The Birth of the Camarilla

The Camarilla, oh what a strange history I have with thee. I claim as part of my geek cred that I am one of the founders of the Camarilla. Seeing as we are into the Halloween season now, it seems like as good a time as any to explain that.

For those not in the know, the Camarilla is a fan organization based on White Wolf’s Vampire role-playing game that came out in 1991. So how did a role-playing game end up with an international fan organization? Let me give you my eye witness account, my personal journey if you will. I’m going to use Vampire game terms liberally. I’m not going to take the time to explain them, I figure most of you can use Wikipedia.

Oh and in case there is some confusion, events in the last couple of years required them to change the official name of the organization to the Mind’s Eye Society. Since I’m talking about from further back I am just going to call it the Camarilla.

Within 6 months of the game’s release a good friend of mine named Matthew Burke informed me that he had been talking with a co-worker of his named Jana Wright and they had decided that they were going to form the official fan club, and wanted to know if I was willing to help. I was a fan of the game, having both played and run a few games since its release.  Sure, I was in.

Now I want to back track here a bit. I think it is worth going over how I knew Matt and how that informed how the Camarilla was formed.

Matt and I met in a Star Trek fan club.

You see there is this really big fan club called STARFLEET International (Apparently the all caps thing is required). It’s the big Star Trek fan club with branches all over the world. The structure of the club was that all chapters were designated as ships and would be named after whatever they called their ship.  This also played into a role-playing element as members of the club would have Star Trek universe persona’s and the clubs officials would  also have ranks like Captain, First officer, Chief Medical officer, etc.  When a chapter was just starting out it would be called a shuttle and would need an existing ship to be its sponsor until it was cleared to full ship status. Trust me this will become relevant.

So our little Star Trek club was called the USS Courageous, which quickly became the main chapter in the Seattle area. I was the Chief Medical Officer, which in real life meant I was in-charge of organizing club social events. Matt joined and became Helmsman, which if I remember meant he helped with club operations. We became friends pretty quickly and hung out a lot. And before you ask, yes we had costumes, and no I do not still have mine. If there are pictures I do not know where they are, or I would be posting them here right now.

I have no shame.

So anyway back to the Camarilla. The original group that came together to get this club off the ground was a mix of officers from the Courageous and friends of Jana, many of whom were from the Goth community. Matt had reached out to White Wolf and they were more than happy to let us form an official club for their game.

So how do you go about creating a fan organization? To Matt’s credit he had an amazingly simple plan, don’t reinvent the wheel. Many of us were part of a successful fan organization based on an existing property, so why not follow their lead.

And by follow their lead I mean take their membership materials and replace all Star Trek references with vampire ones.

I’m serious; there was some confusion on some early members’ part when they asked why there was a reference to a ship in a couple of places in their membership materials.

Chapters were called Houses, and probationary Houses were called coteries and would need an existing House to be its sponsor until it was cleared to full House status.  In case you were wondering, I did copy and paste part of that last sentence.

So yes, the Camarilla is the most successful off shoot of STARFLEET International. Yes we beat out the Klingon Empire and the Terran Empire.

Matt’s plan was that the Camarilla would be a club that did fundraising and public service, just like STARFLEET did as well as the role-playing aspect. One small problem with that plan, when you base a fan club on a role-playing game guess what the members are going to be most interested in. Hint, it’s not volunteering for an adopt-a-highway program.

So gaming, specifically live action role-playing or LARPing, was clearly the heart of the organization. The great strength of the Camarilla was the worldwide chronicle where in-game events happening to us in Seattle was in canon with in-game events happening in Chicago and London.  We started with a home-brewed gaming system based on Vampire the Masquerade, but quickly moved over to Mind’s Eye Theater once White Wolf released it.

It’s at this point I want to talk about the board of directors. In game they were the Inner Circle of the Camarilla and were amongst the oldest and most powerful vampires in the in-game world. My good friend Matt as Club President was the Patriarch of the Inner Circle Dorian Strack, who was also Prince of Seattle.  At first I was not on the board. I was serving as Matt’s assistant and special advisor to the board. Also I was working with Matt on an idea to also produce a Vampire comic book to propose to White Wolf.

My Character was Caliban, a Gangrel and one of Dorian’s enforcers.  Yes, this is where I got the name from. Why Caliban? Clearly the Shakespeare reference as Caliban saw himself as a beast but could also be intelligent. Also Matt took the name Dorian, which was what I was going to use, but he was the boss.

So part of the idea was that each board member was also the representative of their clan on the Inner Circle. Why is this important? Not long after the official kickoff event for the Camarilla, but right before we open up membership, the board member in charge of the organization newsletter just up and disappeared.  We literally lost contact with him. To this day I have no idea what happened to him. As I majored in journalism in college it was natural to make me his replacement. However this meant I had to retcon Caliban into a Brujha.

So the Camarilla was off and running. And it was met with a lot of initial success. People really liked the game and so it was easy to generate interest, particularly at conventions. The Board of Directors learned a lot during that time about what was needed to run a quickly growing organization. I would say that we did fairly well. However there were some challenges. Some people found that it was more stress then they had counted on and left. Others were lured away by a more daunting challenge, a career.

When Matt contacted White Wolf about forming the Camarilla he was informed that one of the people that worked on the original game was working in the Seattle are, Lisa Stevens. Lisa had come to the area to work for Wizards of the Coast. Matt contacted her and she started attending Board of Director meetings. Lisa also invited members of the Board to visit WotC as they had open staff meetings at the time. This was almost about nine months to a year before the release of Magic: The Gathering so it was still a small company running out of Peter Adkison’s basement. A few of us went, but I was really the only one who started going to these meetings regularly, and I even started helping out on projects there.

Eventually the summer of 1993 rolled around and with it the release of Magic: The Gathering. WotC had a spare airplane ticket, and so they took me with them to GenCon that year and based on the massive response to the game Peter hired me full time at the convention.

So suddenly I am working for a game company that is growing rapidly. This did not leave a lot of spare time and within a couple of months I officially left the Board due to time constraints. I’d like to point out that I had only left the board; I was still a Camarilla member and got to keep using Caliban as my character.

If it had just been me that might have been one thing, but due to WotC’s growth they needed more people and since there were strong connections between WotC and the Camarilla board several other board members, Including Matt and Jana, were hired over the next several months. Some of the board members felt the same time management issues I did and decided to also step away from the board, but like me were still active in the organization as members. A couple balanced both; how they did this I have no idea.

Due to this eventually it was decided that a whole new board was needed. I was not involved in these decisions so I don’t know how it came to pass, but it was decided that the Camarilla group in Salt Lake City was to take over the duties as Board of Directors.  At this point any knowledge I have about how the Camarilla was run would be third hand at best.

I did stay an active member more or less until about 2004. I won’t go into why I left other than to say it was a combination of burn out and some personal issues.

So how do I feel about my time with the Camarilla? Nostalgic I suppose. I joke with a lot of the other founders and early members that I am still friends with that when we created the Camarilla we said “what’s the worst that can happen” and “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The truth is that it was a good idea and it has given a lot of people a lot of joy over the years. People met other people that they would have never met otherwise. This means friendships and even marriages happen because it exists.

Other than a couple of people I hang out with that I knew before it was formed, my entire social circle can be traced either directly to the Camarilla or to WotC which itself I can trace to the Camarilla. Because of this I met my wife, found my job which I like, discovered a sister and associated family that I love, and had a host of amazing experiences. Heck even my entertainment comes from the Camarilla. I have mentioned before that I am a fan of an internet streaming show called Radio Dead Air. The host Nash is a Camarilla member and started the show as an in-character radio show in his local game.

So that is my tale of the birth of the Camarilla, as I recall it. Of course other board members from that time may remember things differently. So to them I make this offer. If any of the other founding board members have a different take on the early days, or just want to write up their memories of what happened, I will give you your say. Write up what you remember and send it to me. I promise I will publish it here on Fanboy News Network completely unedited.

As I said a lot of interesting things happened during my time in the Camarilla. One day I might dip into that vault and tell another tale. Believe me there was a lot.

The Avengers: The movie I have waited for my whole life

Sometimes when writing an article things just don’t come out the way you want.

I’ve tried three times to write about the Avengers movie. In the end what stymied me was that with it’s phenomenal success. Everyone has written about it, about the effect it will have on future Marvel movies, future comic book based movies and the careers of the creative people involved.

If you are reading this blog I am going to assume you have seen the Avengers, are going to see the Avengers, or ended up here by mistake.
So this is not going to be a review of the Avengers.
This is going to be a personal examination of how I felt watching the Avengers.
As I am sure I have stated before I grew up reading comics. As far back as I can remember my dad would read me comic books at bed time. He used comics to teach me to read. So I have been literally reading comic books all my life.
And I never thought I would get to see a movie like the Avengers.
As I was growing up, any translation of comic book heroes to live action were lack luster at best. The 70’s and 80’s had several Marvel heroes on TV, Spider-man, Hulk, Captain America and Doctor Strange. Of all of them Spider-man was the closest to making the character I grew up with.
Really the first two Superman movies were the gold standard for years.
And getting multiple heroes together in one movie, forget it.
There was one attempt in the in 1979. It was Legends of the Superheroes. It started Adam West as Batman. I think right there you can guess how bad it was.
In 1997 there was an attempt to make a Justice League TV show. It was an adaptation of the Giffen and DeMatteis run, which was already humorous. They cast David Ogden Stiers as the Martian Manhunter. Here is the result.
So I pretty much gave up on a cool team up happening.
Then Marvel decided to start making movies.
The moment Nick Fury showed up post credits in Iron Man a sense of excitement started. Could they really pull it off?
And as we have seen, the answer is yes.
As Nash Bozard of Radio Dead Air (an online show you should be watching) put it, it was the best possible Avengers movie that could be made.  
Watching it I realized that I had been waiting my whole life for this movie. It was true to the characters, it had action, it had story, and it had heart.
The bar has been raised and I for one cannot wait to see where we go from here.
Oh, and this is for you Nash

Site update

Sorry I missed last Saturday’s posting. A combination of illness and the article I was working on not coming out the way I hoped led to that happening. I am working on a post for tomorrow.

I’m still working on the move to the www.fanboynewsnetwork.com domain. I am waiting on one last element to be finished before I make the move. Once the move is completed I will get to work on setting up the Podcast.

Starting with tomorrow’s post I will be adding a rating system to any reviews. I will be using an A through F grading system with A+ being an all time classic, C being enjoyable, but flawed, and F being please do not waste your time with the tripe.

Finally I will not be getting a chance to see Avengers until tomorrow night. I will review it, but it will be a special mid-week post.

Upcoming Fanboy changes

This last weekend I attended Norwescon for the first time in 12 years.  I think this is what a high school reunion must feel like. Catching up with people I have not seen in years. It was a blast.

While at the convention I attended every new media panel they had. It was highly informative. I was looking for ideas to use in the upcoming video series. Instead what I got was a whole new battle plan.
So here is what you can expect in the near future for Fanboy News Network.
I will continue the blog as is with updates on Saturday. However I will soon be migrating the blog to www.fanboynewsnetwork.com using WordPress. The blog posts will continue to be the editorial format, but will no longer cover recent news or recent movies.
This leads us to the big change. Once the blog is moved to the new site I am going to start doing a weekly podcast that will cover geek news from the previous weeks and reviews of recent movies. Eventually I hope to do interviews as well.
I will also do video updates but they are going to be less frequent at first as they are more labor intensive. Videos will be for things where there is a need for visuals, such as reviews of older movies and events such as taking a trip through EMP to cover their Science Fiction and Horror exhibits, or a tour of Seattle to prove we are the geek capital of the world.
My hope is that this more multimedia approach will allow me to not only create more content for the site but to help build Fanboy News Network as a brand. If nothing else it will give me additional creative outlets.
Now I just need to work on getting a logo and a theme song.

Emerald City Comicon Day Three

The final day of a convention can be a bitter sweet affair. You have had a great team, you will miss all the experiences, and you are exhausted and just want to get home and soak your poor abused feet.

I only attended two panels, the Summer Glau and Adam Baldwin panels. The Browncoat in me required it. They were fun panels. Summer is obviously a sweet girl and was adorable on stage. Adam is an old veteran who knows how to connect to the crowd.
I spent the rest of the day checking out booths I had not gotten to previously and catching up with old WotC colleagues I had not seen in a while. Towards the end of the day I ended up helping out at the booth my wife was vending at. This led to my awesome moment of the day.
One of the items my wife makes is a bracelet with a heat sensitive stone like an old mood ring at the center. A little girl about 4 or 5 years old was with her parents at the table and I encouraged her to touch the stone. As the stone turned color I could see the gears in her head start working. She was trying to figure out how I was making the color change. She keep looking at her had expecting ink. And she was not going to take this nonsense I was telling her about science and body heat. Somehow I was making the green stone turn blue and she was going to work it out.
And before I give you the tally of today’s cosplay I want to share a revelation I had. My identifying and recording the various costumes I saw was basically the fannish equivalent of trainspotting.
And with that thought firmly in place here are the results for Sunday.
·         Superman: 7 finally knocking Doctor Who out of the top spot.
·         Doctor Who: 6
·         Captain America: 4
·         The TARDIS: 3
·         Supergirl: 3
·         Spider-man: 3
·         Riddler: 3
·         Power Girl: 2
·         Green Lantern: 2
·         Robin: 2
·         Harley Quinn: 2
·         Joker: 2
·         Poison Ivy: 2
·         Wonder Woman: 2
Tomorrow I will do the final review of the convention, after I get a good night’s sleep.

Emerald City Comicon Day Two

Second day of the convention.
The big news was the show hitting capacity. Someone told me it was 10,000 people. It seemed like more. It was bad enough that the fire marshal had registration shut down and was not letting people who stepped outside to come back in until the crowd thinned. This crowding was most evident in the area outside of the dealer floor. It has been where cosplayers have gone for photo ops. It was so crowded that you could barely move. I think some expansion of space may need to happen next year. An upside of this is that everyone I know that is running a booth had very good sales.
Panels I attended.
Will Wheaton’s 90 minute awesome hour. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin. I have never seen anyone able to work a crowd as well as Will Wheaton. He knows his audience and knows how to play to them to perfection.
Marvel: pint of O’ C.B., which is basically Marvels big news panel. It was a good show case for what Marvel is up to. There were two highlights for me. One was a very honest answer to the question of the lack of female creators. They are aware of it and looking for ways to address it, but right now it is a continuing issue that plagues the whole industry and will probably take years to turn around. The other highlight was when Matt Fraction was asked about his writing of Dr. Strange as very creepy. Fraction countered that Strange is creepy and used that fact that he entered into a romantic relationship with his student Clea. Fraction felt that crossing that line informed a lot about the character.
DC Comics: The New 52. This was a lot better than the DC panel from the previous day. Tough questions were not ignored. A big one was how DC addresses old readers leaving in wake of the New 52 does. Gail Simone led the way in answering that stating that change can be hard but the writers are dedicated to doing their best by the characters. This led the rest of the panel to give their opinions as well. Overall a much more satisfying experience than the day before.
Next were back to back panels featuring Christopher Judge of Stargate SG-1 and George Takei. I will save fuller write-ups on these for the post con report. But let’s just say both were great speakers.
Most awesome moment of the day came early on when I met up with an old friend of mine, Ryan K. Johnson. Ryan is a film maker and it the late eighties and early nineties I worked with him on several fannish films, including Star Trek the Pepsi generation. While talking he told me that he really likes the blog. As a creative person I really respect his praise meant a lot to me.
As for my little cosplay contest, here are the scores for Saturday. Please note that these are new people in the costumes. If it was someone from the day before wearing the same costume I did not count them.
·         Doctor Who: 15 our winner the second day in a row.
·         Joker: 10
·         Batman:9
·         Captain America: 8
·         Batgirl: 7
·         Wonder Woman: 6
·         Robin: 6
·         Harley Quinn: 6
·         Poison Ivy: 5
·         Superman: 4
·         Thor: 4
·         Catwoman: 4
·         Zatanna: 4
·         Green Lantern: 3
·         Deadpool: 3
·         Phoenix: 3
·         Rogue: 3
·         Batwoman: 2
·         Hulk 2
·         Doctor Octopus: 2
·         Nightwing: 2
·         Iron Man: 2
·         Supergirl: 2
·         Spider-man:2
·         TARDIS: 2
·         Riddler: 2
See everyone tomorrow for the last day of the Con.

Emerald City Comicon Day One

Quick overview of Day one of Emerald City Comicon.
First up, the panels.
I attended the Women of Webseries panel. It was definitely what the title suggested, local women working on producing, writing, directing, and staring in webseries. I got some good ideas for the projects I want to work on and a lot of inspiration.
DC All Access panel was next. You would think that a panel at a comic convention that is the news panel for one of the big two it would be kick ass. No such luck. The pros on the panel did some quick shilling of their upcoming projects. When it got to question and answer time that was a lot of deflection. One question asked about the status of Wally West and Donna Troy in the new 52 DCU, the answer was to make a joke and then ask the audience if they would like to win a prize for answering a trivia question.
The next panel was about the history of Wonder Woman for an academic and psychological perspective. The speaker was a tenured professor at Oregon State University for teaches minors program on comic book studies. He was awesome. And as much as I have researched at lot of the same history he covered I still learned some new stuff.
I wanted to get into a panel featuring noted voice actors but it was too full a room.
Next is the dealer floor.
This year has a good mix of comic shops, convention dealers, comic companies, artists and everything else you would expect. Due to the show still growing, this year the gaming based dealers were moved to a new area. It’s a bit of a walk to get there, but it is nice to see the growth.
My wife is a vendor this year and that fact lead to my most awesome moment of the day. She makes gaming dice shaped soap. I took a set to Randy Milholland, the creator of Something Positive. When I gave them to him his face lit up, and he had to show his booth mate Danielle Corsetto, creator of Girls with Slingshots. Mission accomplished and he gave me a sketch and print in return.
Cosplay
So I have decided to keep score of the characters people cosplay as this year. Basically if I see at least two people as a character I start keeping track. I will declare a daily winner and an overall convention winner. Here are today’s scores.
·         Doctor Who: 8 Today’s winner
·         Captain America: 6
·         Harley Quinn: 5
·         Batman: 4
·         Poison Ivy: 4
·         The TARDIS: 4
·         Robin: 3
·         Black Canary: 3
·         Superman: 3
·         Batgirl: 3
·         Green Lantern: 2
·         Catwoman: 2
·         Supergirl: 2
·         Spider Man:2
·         Doctor Horrible:2
·         Captain Hammer: 2
·         Death from Sandman: 2
·         Dalek: 2
·         Red Power Ranger: 2
·         Riddler: 2
·         Green Hornet: 2
See you tomorrow for the next update.

My Fanboy New Year’s Resolutions.

I took time off from writing the blog for the holidays. This was needed as it was a crazy time for me and I needed the time.
However I did take time to reflect on where I want to go with this blog in the New Year. Let’s take a moment to look at my Fanboy News Network resolutions for the 2012.
First off my wife and I are rearranging our house. She is dedicated to make her home craft business Twisted Kitten Creations a success and I want to start making video entries. To facilitate this we are rearranging the house to give us more room for our creative activates. This will give her more room for making her products and give me a space to use as a recording studio.
This leads straight to my next resolution. Start making videos for the site. I have a plan now. Once the house is rearranged I will start making them. I may take a couple of tries at it before I release anything, but I will at least start recording. Once I start posting my goal will be a video port every two weeks. I’ve already invested in a more powerful computer to handle the editing.
And now I will make the statement that is sure to come back to haunt me. I vow that there will be a post on the blog every Saturday. This means that every Saturday I miss will bring me the burning shame of missing a deadline. If that doesn’t get me writing more nothing will.
I will do more posts that are reviews of material relevant to geek culture and not just editorials.
I will look at expanding beyond just a blog and work to make this a more legitimate site. I will look for advice from my sister as she is much more successful at this. (Assuming she buys my line about this being what family does for each other.)
I will start promoting the blog more. This is hard because despite doing this I hate going out and promoting myself because I fear that I will come off as an egotistical ass. I need to get over it if I actually plan on ever finding a larger audience. Again I will ask my sister for advice. 
And my wife.
 And Aron from the comic shop.
And my other friends
And those of you reading this.
Help!
Where was I?
I will make an honest effort to make a backlog of articles so that if life gets in my way I will still have something to post every Saturday.
I will create a catch phrase to end blog posts. I feel I just sort of end right now.
There it is, my goals
So with that here are some projects I am working on.
1.       An article on the power held by geek culture and that pros and cons that brings.
2.       A series of reviews cover Universal Horror, both written and eventually in video.
3.       A video series on what makes Seattle the Geek capital of the World.
4.       A new Alternate Interpretations.
5.       Tales from my days working at Wizards of the Coast.
6.       Tales from my days as one of the founding members of the Camarilla.
We will check in in on this list in July and see how well I did.
Have a happy New Year.

A wrestling MMO, or why I should not become bored.

Last post I made I went over my nostalgia for my old wrestling role-playing game group. Today I want to go over what brought that up.
It all started with me getting bored. Apparently I should not be allowed to become bored. When I get bored I start planning things.
Recently I went on a trip that we need to take my wife’s car because it has more cargo room than mine. I can’t drive a stick shift so she had to drive. It was a long drive. I ended up with a lot of time to think. And where did my mind go?
I started mapping out how you would structure a functional wrestling MMO.
Yeah, really, I went there of all places.
So we went over my history with wrestling role-playing. Go back and re-read it if you need a refresher.
The other link that leads to my boredom inspired plan was a trip to San Diego Comic Con one year. It was when Everquest was the king of the MMO heap.  There was a panel that was about designing MMOs. At the panel I asked the panelist thought were the different genres that could translate to MMOs. The lead designer said that any genre that is successful as a regular video game would work as an MMO.
You know what are fairly successful games? The WWE wrestling games, after all they put out one or more a year.
So these are the elements that came together in my head on this long drive.
So what plan did I come up with? Come with me on my whimsical flight of game design fantasy.
The one major conceit needed to make the game work is that everything shown in professional wrestling is absolutely real.
Also a wrestling game by its very nature is going to be Player vs. Player. There is the ability to have some Player vs. NPC action, but it would not be the focus of the design.
Let’s start with the basics. How a character would work.
When you create your wrestler you would have several choices to make. First would be allocation of points. You would have a basic set of stats to fill: Stamina, recovery, brute strength, technical skill, acrobatics, martial arts, and dirty fighting. All the stats except stamina and recovery represent a style of wrestling and determine the wrestling moves your character can execute and how well. They also define how well the character and defend against that style. Stamina determines how much punishment you can take and recovery determines how well you can regain stamina. Once all the stats are done you will pick your characters finisher (their signature move)
Next you would select the look of your character. Not just what the avatar looks like, but how they stand and walk. You would also select a ring entrance style. Alignment would be next, are you a face (hero) or heel (villain).
Finally you would select personal information. Of course the character’s name would be the most important thing here. This would include a first and last name, plus an optional nickname.  You would also need to pick which one people commonly call you.  You would also select where you are from, and have text field to enter a character bio.
Once your character is finished it would be off to the tutorial. The tutorial would take the form of going to a wrestling school. Here you would go through the basics of how the game works and a few sample matches. All matches in the tutorial would be player vs. NPC. Once you are done it is off to the big bad world of professional wrestling.
The character will start off on the independent circuit. These are shows that have no real storyline outside of the match itself. All matches are set up by the game system itself. It would be possible to have matches some matches that are player vs. NPC here, but they would be worth less points then PvP.
This brings us to rewards. Rewards would take two forms: points and money. Points would be spent on improving your stats, both in raising the overall stat, or buying a special maneuver if you meet the stat requirements for it. Money on the other hand would have several uses. You could by better gear to improve your look. You could upgrade to a flashier ring entrance. You could spend it to hire a manager or valet, which would be an NPC that would go to the ring with you and might provide some bonuses. You can also save it up for one time uses.
Once your character is past the beginner levels they will have the opportunity to join a wrestling federation.
This brings us to the thing you have to deal with if you want to have a wrestling game with thousands of players? In a wrestling game your goal would be to become the champion and hold that championship belt. But how do you do that?
The answer is you base it on a guild structure, an in game organization of players. In most MMOs a guild is a large group that gets together to share resources and go on organized missions. In our proposed Wrestling MMO these would be called federations and would be the crux of the game.
A federation would need 10 people to start. At first it would have a limit of 25 members. There would be a federation point system to allow for growth. Eventually the federation could grow to a membership max of 75. Each federation would start out with a championship belt.  The members would compete amongst each other to be the champion.  As the federation grows it can add more belts.
As with the independent circuit, federation matches would be set up automatically by the system. Getting a title shot would be based on ranking in the federation. The rank would be calculated by various factors, such as overall win/loss record, how active you have been recently, if you had a recent title shot, and so forth.
One rule that would have to be in place is that once you win a belt you have to defend it at least once a week. This way someone cannot just win the belt and sit on it. If you do not the system strips it from you and sets up a tournament to find a new champion. Beside a title match generates more money so there is a reason to get out there and defend it.
The heads of the federation (which would be like officers in a regular MMO guild) could schedule periodic events, called PPV events (named for Pay-Per View events that real wrestling organizations have) They can be whenever they heads wanted them, but no more than once a week. There would be twenty slots available. Getting a slot would be based on how active you were in the week before the event and how well you did in your matches, as well as being logged into the game at the right time for slot selection. If a belt holder is logged in they automatically get a slot defending their belt. All PPV matches are worth double money.
For additional interactions federations can have cross-promotional matches where two feds have a joint PPV with the winner being the fed that wins the most matches.
And I’ll stop here. This is not everything I thought up, but it is the basics I came up with.
Now in all fairness, I am not a game designer, and I do not know if what I came up with is feasible or not. I just know that I would love to play in a game like this.
So what do you think? Cool idea or should I never be allowed to become bored again?

My Favorite Role-playing game experience.

Let’s get one thing straight, I love role-playing games.
I’ve been a role-playing enthusiast since I was a teenager. I can trace my connection to the majority of my social circle to role-playing games. I spent several years working at a role-playing game company.  I helped found an international organization devoted to role-playing. Role-playing is second to only comic books in the hierarchy of my fanboy interests.
I’ve played several versions of Dungeons and Dragons. I’ve played most of the old World of Darkness games and a couple of the new. I’ve played Champions, Gamma World, Toon, Chill, Cyberpunk 2020, Deadlands, and many more.
I am currently in a group that plays both Promethean and The Dresden Files RPG.
However like every role-play there is that one game. Every role-player has one, that one group that just clicked for them and even years after it broke up still has that lingering nostalgia for it.
In 1994 while working at Wizards of the Coast I found mine.
I found it when I learned a co-worker found a copy of the WWF basic Adventure Game and had started a group and wanted to know if I was interested in joining.
Yes you read that correctly.
My favorite role-playing group of all time was a group playing an RPG based on Professional Wrestling. It was a game published by Whit publication. It was meant to be the main book for a whole line, but as far as I have ever been able to learn it was the only book released.
To be honest that book as published was a so-so game but we worked at a gaming company. We were able to fix the rules to make a working game.
And what a game it was. For the majority of the nearly two years we played this game there were only three of us playing. All players had several wrestlers and managers, a ref, and a ring announcer.
It was structured so that in a match you would have two wrestlers and the third player would have his ref character in the match. Whoever was ref was the GM for that match. The game was basically a protracted fight that goes move by move with attacks and counters.  In a night we would have time for about 4 to 5 matches and all three of got to play as all three of us also acted as gm. 
Our fictional wrestling organization was Intercontinental Wrestling Federation or the ICW. It was located in Las Vegas. Steve, whose house we played out went so far as to get little wrestling figures to use as miniatures and made a scale map of the arena that took up most of the table to use for play.
As I said earlier each of us ran about 4 or 5 wrestlers. Mine were a mixed bag of various archetypes that would show up in wrestling.
Johnny Hartman the all-American. He was a college football star from South Carolina that had gotten into wrestling as a form of cross-training.  He was taken under the wing of “Captain America” Lance Arness, who he referred to as coach. He had a long rivalry with a wrestler only known as the Duke of Slamchester and a brief rivalry with the ICW champion the Golem. His finishing move was a pile driver he called the Touchdown.
Vincent “The Don” Vincenzo was a Mafia themed wrestler. He was managed by Uncle Guido Vincenzo and teamed with his cousin Benny “the leg breaker” Pagliocci.  I ran all three characters. Vincent would start most matches offering a bribe to his opponent to throw the match. His finishing move was a choke slam called the Strong arm.
Jerry Aldini, who was often called the hardest working man in wrestling. He briefly held the Intercontinental champion ship after defeating Apollo Storm. Eventually had a heel turn after he felt he was disrespected once too often.
We had storylines that would go on for months, we had rivalries, and we had pay-per-views. We were convinced that the house we played at was bugged because we would have a storyline and soon a similar storyline would appear in one of the real feds.
Seriously, we had a game session where one wrestler was taken out with a high heel shoe. A week later on WCW Hulk Hogan was hit taken down with a high heel shoe.
Of all the role-playing gaming groups I have been part of this one still stands as my favorite. I had more fun with this one than any other I have ever played in.  It was that perfect mix of the right people together with the right game setting. We had three other players that joined briefly at various times, but it was usually the core three.
 The group finally broke up when Shawn, our third player lost interest and Steve and I didn’t think anyone could really take his place.
I made a couple of attempts to put together new groups but they either didn’t gel or just didn’t get off the ground.
And what made me bring up that bit of nostalgia? Stay tuned, I will be getting to that.
So what was your favorite role-playing experience?