struggling to find a new project

[plinko83]

I'm in-between projects in OOTP right now...i did a White Sox rebuild when I got the 25 game and played it through for ~40 years or so and for the past couple weeks I've not wanted to continue it.

I've opened the game and stared at the opening screen and not started anything new -- or I've started about 8 different new games (starting in 1966, a pro/rel fictional league, etc.) and dropped them all after a few days (or less).

Just curious what folks like to do when they're looking to "spice up" their OOTP play, or switch things up...specifically or generally...while I figure out what my next project is.

I love the idea of a deep, long-running fictional league, but I struggle getting started with it. Not knowing any of the players at the beginning ruins a lot of the fun. I'm thinking about doing an MLB league but starting by dumping everyone into the free agency pool and doing a league-wide draft, but I'm open to any other ideas as well.

Best,
Plinko

[20_range]

What I like to do is run the game for about five years, then expand and takeover an expansion team. That way it's grounded in the real life players but it quickly becomes a fictional league.

The last time I did it I added an additional challenge/fictionalizatuon for myself: my new expansion team wasn't allowed to select/employ any real players, just fictional ones that had been created over the years that I'd skipped. Very difficult at first.

[JudgeGio]

How about setting your home run modifier to something like 5.000 and starting a fictional slugfest league? I have thought of doing that, but haven’t yet.

[FleetWalker]

I have a pro-rel system of 10 leagues each with 12 teams. Teams are apportioned among the US states and Canadian provinces based on population. Each team's market started off based on population weighted by distance from the ballpark and per capita income. Yes, I can be obsessive. Market sizes ranged from 3 to 13 to start. Market sizes at the top end tend to drop fairly quickly, but they don't increase at the lower end very fast.

Ticket prices are fixed and all stadiums at all levels are the same size (not exactly realistic but it keeps things a little more fair).

The top 4 teams in each league go to the playoffs and the top 2 teams get a 1-game advantage in the first round. The league winner is promoted. the worst team in each league gets demoted (there is no playoff at the bottom because it's a pain to manually schedule that every year for 10 leagues).

There is 1-round draft but that's only because I like the draft classes for player creation. Players are immediately free agents as soon as the play a game in any league, so you basically try to sign your draft picks to extensions as soon as they are drafted. The draft is the only source of new talent.

There are no minors, just a 10 player reserve list.

It's quite fun and fairly hard to advance. Since markets only change slowly over time, it's not easy to keep advancing. It's also pretty hard to retain players as they get better, so the lower level teams tend to act like independent minors developing talent for the top tier teams (although they don't sell players because the game doesn't have a great mechanism for that).

[jpeters1734]

have you considered an online league? It really is the best mode OOTP has to offer. I run a fictional league, you can find details in my signature

[Hrycaj]

I never seem to have a single project going myself. I’m in one online league that is great fun with a great bunch of players. To scratch my playing itch I started a 32 team fictional league set to 1985 stats and simmed out 100 years of history and took a club. I play out the games in that one.

For my world building itch I started a league back in 1840 (fully fictional) to recreate the game building out of the wards on NYC. I created most of the clubs, logos and uniforms for it. Each club has two teams because in those days most times they just played themselves. I’m up to 1849 and I have clubs from Boston, Baltimore and Pennsylvania in the mix. Clubs are starting to play each other now and again. Somewhere in the 1850’s I’ll have some of these clubs form an actual league to mirror what was done historically. This project is a slow go because of the heavy editing. I even go as far as doing period accurate naming of the players. I’ll probably write about it at some point and create a dynasty thread.

[Reed]

I came up with an idea this morning.
I play random and normally use 1984 as my stat year. I was trying to think of something that would use random rookies but be very different. Instead of just using 1984 every and if I want a wild adventure, use a 2 digit random number generator to determine my stat year. So one year it might be 1973 and the following year it might be 1916, etc..

[DaBears]

Originally Posted by Reed

I came up with an idea this morning.
I play random and normally use 1984 as my stat year. I was trying to think of something that would use random rookies but be very different. Instead of just using 1984 every and if I want a wild adventure, use a 2 digit random number generator to determine my stat year. So one year it might be 1973 and the following year it might be 1916, etc..

If you are good with only seeing each season in a silo, that's probably fine. Be aware, though, the game will struggle a bit to advance in a reasonable manner stats-wise when you are jumping all over history. Just a caution there.

I've thought about as a fun challenge to progress through seasons and choose a different team to manage each year, maybe the team that finished second or third in the division, and see if you can win.