OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - The PEBAverse Rises From the Ashes of MLB's Demise

BradC · 12-13-2011, 06:02 PM

In what ways have you customized the PEBA/LRS?

Our leagues employ a variety of house rules designed to challenge GMs, and members have an opportunity to influence house rules customization by voting on off-season “floater” proposals. Many house rules revolve around increasing realism of contract negotiations. OOTP goes further in representing real life baseball finances than any other game out there. Still, there are isolated cases where OOTP is over-generous in what it permits. That’s when our own checks and balances come into play to preserve the challenge and reality of the modern baseball financial landscape.

Managing an LRS team is particularly interesting thanks to a few additional customizations. These include a 35-man secondary roster, the gaijin rule (which limits teams to four non-Japanese nationals on the active roster), and the juuki designation (a one-time tag which allows teams to retain one pending free agent for the upcoming season at his current salary… though this tends to result in bad feelings from the player!).

But more interesting than the rules customizations, in my opinion, is the customization of the league’s focus. I believe that what really makes the PEBA and LRS unique is the twin focus on creative expression and community-building.

Ask me why baseball is the greatest sport (and I believe it is!) and I would say it’s the sport’s ability to create narratives more robust than any other pro sport. Maybe this is due to the languid pace of the game, the very thing that baseball’s detractors trumpet as the sport’s greatest weakness. Narratives arise in other sports, certainly, but because the pace of their games are so frantic and the length of their seasons so compressed (relative to baseball), there is only so much time and opportunity to reflect upon emerging storylines.

Baseball affords time for reflection, and we embrace the game’s languid pace in our sim schedule. Generous amounts of time between sims allow members to absorb results from the PEBAverse, uncover the emerging narratives, and construct stories around them. OOTP aids our cause by reporting results in such thorough detail. Members find inspiration in all kinds of locations – a box score, an injury report, an ejection notice, etc. And when no obvious in-game inspiration is available, they’ll make up their own narrative.

For members, it’s an opportunity to exercise creativity in a risk-free environment. Every story is greeted warmly, regardless of the writer’s current level of proficiency. Yes, our membership includes published authors, published academics, and produced playwrights, but it also includes people who never wrote creatively before joining us; they were curious and ended up falling in love. Members find writing for the PEBA and LRS improves their creativity and enhances their writing ability – handy skills in all kinds of real life situations.

OOTP brought us together, but we made the choice to transform our gathering of independent, isolated competitors into something greater than your typical “fantasy baseball league”. From Day One, new members are made to feel part of an evolving community that cares about and welcomes their contributions. Events like the live Amateur Drafts and Winter Meetings, for instance, bring us together with incredibly fun results. The Winter Meetings, a two-hour gathering during which all house rule restrictions on trades are lifted, is one of the most endearing events on our calendar. GMs gather to horse trade, rumormonger, swap stories, and get to know their peers on a first-name basis. The live Amateur Drafts are a non-stop roller coaster of timed selections, instant analysis, and good-natured chatter.

Community-building doesn’t stop with game-related events, though. Our members use OOTP as a jumping off point for better getting to know fellow GMs. We started as competitors and ended up friends. Members regularly chat via Instant Messenger – sometimes about the league, sometimes about life. We’ve had real life meet-ups between GMs. We arrange all kinds of online gaming opportunities – Civilization V, Diablo II, Frozen Synapse, Dominion, Diplomacy, online racing – to provide more ways for members to bond.

Members are encouraged to regularly visit our forums, where we discuss so much more than just what’s happening in the PEBAverse. Our off-topic sub-forums contain over 10,000 posts on a range of topics: book and movie reviews, shared photos, ruminations on changing culture, announcements of new arrivals, and much more. You’ll even find rankings for 110 varieties of apples! No topic is too esoteric, and the forums are always alive with activity.

I will take this opportunity to extend a special invitation to those reading this interview. Are you interested in joining the PEBA community, even if you don’t necessarily have time to join the league? Normally, PEBA forum registration is limited to league members. For a limited time, though, we are opening our forum membership to non-members. The PEBA forums have evolved beyond just baseball talk. We really do cover all kinds of ground, and we think you can help us expand our horizons even further. If you would like to become a part of our extended community, fill out our “Join the PEBA” form with your name, email address, and a note on why you’re interested in joining the PEBA forums in the “Tell us about yourself” section. Once you’re registered, you’ll be able to add to ongoing conversations, start your own topics, and you’ll become eligible to join our various online games. We’ll be accepting story submissions (both league-related and not) from registered forum members, providing you with a platform to improve upon and get exposure for your writing. You’ll also receive invitations to live drafts and Winter Meetings.

Are the PEBA and LRS integrated into the same game world, or are they separate?

The PEBA and the LRS coexist in one gigantic baseball “universe”, which we refer to as the “PEBAverse”. When we began play in our 2007 season, only the 24 PEBA teams (and their affiliated minor league teams) were run by humans. Starting with the 2010 season, human GMs took over for the AI in the LRS. In our fiction, the PEBA purchased a controlling stake in the LRS in 2009, paving the way for interaction between the two leagues.

And the leagues really do interact in a number of interesting ways. Though direct trading between the leagues is not permitted, PEBA teams may submit sealed bids on posted LRS players during the off-season. If an LRS team accepts a bid and the bidding team successfully negotiates a contract with the player, that player joins the PEBA and his former LRS team is wired the bid value. LRS teams can also bid on Japanese players who pass through PEBA waivers. An accepted bid will result in a contract transfer to the LRS, with the bid value wired to the player’s former PEBA team.

What is your history playing baseball sims, including videogames and any card-and-dice ones like Strat-o-Matic? How did you first get into such games?

In truth, I had absolutely no history with sim baseball games beyond typical fantasy baseball leagues prior to OOTP. What I did have was a wide variety of cultural influences: books, movies, television, stage theater, computer games, pen-and-paper role-playing games. The common theme shared by these influences is the focus on storytelling. Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted to do more than consume stories – I wanted to create stories, and I wanted to help others do the same. That, more than anything else, was the driving force behind creating the PEBA. In a sense, the fact that baseball became the central focus of the endeavor was a happy accident.

Interestingly, the day I discovered OOTP was the day that my interest in fantasy baseball died. Once you’re presented with the all-encompassing depth of OOTP’s simulation engine, it’s difficult to go back to the boring abstraction of fantasy baseball. I got into fantasy baseball because I dreamt of becoming a baseball General Manager. I achieved that dream when I graduated to OOTP.

Why do you continue to play OOTP?

As I mentioned earlier, my interest in baseball stems from how well the sport lends itself to the development of narratives. Whether you like it or not, the inequity of baseball’s financial system that allows teams like the Yankees to dwarf teams like the Marlins in payroll is a narrative. A 103-year World Series victory drought is one heck of a long, winding narrative. David Freese going from World Series Game 6 goat to hero is about as compelling a narrative as you can get. Baseball is filled with emerging storylines, and no game on the market helps gamers tap into them like OOTP does.

Features like dynamically evolving leagues, for example, shake up gameplay, force reactions to a changing environment and, in the process, prompt gamers to build stories around this evolution. OOTP’s storyline engine is in its early stages of development, but even now, you can see the vast potential for more emergent storytelling. I’m incredibly excited about the enhancements in store for the storyline engine in OOTP 13. The developers have made this a priority, and gamers are going to discover their OOTP baseball universes are living, breathing places where on-the-field action is only part of the game. This kind of focus brings me back to OOTP over and over again.

How long have you been a baseball fan, and how and why did you get into the sport?

My father got me interested in baseball as a child. Cuba, my father’s birthplace, was much more open prior to their Revolution. Former big leaguer Bobby Bragan visited Havana and recruited my father as an outfield prospect. Though it didn’t lead to a big league career, my father’s love of the game remained and it bled over to me.

I am a lifelong Clevelander. Being a baseball fan in Cleveland comes with a set of requirements: patience, eternal optimism, patience, the ability to absorb a barrage of disappointments, patience, an endless supply of Kleenex, and goo-gobs of patience. I can only hope that Calvin’s father from Calvin & Hobbes is correct in his philosophy that suffering builds character, because Indians fans must learn to accept suffering as part and parcel with their fandom or quickly give up the venture.

But maybe Calvin’s dad is on to something. If nothing else, my fandom has taught me to appreciate the importance of delaying gratification (and delaying… and delaying…). That skill comes in handy for running a league like the PEBA/LRS. It’s not a race to results. It’s a slow-moving, ever-evolving, world-building experience. That’s the greatest strength of OOTP: It lets you play the game your way. Those who want to devour their results hot from the oven can have that. Those who want to savor the flavors of the game can have that, too. Everybody wins.

12-13-2011, 06:02 PM	#2
BradC All Star Starter Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: northern CA Posts: 1,870 Blog Entries: 1	The PEBAverse Rises From the Ashes of MLB's Demise, part 2 In what ways have you customized the PEBA/LRS? Our leagues employ a variety of house rules designed to challenge GMs, and members have an opportunity to influence house rules customization by voting on off-season “floater” proposals. Many house rules revolve around increasing realism of contract negotiations. OOTP goes further in representing real life baseball finances than any other game out there. Still, there are isolated cases where OOTP is over-generous in what it permits. That’s when our own checks and balances come into play to preserve the challenge and reality of the modern baseball financial landscape. Managing an LRS team is particularly interesting thanks to a few additional customizations. These include a 35-man secondary roster, the gaijin rule (which limits teams to four non-Japanese nationals on the active roster), and the juuki designation (a one-time tag which allows teams to retain one pending free agent for the upcoming season at his current salary… though this tends to result in bad feelings from the player!). But more interesting than the rules customizations, in my opinion, is the customization of the league’s focus. I believe that what really makes the PEBA and LRS unique is the twin focus on creative expression and community-building. Ask me why baseball is the greatest sport (and I believe it is!) and I would say it’s the sport’s ability to create narratives more robust than any other pro sport. Maybe this is due to the languid pace of the game, the very thing that baseball’s detractors trumpet as the sport’s greatest weakness. Narratives arise in other sports, certainly, but because the pace of their games are so frantic and the length of their seasons so compressed (relative to baseball), there is only so much time and opportunity to reflect upon emerging storylines. Baseball affords time for reflection, and we embrace the game’s languid pace in our sim schedule. Generous amounts of time between sims allow members to absorb results from the PEBAverse, uncover the emerging narratives, and construct stories around them. OOTP aids our cause by reporting results in such thorough detail. Members find inspiration in all kinds of locations – a box score, an injury report, an ejection notice, etc. And when no obvious in-game inspiration is available, they’ll make up their own narrative. For members, it’s an opportunity to exercise creativity in a risk-free environment. Every story is greeted warmly, regardless of the writer’s current level of proficiency. Yes, our membership includes published authors, published academics, and produced playwrights, but it also includes people who never wrote creatively before joining us; they were curious and ended up falling in love. Members find writing for the PEBA and LRS improves their creativity and enhances their writing ability – handy skills in all kinds of real life situations. OOTP brought us together, but we made the choice to transform our gathering of independent, isolated competitors into something greater than your typical “fantasy baseball league”. From Day One, new members are made to feel part of an evolving community that cares about and welcomes their contributions. Events like the live Amateur Drafts and Winter Meetings, for instance, bring us together with incredibly fun results. The Winter Meetings, a two-hour gathering during which all house rule restrictions on trades are lifted, is one of the most endearing events on our calendar. GMs gather to horse trade, rumormonger, swap stories, and get to know their peers on a first-name basis. The live Amateur Drafts are a non-stop roller coaster of timed selections, instant analysis, and good-natured chatter. Community-building doesn’t stop with game-related events, though. Our members use OOTP as a jumping off point for better getting to know fellow GMs. We started as competitors and ended up friends. Members regularly chat via Instant Messenger – sometimes about the league, sometimes about life. We’ve had real life meet-ups between GMs. We arrange all kinds of online gaming opportunities – Civilization V, Diablo II, Frozen Synapse, Dominion, Diplomacy, online racing – to provide more ways for members to bond. Members are encouraged to regularly visit our forums, where we discuss so much more than just what’s happening in the PEBAverse. Our off-topic sub-forums contain over 10,000 posts on a range of topics: book and movie reviews, shared photos, ruminations on changing culture, announcements of new arrivals, and much more. You’ll even find rankings for 110 varieties of apples! No topic is too esoteric, and the forums are always alive with activity. I will take this opportunity to extend a special invitation to those reading this interview. Are you interested in joining the PEBA community, even if you don’t necessarily have time to join the league? Normally, PEBA forum registration is limited to league members. For a limited time, though, we are opening our forum membership to non-members. The PEBA forums have evolved beyond just baseball talk. We really do cover all kinds of ground, and we think you can help us expand our horizons even further. If you would like to become a part of our extended community, fill out our “Join the PEBA” form with your name, email address, and a note on why you’re interested in joining the PEBA forums in the “Tell us about yourself” section. Once you’re registered, you’ll be able to add to ongoing conversations, start your own topics, and you’ll become eligible to join our various online games. We’ll be accepting story submissions (both league-related and not) from registered forum members, providing you with a platform to improve upon and get exposure for your writing. You’ll also receive invitations to live drafts and Winter Meetings. Are the PEBA and LRS integrated into the same game world, or are they separate? The PEBA and the LRS coexist in one gigantic baseball “universe”, which we refer to as the “PEBAverse”. When we began play in our 2007 season, only the 24 PEBA teams (and their affiliated minor league teams) were run by humans. Starting with the 2010 season, human GMs took over for the AI in the LRS. In our fiction, the PEBA purchased a controlling stake in the LRS in 2009, paving the way for interaction between the two leagues. And the leagues really do interact in a number of interesting ways. Though direct trading between the leagues is not permitted, PEBA teams may submit sealed bids on posted LRS players during the off-season. If an LRS team accepts a bid and the bidding team successfully negotiates a contract with the player, that player joins the PEBA and his former LRS team is wired the bid value. LRS teams can also bid on Japanese players who pass through PEBA waivers. An accepted bid will result in a contract transfer to the LRS, with the bid value wired to the player’s former PEBA team. What is your history playing baseball sims, including videogames and any card-and-dice ones like Strat-o-Matic? How did you first get into such games? In truth, I had absolutely no history with sim baseball games beyond typical fantasy baseball leagues prior to OOTP. What I did have was a wide variety of cultural influences: books, movies, television, stage theater, computer games, pen-and-paper role-playing games. The common theme shared by these influences is the focus on storytelling. Eventually, I reached a point where I wanted to do more than consume stories – I wanted to create stories, and I wanted to help others do the same. That, more than anything else, was the driving force behind creating the PEBA. In a sense, the fact that baseball became the central focus of the endeavor was a happy accident. Interestingly, the day I discovered OOTP was the day that my interest in fantasy baseball died. Once you’re presented with the all-encompassing depth of OOTP’s simulation engine, it’s difficult to go back to the boring abstraction of fantasy baseball. I got into fantasy baseball because I dreamt of becoming a baseball General Manager. I achieved that dream when I graduated to OOTP. Why do you continue to play OOTP? As I mentioned earlier, my interest in baseball stems from how well the sport lends itself to the development of narratives. Whether you like it or not, the inequity of baseball’s financial system that allows teams like the Yankees to dwarf teams like the Marlins in payroll is a narrative. A 103-year World Series victory drought is one heck of a long, winding narrative. David Freese going from World Series Game 6 goat to hero is about as compelling a narrative as you can get. Baseball is filled with emerging storylines, and no game on the market helps gamers tap into them like OOTP does. Features like dynamically evolving leagues, for example, shake up gameplay, force reactions to a changing environment and, in the process, prompt gamers to build stories around this evolution. OOTP’s storyline engine is in its early stages of development, but even now, you can see the vast potential for more emergent storytelling. I’m incredibly excited about the enhancements in store for the storyline engine in OOTP 13. The developers have made this a priority, and gamers are going to discover their OOTP baseball universes are living, breathing places where on-the-field action is only part of the game. This kind of focus brings me back to OOTP over and over again. How long have you been a baseball fan, and how and why did you get into the sport? My father got me interested in baseball as a child. Cuba, my father’s birthplace, was much more open prior to their Revolution. Former big leaguer Bobby Bragan visited Havana and recruited my father as an outfield prospect. Though it didn’t lead to a big league career, my father’s love of the game remained and it bled over to me. I am a lifelong Clevelander. Being a baseball fan in Cleveland comes with a set of requirements: patience, eternal optimism, patience, the ability to absorb a barrage of disappointments, patience, an endless supply of Kleenex, and goo-gobs of patience. I can only hope that Calvin’s father from Calvin & Hobbes is correct in his philosophy that suffering builds character, because Indians fans must learn to accept suffering as part and parcel with their fandom or quickly give up the venture. But maybe Calvin’s dad is on to something. If nothing else, my fandom has taught me to appreciate the importance of delaying gratification (and delaying… and delaying…). That skill comes in handy for running a league like the PEBA/LRS. It’s not a race to results. It’s a slow-moving, ever-evolving, world-building experience. That’s the greatest strength of OOTP: It lets you play the game your way. Those who want to devour their results hot from the oven can have that. Those who want to savor the flavors of the game can have that, too. Everybody wins.