because if they did nobody would be interested in them or their match and they wouldn't be some of the best talkers in the bizz; Face or heel. You just have to figure out more creative ways to going about it.
Person A may want to bash Person B's skull in but if that's how you come at somebody right away with no rhyme or reason behind it, no story to tell with it... then your promo makes no sense and that will reflect in the judging. You don't just speak as a face or a heel without having a reason for the words you say, especially if you come off that strongly.
In the end it's about putting asses in seats. If you're an independent company, then swearing can get by... to a degree. PPV can be one thing, television is another. If you're a mainstream company it cannot for the realism aspect. You don't kidnap (unless it's part of a storyline and the owner gives the OK), you don't murder in your RPs (or else you'd end up in prison) and you don't cut somebodies legs out from under them. There's more creative ways to go about it but remember that in the end you need to tell a story, good or bad, and everything you say and do needs to back up that story.
You cut A down, B builds you up and you cut B down again -- the match officially has sold nothing. "You cut me, I cut you, you cut me, I cut you." -- again we've sold nothing. Creatively building each other, playing off of each other, hyping each other in the aspects that we can (since thats what wrestling is all about) is what will make people, fans (IRL) or your other fellow roster members reading these RPs and being like 'man this is going to be a close one.' But if you bury they'll just say 'this is just gonna be a squash' when it shouldn't be that way.
This doesn't mean breaking the 4th wall either because it's the "cool thing" to do since CM PUnk did it for his storyline at the time.
I'd suggest watching some of those wrestlers promo face and heel and realize cutting people down never does anybody any good. At some point everybody has probably been the way but you can tell a story better with less words (making what you do type, matter) than you can with a RP that's 6 thousand words. If it doesn't involve the match or your opponent in an on camera situation, it's either off camera (which shouldn't count to your match) or it's a developmental piece which tells your story for your character in a different light, it develops them, outside of the matches and shows, having nothing to do with them.
The more you bust out the shovel, the worse your character will look in the end.
