E-wrestling is a fantasy game that has been around on the Internet since about 1994. The term 'e-federation', or 'e-fed' means 'email federation', because that is how it all started. In an e-fed, you create a wrestler and the object of it all is to win the fed's top championship, usually the World Heavyweight championship. The number of e-feds on the Internet is gigantic. Guesses have put the number from 5,000 to 100,000 - possibly more. This is intended as an introduction to the world of e-wrestling. You do not have to pay attention. Onward!!!

I'd be lying if I said that I knew where, when, why or how the first e-fed was created. General consensus is that it first appeared sometime in 1993-1995. The name 'email federation' came because that is what the feds were based on. You joined by email, roleplayed (more on this later) by email and did everything by email. The feds were mainly based like this - you joined and then wrote a roleplay, which you sent to an automated mailing list or just all the other members of the fed. Just that. But then, e-wrestling began to shift. E-feds got their own websites on servers such as Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire and Hypermart for free. The advent of the message board made e-feds the way they are now. But anyway...on to today's typical e-fed.

There are three main classifications which e-feds fall into.

1. RP Booked Feds are the most popular. You have to roleplay against your opponent, who will respond in kind. The roleplay(s) done by you and your opponent(s) will then be analysed by a staff member. Basic results will be drawn up - who won, who lost - and passed on to a card writer¹, who writes up the matches. Their job is to make the matches as interesting as they deserve to be.

2. RP Simulated feds work slightly differently. You still roleplay, the staff decide winners on roleplaying quality but they then put the results into a wrestling simulator program which feeds out results

3. Simulated feds were popular a few years ago. All the handler² has to do is enter their character. Everything else is computer generated. Very few of these remain open today.

Glad you asked. For those of you not familiar with pro wrestling, in a RL federation³, the characters will talk about their upcoming matches every so often. This is referred to as 'cutting a promo'. In any fed which determines its results by roleplay⁴ you will have to roleplay at least once for every match. If you don't you will lose.⁵ If you're interested in how to actually construct RP's, there's a link at the bottom of the page to an e-wrestling site with some really good tutorials on how to get started in an e-fed.

There are more classifications of e-fed and all are different.

1. Imitator feds try to replicate the WWF, WCW⁶ or other RL wrestling federations. You must enter as a character from one of the relative federations. These often tend to become clones of whichever promotion they attempt to replicate, and grow stale and boring.

2. Real-Original (RO) feds attempt to appeal to everyone. They have original names and accept both real and fake wrestlers. There is a link to an RF fed at the bottom of the page. The main advantage to these is that you can join as your favourite wrestler, or one you've seen a bit, and you have a style to RP in ready-made. The challenge is taking the character beyond what he is on the box, and people who can do that are considered excellent RPers.

3. Original-Only (OO) feds are considered to be 'the ultimate challenge'. Only original characters are allowed with original names. It involves creating a character from scratch (or recycling an old idea, if you're an experienced handler) and taking them to glory in the relevent fed.

4. Superfeds are a very interesting concept. Basically, they are two or more feds which have joined together and compete against each other. The concept is rather hard to explain and so there is a link to a superfed at the bottom of the page.

One more round of classifications...

1. Message Board Feds are feds in which you post your roleplays as your character on a specially designated message board.

2. E-mail Feds are still around, and it is said that, while 70% of feds are message board, most of the very best RPing is done via e-mail feds.

Either jump in at the deep end with one of the e-fed links below or visit FWLnet, read the tutorials and pick a fed from their Top 1000 list.

In the words of the complaints department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation 'Go stick your head in a pig'. I worked hard on this, you ungrateful...I'm calm. Don't worry, I won't be offended...much.

Coming soon. So there.