How do you guys stay interested in Fictional Leagues?

[Jman0329]

Lot of great suggestions here, thanks everyone.

[curt]

I prefer fictional leagues but I do have historical rookies in my draft. The best of both worlds. I find it more in depth/involved to build my own dynasty.

[ihatenames]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

That's why I love starting out modern day, since I know the league at that point. And then as the fictional stars start to over-take, it's like I naturally have my history blend into a fictional league.

I like to use all real teams in a modern setting but all fictional playerss. I essentially create an alternate reality. The league feels familiar but the expectations of performances no longer stand in the way. Best of both worlds in my opinion.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by cavebutter

I've been fictional-only since I started playing OOTP. Used to be that I would start a dozen different universes, play them for a little while, get bored and create new ones. I would GM a team here and there, but mostly I was into it for the world building. I may go back to that one day, but...

For 16, I decided to try something different. I created a very small universe- one ML with 16 teams and simmed 10 years. At year 10, I created a player and entered him into the ammy draft. I started a dynasty report (since abandonned, sigh) where I was that player. I followed him very closely through the minors and eventually to the majors, writing dynasty reports from his perspective. In this way, I got to know my league inside and out while it continued to build history. Once my guy retired, I created a human manager with his name, and started managing my way up from the minors.

I was lucky in that it only took me three seasons to get a big league GM job - with one of the worst teams and worst owners I have seen in 11 versions of this game. I am now in season 32 of the league, and almost all of the current coaches in the league are guys that "I" played with or against. I am so immersed in my league that I don't want to take the time away from the game to update my dynasty.

It's a lot of work to create that level of immersion, especially when you consider that you can get that out of the box if you play MLB quickstart. But I love creating the universe that I play in and not having external preconceptions about which players are destined to do what. Besides, I refuse to live in a universe where Portland does not have a ML team.

Great stuff. I need to read that dynasty report. I saw it but didn't read it. Maybe you could bump it for old times sake?

[Rizon]

Originally Posted by thirdsaint

That's cool. I've been thinking about doing team season previews myself for a little bit now. Do you have any examples of what you do?

Couple pages of my Preview file.

[Honorable_Pawn]

Originally Posted by Jman0329

For sure I see the appeal in it, as you can build your own world with connections to fictional players.

However I struggle connected, as I love the aspect of taking real teams and building them to the top.

How do you all stay in interest with your leagues?

Well, take Jayden "Big Mouth" Brown for instance. He started off his career in Boston but he fell out of favor. He was a problem in their locker room so the story goes. They thought that his batting numbers were inflated due to the favorable hitting conditions at State Street Stadium and they didn't want to piss off the great Pat "The Bat" Diaz. So they traded him to Philadelphia for DH William Mumford.




Mumford was a relief pitcher that I had found in the free agent pool in 1962 who who had toiled in the minors without success.



The funny thing was that I was looking for a filler bat in my minor league system at the time. My scouts picked up some news that Mumford had a little pop in his bat but that he was totally raw and had not had any experience since college swinging the bat. I just needed a piece of meat to cover some injuries so I signed him to a minor league contract and he developed rapidly. Within a season he was on my big-league roster. I still remember his 1st big league home run as if it was yesterday. The local fans here in Philly loved his story. Philly citizens are suckers for Rocky Balboa stories.



After the trade Boston fans were glad to see Big Mouth Brown go and Philly fans were pissed off to see Mumford go. But Jayden "Big Mouth" Brown carried Philadelphia in the 1st half of the season in 1964. He was elected to his 1st All-Star game. He was instrumental in our championship run last year. Most importantly, he put the past behind him. Yeah, he has a big mouth but the locker room accepts him for who he is. They know how hard he works.

Mumford now, while he is still a fan favorite in Boston--and in Philadelphia to some extent--has not quite lived up to his storybook hype. Oh, he can hit, mind you. It's too bad, though, that all of his previous organizations tried to box him in as a pitcher. Who knows what he could have become.

Anyway, I'm rambling. These two players both have a chip on their shoulders. Brown wants to stick it in Boston's face and Mumford wants to prove to Philadelphia that they were right by giving him a shot in the big-leagues.

Once you know the back story this early July game means so much more. Both players get up for this match-up:

[NoOne]

i do fictional to avoid the switchover... but, i do real team names/cities/jerseys.

it is no different than a real-world league after all the real players retire. i do reset history and stats to zero when i start, but you could keep the real-world history, too.

you could keep the full minors, too. i do not do that. i use the default 5 or 6 tier minor league system from the initial game creation process. much less work on things i don't enjoy as much.

[Hammercraft]

Originally Posted by Hammercraft

3. Smash common strategy in the teeth, and do something eccentric, like focus on a roster with elite defensive skills and decent pitching

So I took my own advice. I took over an expansion team that was pretty new and had terrible talent up and down the franchise, and the owner was super cheap. I figured the only thing i could afford was solid defense, so I started trading any medium talent I had for elite defensive players, snapped up a few in free agency, grabbed a few cheap groundball pitchers, and hired a good smallball manager...

We won the world series over the Nats and got the Moneyball achievement. What a magical season... my hitting was pretty pathetic, the team offensive leader had a .736 OPS. But we led the league in stolen bases and defensive rating. And because my stupid owner wanted me to increase attendance (while both improving our minor league system and promoting drafted players at the same time) the fans got to see the games this season for $10 a ticket.

Sometimes I guess you just have to take a few chances? I got lucky, it worked out. One extra benefit was that because everyone sucked offensively and was great defensively, it didn't matter when players got hurt, i just plugged in someone else to fill his spot for a few weeks.

Oh well, it was fun. Imma go hug my trophy now.

[thirdsaint]

Originally Posted by Rizon

Couple pages of my Preview file.

Wow, I love those spreadsheets! And I thought I was crazy! Haha

So are all those stats on the one on the left from their previous year and then the numbers that are color coordinated signify their rating on a 1-10 system? How do you get the team rankings on the bottom left and then the Improvement number?

On the sheet on the right how do you get those numbers?

I don't suppose you could spare a blank template... lol

My spreadsheets are predominately for stat keeping although I'm particularly proud of my 'Best Players' for each franchise in which I keep track of the top 10. I also have a Draft History file where I keep track of all the first round picks of every season since I've found some players disappear somehow off the team's draft history log.

[CivicEvo]

As a data nerd, I'm officially in love with this thread.

I do post some of my spreadsheets in my dynasty on the board, but I've been working on quite a few using WAR as the big data connector.

I also do everything in Google Sheets so I can obsess over my fake league at work.

The other thing which I've started is an interactive map of players that I have profiled in my dynasty.. still working out the kinks but: Player Map

Either way, five years in (with super short seasons to start) and I love my league. I intentionally started small so that I can expand (and expand big) over time. Writing the dynasty report has helped too.

Bless OOTP

[Texasborn]

Whoo I not the only one who spends time putting my draft picks careers on a spreadsheet.

[thirdsaint]

Originally Posted by Texasborn

Whoo I not the only one who spends time putting my draft picks careers on a spreadsheet.

Lol, nope. The more I stick around these boards the more I come to breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not the only one obsessed with spreadsheets. That 'rabbit hole' thread really helped.

[Jman0329]

Yeah I should elaborate more. In my real world sims (Cubs in 2072, obviously at that point its a fictional league) I just have a weird thing with wanting the real teams and cities so I can relate.

Oh also, preordered '17, it's as the kids say, lit

[JaBurns]

Just reading this thread and poking around in the forum gives me ideas. Not only is OOTP amazing but so are the people!
Never thought that I would like fictional but started a league and am enjoying it throughly, cannot wait for 17.
The depth that you can go into is mind boggling and I have barely scratched the surface during my 8 months in Ootp16.
Thanks to everyone.

[RchW]

Originally Posted by thirdsaint

Lol, nope. The more I stick around these boards the more I come to breathe a sigh of relief that I'm not the only one obsessed with spreadsheets. That 'rabbit hole' thread really helped.

LOL you should see how 100+ seasons of LTM spreadsheets and csv files turned into xlsx files look on my HDD. I know they can be deleted but maybe I need " computer hoarders anonymous".

[Honorable_Pawn]

Another thing I'd suggest is to make sure you keep the scoring updates open and read every scoring play all the time. You'll also see when players move up the all-time rankings in various stats.

[Texasborn]

Speaking of spreadsheets, can some one show me one of there draft ones. All this talking about spreadsheets makes me want to redo my format. Thanks

[RchW]

nm

[Rizon]

Originally Posted by thirdsaint

Wow, I love those spreadsheets! And I thought I was crazy! Haha

So are all those stats on the one on the left from their previous year and then the numbers that are color coordinated signify their rating on a 1-10 system? How do you get the team rankings on the bottom left and then the Improvement number?

On the sheet on the right how do you get those numbers?

I don't suppose you could spare a blank template... lol

My spreadsheets are predominately for stat keeping although I'm particularly proud of my 'Best Players' for each franchise in which I keep track of the top 10. I also have a Draft History file where I keep track of all the first round picks of every season since I've found some players disappear somehow off the team's draft history log.

Your spreadsheets are so clean, they look great!

You are right with your questions. All rankings are fed from another sheet(s) in the workbook that calculates them. It's a gigantic workbook with many tabs, and is also fed by a separate file that houses modifiers I use for ratings. I use to have more spreadsheets, but had to give them up in the interest of time and wrist health, or OOTP began keeping track of them better than I could.

Draft file I no longer use
My team's yearly w/l records
Batter and pitcher rosters with rankings
Team schedule and scores

I can send you some of these, but it may be difficult to explain what I've done

[Habsfan18]

I love this forum.