Fictional League

[Romagoth]

So I am thinking about starting a fictional league for something different. I was wondering what types of strategies people are using when creating a fictional league, such as:

• Cities
• Team names
• Finances
• League size (i.e., how many divisions, etc.)
• DH in both leagues, not at all, or like real life
• Length of season (162 games or less)
• Free Agency settings (i.e., arbitration, service time, etc.)

I'm just looking for ideas based upon what the rest of you are using so I can have a unique experience. What I'm finding right now is that when I create a fictional league it ends up being eerily similar to the real life MLB....ugh.

[NoOne]

well, if that what you want, don't think it's wrong.

any ficitonal league -- sim 20, preferably ~25-30years, by starting that many years "early." erase entire league history at intended starting date. you can delete retired players and purge db if you want to be very thurough. then, make a backup -- if still ~500mb or larger, delete contents of that backup directory, and click backup again, just the normal "backup" as before-- only the bare minimum + incremental stuff will be copied over -- you will need to reload logos and such if oyu do this last part, but it will lop off hundreds of MB. after that, it's just like a new league and non seed players -- all fictionally produced and alotted by the simulation. (BIG difference in distribution of talent... things will be "normal" after this point. easier to manipulate / test / understand). make a template now if oyu want to avoid that 30-year process in future, but you start with those players each time.

i change what i don't like about RL baseball... one example - tv nonsense affecting schedule and other things. i also don't want bad ideas that are 100 years old sticking around

i've yet to do it, but at some point i'll start a league in 1871 with fictional players and let it run to present day -- auto-importing historical LTM/LT so that it somehwat follows the real world era changes and such, or make my own. i do like starting fresh, but a 100+ year history is really coold, too.

anyway, do as you want... i re-do the entire financial environment, i make parks neutral, i tailor their capacity to market size etc etc... balanced schedules within each 10-team division to eliminate as much off-field randomness as possible relative to making the playoffs. in the past i did 40T so as to have 2 subleagues and an ASG, but lately i just chop the ASG out and do 30T 1 sub-league.

i re-use RL team names for the most part, but have have replaced 2 teams out of 30 in my most recent leagues i've created. indianapolis hoosiers and las vegas knights replaced AZ and MIL. bit of a pain re-working the MiL system, but i can make a template during game creation to avoid that mess if i need to restart, in addition to backups.

But, i want an MLB-like feel. my LTM/LT may not always reflect a steroid era, but they do reflect some idealized version of the mlb.

if you do anything like re-structuring or re-using things etc.. make use of a spreadsheet to keep track of stuff. the pic just shows league structure,market sizes with averages for division and league-wide.

the payroll column requires a bit of translation - think thats 30m less than average revenue for that market size or thereabouts. used for inaugural draft payrolls etc... the LT sheet (*oops can't see it, but it's the 2nd worksheet) maintains a set of default mil totals and also the ones i use for the majors. mostly formulas, so that when i change hits or doubles the avg/obp/slugging/babip stuff all changes in tune. at this point i don't often change my league totals.

everything is actually calculated from market size, but you can just type it in too... if you use formulas as much as possible,it's more automated and re-useable, though.

guess who controls a 10mkt size in the east? the game will likely boost somethign in the east in short order. it stays pretty averaged out over time. a 5-6 market size average is a good goal if you try to dabble inthat. revenues wil be different based on settings - e.g. i don't let owner get invovled, and nat'l media is 50M not 40M. rest default with 250m cap / 7 year max terms. heavy 100% tax over 150% average payroll.

even though it looks like certain teams should dominate, the 3+ market sizes do just fine. 250m cap helps. they can get to 185m at least. shows how key an AI GM strategy is. i ran WAS as an 8, and they were the most dominant in teh setup below (swapped 8&9 with indinapolis).

it contains all the mil teams, but i cropped that off dince it's just redundant. i definitely recommend more than the default R-sa-a-aa-aaa fictional mil system. 2-3R, even 2 A's is a good idea. if you do 2 a's have at least 3rookie and a short a... or 4 rookies and optional short a. probably don't want multiple AA or AAA

[BBGiovanni]

Think about some parameters. I have ideas for different leagues for different reasons. Often when I travel internationally I think about what the country's (Italy, Australia, etc) league might look like and that changes how I set up the US major league.

Also, think about size. Do you want a huge league? A small league? or a medium league? My favorite fictional leagues are: 32 teams in four generally regional divisions, or a giant 64-80 team league that I'm evolving out gradually over time. 80 teams mean places as small as Greensboro NC have and Fresno have major league teams (which I like for various reasons). That big league is part of a giant world with multiple international leagues. The whole thing was an outgrowth of designing a league of just 2 8-team divisions. I liked them so much they ended up being the basis of the larger setup.

Then think about whether you want a lot of minors or a few. I like just four levels to limit the amount of washout management I have to do. You might want college feeders, or even no minors at all. Anyway, think through that and try to come up with a reason things work that way. Maybe baseball was never as popular as it was when there were hundreds of minor league teams.

I really like to use Arbitron (now Nielsen) radio market sizes to decide where teams would exist and how big they would be. They list NY as a 15M person market, so I (arbitrarily) decided that 5M was the population point at which a place could support more than 1 team. That put 3 teams in NY, 2 each in LA and Chicago, and the rest with one team each.

You could do the same thing with Metropolitan Stats areas or any of a number of wikipedia population lists (i.e. by state, city limits population only, etc.).

Anyway, my basic advice is: think about the sort of game you would like to play (small, big, lots of international players, college teams, etc) and then work from that to figure out how your world evolved differently than MLB.

[Leo_The_Lip]

I'm going with my latest variation of my Old Dominion Association which is 16 teams based in Virginia with 8 in the Chesapeake Bay League and 8 in the Shenandoah Valley League. My latest modifications were to start all teams at 'average' in market size and fan interest so there were equal footings. That has changed over time, however it is still relatively even.

Secondly, I always had an issue with the names of minor league teams since the ODA is like a very low level minor league--except it is not. Then I got an idea to make the minor leagues 'Industrial' 'Commercial' '
Retail' and 'Automotive'. That way teams have names like 'Elite Tailors', 'Byrd Field Aircraft', and 'Nash Ramblers'. I don't make uniforms because I don't generate photos for the minors. I greatly enjoyed making all the logos, however.

I'm started in 1946 (post-war) and am in 1967. I took over the Richmond Gems who had won the first three seasons and then nosed dived into decrepitude. I hope to have their first winning season in 9 years. The Gems play in Ginter Park named after original owner Lewis Ginter who made his fortune as the first manufacturer of cigarettes, Gems. Previously all ciggies were hand-rolled by women. He later sold the Gems name and they became Lucky Strikes in their familiar red and green packaging. The team's colors were picked off images of the pre-WWII packages. During WWII the packaging had to become white as 'Lucky Strike Goes to War'.

In any event, I'm happy with this iteration of the league.

[chickennoodle77]

Originally Posted by Romagoth

I'm just looking for ideas based upon what the rest of you are using so I can have a unique experience. What I'm finding right now is that when I create a fictional league it ends up being eerily similar to the real life MLB....ugh.

I used to do the same until I decided to start my current fictional league. Would routinely setup leagues in which I would play as the Cubs, but would modify the MLB by adding a few expansion teams and restructuring things a bit (i.e. adding Montreal, Havana, Mexico City, San Antonio). Always found I would get bored after a handful of seasons as I would attach the real life history to the teams, even if I deleted its prior history.

To get away from this I built my own universe from scratch. Created own map (from some online map making program), developed my own world.dat file with nations, fictitious cities, regions, etc. Did not include any major world cities but have one country comprised of communities around where I live and a second of Lego Ninjago locations for my son to enjoy. Then I created three separate major leagues with minors (AAA, AA, Ax2), HS and College feeders, and a couple independent leagues. Went through and setup team names and logos for every single team. Each ML has same setup with 4 divisions with 7 teams per and 162 game schedule. I wanted to leagues to be consistent so I could compare records over time and had plans to one day combine three leagues in a Pro/Reg format (haven't done so yet). I took control of one team in one of the major leagues and watch each game in either 3D or webcast mode.

I've found myself enjoying the league much more as I know the inner workings of its setup and can watch my team perform. Players have no preconceived name recognition and neither do teams/cities. I've already grown a distaste towards a couple of clubs who have had my number. Not sure if this method works for you or others, but thus far I've found it to be more enjoyable and help with achieving a longer sim life by keeping my interest.

[DreamTeams]

Fictional is a fantastic way to go. I started my fictional Metro Leagues what seems like moons ago and still enjoy it. You can visit my league page by clicking the link in my sig. and visiting the "About' page for more ideas.

[amwendwa]

Dream Teams.. your Metro Leagues is amazing. I went into your link there and that gave me some great ideas for running my fictional league. Thanks.

[slugger922cubs]

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Often when I travel internationally I think about what the country's (Italy, Australia, etc) league might look like...

I highy suggest trying a foriegn country this gives me the deepest immersion value. My favorite league ever is an Australian League with the sport spread all over Oceania and the Commonwealth. Ive set this up on many occasions. Boy can those Samoans rake. UK, Germany, Australia, Brazil all good calls. Maybe explore what baseball may have looked like had it started on the west coast instead.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Also, think about size. Do you want a huge league? A small league? or a medium league? ....

I personally feel like I get better immersion value out of a small league where i can watch players move around easier. 12-16 and a couple levels of minors for me. But some people do enjoy the mega leagues with hundreds of teams and simulating huge worlds.

Originally Posted by BBGiovanni

Then think about whether you want a lot of minors or a few. I like just four levels to limit the amount of washout management I have to do. You might want college feeders, or even no minors at all. Anyway, think through that and try to come up with a reason things work that way. Maybe baseball was never as popular as it was when there were hundreds of minor league teams.

This is another big one that depends on preference. Don't feel like you have to imitate MLB. Choose where your players come from and how they develop. For Example, my league in Australia features an NHL like junior League system instead of colleges and high schools. I draft players at 19 or 20 most top prospects make an impact in only a couple years. Some will toil and come up at 27 for a few cups of coffee otherwise spending whole careers as AAA players. Others may very much enjoy the experience of slowly moving players up the ladder like MLB and opt for deep minor leagues.