What are your favorite pointers for creating a fictional league?

[Cruzatte]

My advice: do the early simming, then do the deleting.

I became bizarrely attached to my first--first EVER--fic league. By the time I found my way around the game, I'd played out a season where there were like 40 guys with OPS's around 1.200. There were some records that are gonna stand for a loooong time...

Also: in my third season, once I noticed that the inaugural draft was producing MVP 22-year-olds, I filtered to get all the 4.5/5 star guys under the age of 25, and just ratcheted back their birth years (mostly by 5 years). It made for some free agency anomalies, but it saved me from having untouchable career records, which is nice.

Anyway, it's taken a LOT of Commissioner-Mode ninja'ing to get things right.

EDIT: oh and also, I didn't notice that my league evolved to require only 2 years for arb... i.e., guys were getting Super-1 status. That mess took some cleaning up. The feature is permanently off

[bbmike]

Originally Posted by JimboJones

Does anyone use a schedule less than 154 games? I'm thinking about starting a small league (8-12 teams), and I'm thinking a 154 or 162 game schedule might be too long. Especially since I would prefer to play out my games, and a shorter schedule would allow me to get through more seasons.

I'm currently using a league with 8 teams and have scheduled 81 games.

[bbmike]

Originally Posted by Cruzatte

My advice: do the early simming, then do the deleting.

I became bizarrely attached to my first--first EVER--fic league. By the time I found my way around the game, I'd played out a season where there were like 40 guys with OPS's around 1.200. There were some records that are gonna stand for a loooong time...

Also: in my third season, once I noticed that the inaugural draft was producing MVP 22-year-olds, I filtered to get all the 4.5/5 star guys under the age of 25, and just ratcheted back their birth years (mostly by 5 years). It made for some free agency anomalies, but it saved me from having untouchable career records, which is nice.

Anyway, it's taken a LOT of Commissioner-Mode ninja'ing to get things right.

EDIT: oh and also, I didn't notice that my league evolved to require only 2 years for arb... i.e., guys were getting Super-1 status. That mess took some cleaning up. The feature is permanently off

I decided not to do any early simming for my current league. I kind of like the idea of the inaugural guys having records that will stand a long time. For now.

[tanstrom]

One thing I really like to do is to watch fictional leagues play out over time. Right now I've got a league that I just started up in 1880 with 16 teams and I'm essentially just seeing it develop. I bookmark All-Stars (who I select) and some 1st round picks, vote on post-season awards, and generally just watch the league develop. Honestly it's more fun that it should be.

It's a great way to both see a full history develop and follow a lot of great baseball stories. For example, I just saw Chicago's Dustin Simmers miss out on the Union League triple crown by two points in AVG (he'll have to settle for a .350/56/126 season) after Minnesota's Ronald "Farmer" Sugden closed the season out with a 37 game hitting streak to finish at .352.

As for settings I pretty much just use the standard modern settings, although I switched to a four man staff because I wanted to see some 300 game winners.

[themonk]

Originally Posted by JimboJones

Does anyone use a schedule less than 154 games? I'm thinking about starting a small league (8-12 teams), and I'm thinking a 154 or 162 game schedule might be too long. Especially since I would prefer to play out my games, and a shorter schedule would allow me to get through more seasons.

I'm currently playing a fictional league with 2 subleagues of 8 teams each with a 112-game schedule.

I've learned a lot just by reading about the fictional leagues created by other forum members. My present league is based on the Kalama Premier League of blueturf and Metro Leagues of DreamTeams ( I borrowed and experimented with a lot of ideas from these 2 leagues ).