Something a Bit Differentt: a pre-professional, 1860s Quickstart

[tm1681]

Hello everyone!

I am the author of this thiread over in the Historical/Fictional Simulations forum, and after a few people expressed interest in a Quickstart i've made one.

For those unfamiliar, back during the initial months of Covid in 2020 my wife gave birth, and there were complications to both - wife was okay in a few weeks but the newborn spat up everything she ate for about six months. That meant I got overnight duty.

During that time I came up with an idea for a fictional league that would mirror the development of the National Association of Base Ball Players, starting in 1857, then move on to a split between amateur & professional baseball, and go from there.

The first version of that universe lasted until about 1903 until there some old problems made it unwieldy for me to continue, so the linked thread details version two.

The Quickstart begins on the first day of the 1864 offseason, with the NBBO just having finished its eighth season of play. Its after season eight where players start to change teams more often - I set Eight Years as an arbitratry number for Free Agency - to simulate the rise of under the table cash payments in baseball as it became more popular.

The kings of this version of base ball are St. John's B.C, who just won the NBBO's championship, the Tucker-Wheaton Cup, for the 4th time in its 8th year of existence, having gone 9-1 in the playoffs.

While the NBBO is meant as an analog for the real-life National Association of Base Ball Players, there are many more teams. Here are the 48 active teams in the game world:




















The 48 fictional teams are a mix of ones I made up, one that existed at the time but don't anymore, and ones that existed at the time and have come back as teams in Vintage Baseball revival leagues.

Here is a link to a zip file of the Quickstart in the Public folder of my OneDrive. Unpacked it runs about 300mb, but that's because I have all of the graphics (caps, etc) included.

Because I'm running a game where the date is pre-1871, there are some quirks:

• You will either need to change the "Historical Year" back to 1871 at the start of each preseason, or turn off all of the automatic adjustments & imports in League Settins -> Options
  
  
• I tried a test running the league with 1-man or 2-man pitching rotations and no relievers, which would have been the norm at the time, and the game engine didn't seem to like that for a fictional league instead of a historical re-sim. So, teams have two starters & two relievers.
  
  
• Baseball beyond small stipends was considered amateur then, but under the table payments were well-known. I've created custom financial settings to try to reflect this.
  
  
• I changed the playoff format from league playoffs and a final to a Round Robin format after teams in the weaker divisions kept hogging #1 seeds. However, I didn't realize that if two teams tie at the top of a Round Robin the engine just picks a winner - couldn't figure out what tiebreaker it used and I went back and manually schedule a one-game playoff to rectify the issue. So, in the Quickstart the playoff final, the Tucker-Wheaton Cup, is a Round Robin of six teams playing each other twice for a total of ten games, with the top-two teams taking part in a one-game playoff to determine the champion so one isn't seemingly given at random.
  
  
• There is an All-Star game. It's covered in the story thread, but there was a real-life All-Star game that took place in about 1858 so I decided to make that canon here.
  
  
• There is one real-life star in the current version of the game universe: Jim Creighton. That is because after a poster asked if I'd consider adding 1850s-60s stars and I decided to go all-fictional, the Excelsior club made the independent scouting discovery of a young pitcher in the winter of 1859-60, which oddly was when the real-life Excelsior club discovered the real-life Jim Creighton. I decided there were too many coincidences to pass up.

There is a custom database in this universe, but as far as I know it should work. I imported the game from OOTP 24 without copying my modified database files over, and everything regarding player creation works as it had been.

Hopefully everything works for any of you who decided to download this Quickstar.

[thehef]

Originally Posted by tm1681

Because I'm running a game where the date is pre-1871, there are some quirks:
[LIST][*]You will either need to change the "Historical Year" back to 1871 at the start of each preseason, or turn off all of the automatic adjustments & imports in League Settins -> OptionsThere is a custom database in this universe, but as far as I know it should work. I imported the game from OOTP 24 without copying my modified database files over, and everything regarding player creation works as it had been.

I rarely even dabble in fictional and was hoping someone with more fictionals experience would ask a similar question more intelligently than I But I've very curious about the nuts and bolts of how you start with 1860, what settings are used initially, what settings need to change each year, and - if you continually use 1871 as you describe above - how the league history looks after a few years... and wondering about the details of your modified database files...

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by thehef

I rarely even dabble in fictional and was hoping someone with more fictionals experience would ask a similar question more intelligently than I But I've very curious about the nuts and bolts of how you start with 1860, what settings are used initially, what settings need to change each year, and - if you continually use 1871 as you describe above - how the league history looks after a few years... and wondering about the details of your modified database files...

Basically I set the league to use 1871 Player Creation Modifiers, and I used the 1871 statistical data set and auto-calc with some tweaks when setting up this version of the universe. Then, when I imported into OOTP 25 the engine turned the statistical output of the previous season of the league into the statistical base for auto-calc.

Aside from that, I did things like Arbitration after a year, Free Agency after eight, minimum salary being about $50 and superstars making about $500.

While screwing around during one of the endless overnight with the newborn, I figured out that if I modified the database enough within the game itself via "Explore World" -> "Nation Editor", I could create a situation where the international players who enter the game somewhat mirrored the ancestry/immigration patterns of the 1800s United States, meaning new players from England/Scotland/Germany/etc.

[willboat75]

I was wondering when this would be posted as a quickstart! I think the idea for the league is awesome, and your writing has been fun to follow. I might wait a few more decades before I'd dive in myself, though.

[Torito_Mancha]

I've started playing this quickstart and its excellent! Amazing work.

Quick question, does every team always stay healthy financially with the settings as is? I was thinking of dropping the attendance baseline to around 800 so smaller markets have a bigger challenge.

[Ctrane]

I love the logos you’ve created for this world. Very evocative of that time period. Nice work!

[Ty Cobb]

Have only looked at these logos, not the QS...but these are some genuinely nice logos!

[Lord PichuPal]

I am curious about what happens once you get further along, like into the years where pro baseball is more widely accepted. Do you add any teams or different leagues to mirror that? It sounds really cool to experience this

After digging around further I realized you did previously have all the future leagues up to 1905 created and posted. So I guess I can go off that as a basis for a timeline to follow. The consistency of having all the logos and uniforms matching is important, and I love the fictional universe stuff.