Big Bri offers some good advice here, much of which I follow. So, I'll ditto what he says and add some comments and suggestions.
1. Maybe divide a game year into "sections" in which you would calculate rankings and determine the new contenders. For instance, if a game year is 12 months, maybe recalculate the rankings every 2 months? This would allow the dice to determine the contenders to a point but you won't be number-crunching all the time.
This is a great idea. It also gives you a chance to cycle wrestlers out who aren't performing up to par. Sometimes the dice just have a grudge against someone and it's best to bench them while you bring in someone new.
2. Out of the LOW cards you use in your fed, are there any dream matches you'd like to play out? If so, make a list of them and try to play one every few months (in game time) so you always have something to look forward to in your fed. For every one of these dream matches, maybe a couple months before you want the match to take place, start planting the seeds for a feud to develop between the wrestlers.
I dig the dream matches too. A flaw of mine is going for the dream match too soon. Hotdogging, if you will. That's something to keep an eye on. In my fed now, I only have title matches on the main PPVs. So the champ wrestles non-title matches everywhere else.
This is good because even if I hotdog the dream match (basically book it too soon) I still get at least one more chance to get it right (the actual title match). Prior to moving away from setting up storylines/feuds before the dice hit the table, I used to "push" guys into contender position just to get the matches I wanted.
That was a bad move. Because the feuds fizzled out as often as not because the dice were just hot one way or the other.
Now my feuds happen organically and I get some really interesting results. Like now, Black Gordman & Great Goliath are having some awesome matches against Samu & Alofa. And the Valiants are beginning a heated feud with Nikolai Volkoff & Krusher Kruschev. Hulk Hogan and Bobo Brazil are also starting to get really into it. And I think Ted DiBiase and Larry Zybysko are in the middle of a really nice feud.
Now, the feud I
wanted to happen was Lou Thesz and Jimmy Snuka for the World Title. But Thesz is mopping the floor with Snuka. Now, because it's PPV time, Snuka has to defend the title against Thesz. So he's going to have to either show us why he's the champ or hand the belt over to Thesz.
The best part about this approach is that the feuds happen because, well, the stars are right. I was
so frustrated when I brought Strangler Lewis in to contend for the title last year. Built him up with a bunch of easy matches and then watched Snuka just destroy him.
Because I'm not building these feuds (I'm letting the dice do it), it's a lot more fun. Feuds seem more palpable because either the cards match up well against each other or the dice are hot for both contestants.
3. You could always spice things up by having a battle royal or tournament for a title shot. Or a tag team tournament where the partners are chosen at random. Some feuds could always develop from these types of events.
Old school Memphis (like Gulas-era) did this a lot. It's a good recipe for keeping things interesting. Remember, you're the promoter, booker and AUDIENCE! If you want to spice things up, throw in a battle royal. No one's going to come and take your dice away...
4. I highly suggest using the "Between Matches" chart that you'll find in the Open Source Content Archive section of this board. It gives you lots of possibilities for things that can happen during a card (backstage interviews, brawls, etc.). Again, many feuds could be spawned here. In fact, there are many charts and rules in the Open Source Content Archive section that could spice up your fed.
This is a good chart. I've also grown fond of using (
Mythic).
It lets me interject random elements into a PPV or Show. Like recently, it led in the direction of putting Ray Stevens and his manager, Bobby Heenan, ringside at the announcer's table for a match between Chief Jay Strongbow and Len Rossi. This helped me explain a
really weird DQ result. It also seeded the idea that Tommy Rogers of the Fantastics was wrestling a match with an injury after a loss to Krusher Kruschev and Nikolai Volkoff (a.k.a. The Red Menace) in the previous show.
As for any other advice...
I've been watching a lot of ROH lately. And it's helped me to lessen the desire to have well-defined heels and faces. I still have heels and faces. But I don't sweat it when I have a match between two faces and one or the other resort to heelish tactics. Unless it's something egregious (like piledriving a guy on the concrete), I chalk it up to competitiveness and playing a bit rough.
For example, Jimmy Snuka and Rikidozan faced off on my last show. It wasn't a PPV so the title was not on the line. Snuka needed the win because he was coming off an embarrassing loss to Lou Thesz. He needed to validate his status as the LWF World Champion (since November 2, 2006 no less). Meanwhile, Rikidozan had been taking a beating in the title race. A loss to Snuka would have dropped him lower in the rankings. Possibly even threatened his ability to stay in the LWF!
Both men resorted to some heelish tactics. But I figured they both were desperate for a win. So no big.
I've often found that sometimes a match dynamically defines the Heel and Face for the match. Like in the last show, the Valiants took on the Red Menace. Both teams are hated heels. I mean really hated. But the match played out to where the Valiants were actually playing the face role. The Valiants won (just barely) and the crowd cheered. But did this make them faces? Heck no. They're still heels and when they go up against the Fantastics at the PPV to determine who becomes the LWF World Tag Champions, the crowd will boo them six ways from Sunday. It's just that the Valiants are a little
less hated than the Red Menace. Go figure.
I've also switched to a set schedule for everything but my PPVs. I have 12 wrestlers in the world title division. 6 teams in the tag title division. And 6 wrestlers in the US title division. I have a schedule that goes for so many shows with each wrestler (or team) facing another one in the division. Kind of like a football schedule.
A win (even by DQ) gets a wrestler one point. Some wrestlers start out with a point. Most start out with zero points or -1. The wrestler with the most points gets a shot at the title at the next PPV (unless he's caught in a feud).
That's the gist of it. There's a little more to it. Like I use a
McMahon-style Tournament setup for the different divisions. But junior title and tag title divisions have "hard brackets". I don't bother with any complicated win-loss or ELO rankings. I just give the guy a point if he wins, dock a point if he does something to tick off the commish or put points in "layaway" if two wrestlers are in a feud -- making winning a feud REALLY important to rankings. A 3-point feud could be the difference between a title shot and a pink slip.
At the end of a season, I reset the standings. The champs start out with 1 point. And everyone else goes to zero or -1.
I'm having a blast. I don't worry about booking anything. The PPVs write themselves based on the scheduled matches. And I'm getting a lot of interesting feud matchups, as I mentioned before.
And Mythic adds in all those things that I wanted from "booking storylines" back in the day. Better yet, all these storylines revolve around the wrestling. The quest for the title is the name of the game. I'm digging it!
