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Hey everyone — I wanted to share something I’ve been working on (with lots of help from the TEW IX community) — it’s called Grind for Greatness (GFG), a “game within a game” / challenge mode built for Total Extreme Wrestling IX. Consider this post the introduction, an overview of what GFG is, how it works, and what I hope people will get out of it. I’ll also toss in my thinking, inspirations, and what to expect. Would love feedback, questions, or suggestions as I finalize the version and roll it out more widely.

What is Grind for Greatness

Grind for Greatness is a structured challenge concept/mod for TEW IX that gives players a layered set of objectives, rewards, difficulty modes, and long-term goals. It isn’t just “play TEW until you win.” Instead, it’s about completing many smaller challenges, adapting to constraints, and pushing yourself depending on how tough you want things to be.

It’s “lightly based on the Road to Glory (RTG)” by Bad Collin. RTG was something I – and many others in the community – enjoyed for its flavour of progression and challenge in TEW 2016 and TEW 2020. It inspired me to build something more expansive: more objectives, more customisation, more difficulty layers. That was the seed. After playing with it, tweaking, sharing with friends, and seeing positive feedback, I decided to release it to a wider audience. Google Docs

Key Features & Structure

Here are the building blocks and features of GFG:

  • Tracker Sheet. There is a Google Sheets tracker. Once you “Make a Copy” to your own Drive, you can use it to log what objectives you’ve completed, what rewards you’ve unlocked, and your progress toward the “Greatness Wall” (the capstone or major goal depending on your mode).

  • Difficulty / Mode Selection. There are multiple modes, each with increasing challenge:

    1. Easy Mode — good for dipping your toes in; more forgiving start with better finances and skill point allocation.

    2. Normal Mode — steps up difficulty a bit; less room for error.

    3. Hard Mode — similar in difficulty to RTG, so for people who are familiar with “Nothing to Something” type challenges.

    4. Extreme Mode — much tighter constraints from the start (finances, skills, etc.), more goals, and a harder path to the Greatness Wall.

    5. Ultra Pain Mode — the ultimate challenge. You start in the 80’s, with limited staff, limited broadcasts, minimal resources. Also, in this mode you must use the “Grind For Greatness: From Nothing” mod. Only for very committed/die-hard players.

  • Objectives & Rewards. Each mode comes with a list of goals you must hit to unlock rewards. Some are smaller “checkpoint” style, others are longer-term. The rewards are also variable depending on mode — harder modes tend to give harder-earned but more satisfying rewards.

  • Greatness Wall. This is the major milestone(s) at the end: once you complete enough objectives, you reach your mode’s capstone, sometimes called the “Greatness Wall.” What that means depends on which difficulty you chose. It’s one way the challenge scales — more goals for harder modes.

Why I Made It / What I Hope to Achieve

I see Grind for Greatness as filling a gap. TEW is already deep and richly modifiable, but I felt there was room for a challenge framework that more explicitly rewards long-term planning, risk-management, and consistency. Rather than just “build a big promotion,” I wanted something that makes you think: “Can I survive this harsh start? Can I stretch my resources? Can I hit all these milestones, even in the face of adverse conditions?”

Some of the hopes / goals are:

  • Replayability. Because of the multiple modes, you can play GFG several times and get different experiences. Start easy, get used to the objectives; then maybe try Extreme or Ultra Pain.

  • Structured progression. Many TEW players love informal “self-challenges.” GFG formalises that, gives you a roadmap, a tracker, rewards, and visible milestones. Helps avoid the drift/aimlessness that sometimes comes in long sim campaigns.

  • Motivation & community. I hope people will share their progress, compare their Greatness Walls, show off unlocked rewards, maybe even compete informally (“Hey, I hit this in Hard Mode before year X,” or “I got more achievements in Extreme”).

What To Expect & Recommended Starting Advice

If you’re going to start with GFG, here are some tips based on what I’ve learned during design/testing:

  • Start with Easy or Normal if you’re new to challenge modes. Get used to how objectives are structured, how tight the constraints are.

  • Use the tracker sheet from the start. It helps you visualise progress, which can keep you focused and prevent things slipping through the cracks.

  • Pick your mode not just by ego, but by what you enjoy. Some of the higher modes are punishing; failing often is part of the fun, but it can also be frustrating if you expect smooth sailing.

  • Be ready for resource constraints (especially in Extreme / Ultra Pain). Staffing, finances, broadcasting etc., will be harder. So plan carefully; maybe borrow tactics from “Nothing to Something” challenges: early efficient promotion, tight cost control, smart booking.

  • Be okay with failing early or often. Sometimes a “failed” run still teaches you a lot. And every objective you tick off even in a partial run counts toward building instinct.

What’s Still In Development / What Could Change

While version 1.0 is released, there are (as always) bits I’m considering adding or refining:

  • Possibly more reward variety, especially for the mid-tiers.

  • Better feedback/documentation or examples of strategies people used to succeed in Extreme / Ultra Pain.

  • Some balancing tweaks: making sure some objectives aren’t accidentally too easy (or impossibly hard) depending on promotion choice, region etc.

Final Thoughts

Grind for Greatness is my attempt to give the TEW IX community a formalised, flexible, rewarding challenge system — something that scales from casual journeys to hardcore “do you even survive in ultra-pain” marathons. It’s a labour of love built off inspiration from earlier mods and challenges like RTG, feedback, testing, and community discussion.

If you try it, I’d love to hear:

  • What mode you picked, and why.

  • Which objectives felt good / which felt frustrating.

  • How you approached tackling the harder modes.

  • Suggestions for new rewards, new objectives, flavour you’d like to see.

Thanks for reading this intro! I’ll post more about strategies, community leaderboards, and maybe even variant rulesets soon. Let me know what you think, whether you’ll take the challenge, and if there’s anything you’d love to see added.