Stuck in a Rut
 

So a while back I got into a couple online leagues; while fun it took up a lot of my time and I got burned out on playing OOTP. I usually play offline games on my own, typically starting as the Cardinals. Looking to try starting out as a different team...who have you all found is an enjoyable team to GM? Not necessarily looking to take on the Marlins challenge yet, but I don't want to take on a Red Sox or Yankees type with a huge budget either.

You should make a fictional league. All new teams. All fictional players. Tabula rasa, a totally clean slate. No expectations and history is made with every game.

Try the A's or Ray's. It's AL ball so you manage and build your team different and it provides a challenge in having a border line team with not quite enough budget to keep up.


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Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I may go the fictional route first; I have always enjoyed txranger's logos and jerseys and it will be fun to implement those.

Mr. Marlin, do you usually take control of a team right away, sim a few seasons first, or never GM a team?

Try and do something really radical. Do the quickstart promotion/relegation league and start on the bottom rung with a low budget team. After you escape your first tier you'll realize you need to rebuild your team since it won't be able to compete in the next level but whoops the whole lose on purpose gimmick to get high draft picks doesn't work since that means you get sent down. I did that and it took me 26 years to climb to the premier league and win the world series.

I do a few things:
1) Upon creation of the league I'll delete all of the players.
2) Then set up the player creation parameters appropriate for the year the league starts.
3) Then autofill all the teams with fictional players.
4) Create 100 or so free agents of middle to low quality
5) Create 50 or so free agent coaches, team staff
6) Fix the financials of the league appropriate to the era
7) Assign fictional contracts to all players and personnel
8) Sim for 20-30 seasons to build up a history.
9) Take over a team or just look for open jobs.

Steps 1-7 takes about 10 minutes. To sim 30 season on my laptop takes about 45 minutes to two hours depending on how many teams I made.

I love fictional play. And all the quality mods like TX Ranger's work and others you can make it yours and really bring it to life. There are no preconceptions, no expectations, it really is a clean slate. I kept on running over 100 seasons with one rule: no logos or teams from the real world. It had to be 100% fictional. It never got stale.