Ideas to make fictional leagues unique

[Skywalker76]

What are you guys doing in order to make your fictional leagues unique other than relocating teams?

[Assos]

East Timor league! Try taking non-baseball rich nations and making a league with them.

[ShaneCarson]

I made a thread when starting my first ever fictional league and posted the following.

I've been playing since OOTP 2007 and am really diving into a fictional league for the first time. I generally play fictional teams, real players but am going wholly fictional this time around.

I have twelve teams(starting small), divided into two leagues. Did all the logos and unis for them, renamed all of their stadiums, and adjusted market sizes to my liking(as well as set up budgets based on population via the inaugural draft). I am playing out all of the games and am already a month in. I'm definitely enjoying it, getting to know some of the players.

I've also set up a system of random events for my own league evolution. It's essentially using Random.org to generate one random number a year, between 1 and 1,000 to determine a random event each year. This could be anything from:

•Expansion
•Owner Sells Tean
•Relocation(which carries a far bigger weight for five years if the event "owner sells team" happens)
•International Star Found(playing with scouting off, I'll insert a young, very projectable international player into the free agent pool)
•Off Field Incident(this event randomly chooses someone who either carries the "disliked" tag or has very low work ethic / intelligence combination and I'll write up a story of an incident. Most will result in suspension((length determined randomly)) and could deal with anything from player being arrested to any number of incidents I have set up)
•New Stadium(pretty self explanatory, can completely change the face of a team though who has built around their park factors)
•Early Retirement(Randomly chooses a player of mediocre to star caliber to retire early)
•Death(random event is dialed WAY down so it has a .5% chance of happening)

I just wrapped up my first season of playing every game out. I ended up choosing two random events a year and have added some since the post. I had one team's star catcher get busted for a DUI and suspended for 15 games.

The owner of the Minneapolis Navigators is putting the team up for sale after the first season of the league. They had finished in last place and he is up there in age. Their fan loyalty was rather low as well, which is what helped me choose them. I have picked owners from 4 random cities who are interested in purchasing the club. I'll randomly choose one. I am playing out the scenario of it taking some time for the sale to go through. Writing news articles with updates on the situation. Will bump up the percentage of relocation now for the next couple years since the team will be sold.

Writing news articles definitely helps. Keeps you involved and gives you something to go back and read.

Hope this helps!

[John]

That is a very interesting idea... could you post, or PM me, your random events chart? (If I think of any and add them, I'll send em on to you). thanks

[Skywalker76]

Originally Posted by John

That is a very interesting idea... could you post, or PM me, your random events chart? (If I think of any and add them, I'll send em on to you). thanks

Shane Can you pm me or post me as well and also can you send the link of the thread? I searched but could not find it...

Thanks!

[Peregrine]

Using other countries is a great (and easy) thing to do - I an running a World Baseball League for 90 years now where the teams are all over the world and players can come from almost every nation. Creating your own country to set the league in is also doable but takes a little work in terms of editing the files.

I also enjoy having multiple major leagues in the same universe - you can have a bigger league along with a small upstart, or two equals. For a while I was running a "mirror league." Two separate leagues, each with teams in the same city. After a while I would compare how they were doing against each other and start playing a team that was really weak.

Lots of ideas out there. I love the random event one though!

[akw4572]

Originally Posted by ShaneCarson

I made a thread when starting my first ever fictional league and posted the following.



I just wrapped up my first season of playing every game out. I ended up choosing two random events a year and have added some since the post. I had one team's star catcher get busted for a DUI and suspended for 15 games.

The owner of the Minneapolis Navigators is putting the team up for sale after the first season of the league. They had finished in last place and he is up there in age. Their fan loyalty was rather low as well, which is what helped me choose them. I have picked owners from 4 random cities who are interested in purchasing the club. I'll randomly choose one. I am playing out the scenario of it taking some time for the sale to go through. Writing news articles with updates on the situation. Will bump up the percentage of relocation now for the next couple years since the team will be sold.

Writing news articles definitely helps. Keeps you involved and gives you something to go back and read.

Hope this helps!

I'd love to get a copy of that too!

[stevebydac]

Planning out the following now:

• fictional nation of 50M based mostly on two big islands - Earth had a catastrophic asteroid hit in the 1600s that raised seas, wiped out continents
• over time much of the remnants of population reached these islands - the rest of the world is just scattered barbarians now
• flight was never invented, so the "new" civilization hasn't really spread out from here yet
• 14 team top league
• 20 team lower league, 10 per island
• just 26 games per year to make each game extremely important, and this also helps the AI against me as I can't judge players as well & can have cold streaks that will kill my season
• promotion/relegation of one team per year - the winner of the lower league's championship series moves up
• top league will have 6 uber-teams with higher payrolls
• I'll sim 60 years to build history
• teams are mostly the usual city-based types, but there is also a navy team, island defense team and 4 religious-based teams

[Chicagofan76]

My ABF league overall may not be interesting to all. but for each yrs Ammy draft i bring in 1 former White Sox player, 1 former MLB player (not always a HOF er) 1 player from my EBL HOF.

[Charlie Hough]

Please add me to the list of folks requesting a copy of the random events chart, if you're comfortable with sharing it of course.

[Chicagofan76]

me 2

[ShaneCarson]

Hey guys. Just checking the boards for the first time in a couple days. I'm at work now but I'll post the chart when I am home next. I plan on trying to put together an Excel spreadsheet as well that gives you a random event when you open it, using their random function.

[Dreifort]

Originally Posted by stevebydac

Planning out the following now:

• fictional nation of 50M based mostly on two big islands - Earth had a catastrophic asteroid hit in the 1600s that raised seas, wiped out continents
• over time much of the remnants of population reached these islands - the rest of the world is just scattered barbarians now
• flight was never invented, so the "new" civilization hasn't really spread out from here yet
• 14 team top league
• 20 team lower league, 10 per island
• just 26 games per year to make each game extremely important, and this also helps the AI against me as I can't judge players as well & can have cold streaks that will kill my season
• promotion/relegation of one team per year - the winner of the lower league's championship series moves up
• top league will have 6 uber-teams with higher payrolls
• I'll sim 60 years to build history
• teams are mostly the usual city-based types, but there is also a navy team, island defense team and 4 religious-based teams

I am currently working on a base model platform for a fictional country (off the east coast of America) for my fictional historical league. I have the country all established with cities and modern day populations (OOTP does not grow cities over time).

My goal is to recreate MLB along the same time-line, but in a different country. Basically recreate baseball, but with new Babe Ruths, new Christy Mathewsons, ets... new players that pioneer baseball. Of course along with OOTP's help, I will allow the league to evolve just like IRL MLB.

I am starting out with 12 teams and one 12 team minor league system. To be more realistic, I should delete the minor lg system and use an independant 12 team league that "shares" players with MLB teams (as such orig minor leagues did).

It's taking most of my little free time, but I am testing over and over again the intial years from 1897 to 1900. I plan to establish players these years and have the final league version kick off in year 1901.

The biggest problems with creating a ficticious country is you have to design everything for 2010 (or the final years you think your lg will evolve to). So in 1897 if your country only has 26 cities, but in 2010 it will have 190...you have to start with 190 cities...etc.

Below is a sample of my country map. Population in 2010 is around 50 million (basically the same population size as modern England).

[Antonin]

The idea of having a league in a fictional country sounds great!

I have one Global League and a Ghanaian League. I'm getting ready to set up an African League.

My main league, though, is my Summer League, consisting of various US cities.

[Chicagofan76]

May have mentioned it before but I have my Endor Baseball League which I have played since TLR3 and had it on here but not with teh actual cities.
Starts off in 2003 with 4 teams last time I played it on HH2k3 i was at 2038 with 30 teams.. I am gonna recreate it on OOTP the way it should be it will go head to head vs semi historical MLB from 2003 on...many of MLB stars such as Wilbur Duggleby (some know him) plays for the Endor City Capitals 2015-16, Anderson Indians 2017 (greatest team EVER! on paper ) Sony Storm 2026-27, MGR Cooperstown Quest 2033-2038. He legitimizes the league as a force in 2015.
But for those Star Wars fan out there this is a great league and if i can condense a quickstart I will offer it after the 2040 season...I have put this on hold for the past 4 months, since I have had a ball playing my ABF league and my 1871-2010 league, But I had several ppl make logo's and uniforms for the EBL I need to make sure i didnt have them do it for no reason.
I have to still put in about 200 more cities into the cities.txt and all 100 NCAA EBL schools, takes forever. Wish i could just add them in game would make life so much simpler

[Scott Vibert]

Fictional Country/Cities - Alternative History, use the alternate database to bring in players at age 18. Turn on options for expansion/relocation by the game and minors.

Promotion-Relegation leagues with added "cup" competition.

Alternative countries, start the league by filling with AA level players and let the league mature as better players are drafted and slowly take over.

[Tram2Whitaker]

I tried building a 12 team league, divided by geographical location, that plays strictly from memorial day to labor day (playoffs take the season to the first day of fall).... The first problem, is I tried to force it to start on Monday, thinking it would always start on the last Monday in May - WRONG! season 2 started on June 6, and so on, so I had to push opening day back by a week; but then you get the week before memorial day, 4 times every 28 years.

Each team has 2 A level teams, 2 AA level teams, and I started with only one AAA system, since I figured all the bums would've been weeded out at this point; but I had to install another AAA league, since a lot of the players were requiring more development. One set of minor league systems would play simultaneously with the major league squad (These were the secondary cities that really have major league teams, but not in my league, such as Cleveland and Kansas City) The other set of minor leagues would play between the day after Thanksgiving (again problems with the force of starting on a certain weekday) These would go until March, with the playoffs ending between the 20th and 25th. They also are played in warmer clients, such as a league with a subleague located entirely in Florida, and a subleague located entirely in Arizona, a league with one division entirely in Central America, and the other in South America, and the AAA league located in Mexico (only) and the Caribbean.

The problem I had with the alternating schedules, is that I was the only one updating my roster (i.e. I had 120 players at 3 levels of minor league and the majors, other teams had to sign up 210 players, because they weren't alternating teams). Coincidentally, I always dominate the winter leagues, because all the other teams are too watered down.

After 7 seasons, I've become bored with it, because even though I created it to be dynamically evolving, it hasn't evolved one bit. The talent pool hasn't improved that much since inception either. I'm still playing with the same guys from the inagural draft, and they're getting real old.

[stevebydac]

Originally Posted by Scott Vibert

Promotion-Relegation leagues with added "cup" competition.

Scott how are you scheduling the cup games? I'm contemplating that. Parallel to the season, or are they in spring training? If ST, we can't customize the ST schedule, right?

I'd love to hear your league structure/details someday if you have the time. Thanks.

[Scott Vibert]

I don't play ST games.
I use a manual schedule and put a gap in the middle, for the local cup competitions, manually schedule those games (typically do 8-team double elimination tourney's for these).

Since they are the only exhibition games there, the stats are easy enough to see.

I arrange the different leagues as divisions in one master league, then for the postseason I put all 64 teams in the playoffs and that becomes the major cup competition (think FA Cup), those stats are saved as the playoff stats.

[Cooleyvol]

Originally Posted by Scott Vibert

Promotion-Relegation leagues with added "cup" competition.

Originally Posted by stevebydac

Scott how are you scheduling the cup games? I'm contemplating that. Parallel to the season, or are they in spring training? If ST, we can't customize the ST schedule, right?

I'd love to hear your league structure/details someday if you have the time. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Scott Vibert

I don't play ST games.
I use a manual schedule and put a gap in the middle, for the local cup competitions, manually schedule those games (typically do 8-team double elimination tourney's for these).

Since they are the only exhibition games there, the stats are easy enough to see.

I arrange the different leagues as divisions in one master league, then for the postseason I put all 64 teams in the playoffs and that becomes the major cup competition (think FA Cup), those stats are saved as the playoff stats.

British Baseball Society is an online league with this setup.

We have three different 'tiers' and have a cup involving each tier and then a league wide cup. Both are run during gaps in our season of fixtures. Each 'series' is worth points to the winners and losers (if they win one of the first two games).

There's a 'fixtures' link on the site that will popup our schedule showing how I have it all scheduled.

Our preseason has three double-elimination tournaments of 8 teams. If you turn ST off, then you can schedule games during ST times of the calendar.


I schedule the preseason stuff as exhibitions and the in season cup games as playoff games so that we can find cup stats very easily.