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House Rules - Preparing For Season Two
Gamethyme - Feb 12, 2004 - 03:23 PM
Post subject: Preparing For Season Two
I'm the commissioner of a small (Nine teams as of this writing) Blood Bowl league in Western Washington, and we just started discussion of how to handle Season Two, and making it fair and equitable for new teams.
One idea that hit quickly was that of forcing people to re-hire their rosters (but making their current players available - for a cost).
Player Rehiring:
Player rehire cost would be determined by taking the base player type, and adding the calculated cost of each skill or trait increase they have received over the course of play. Most skills cost 10k each. Some skills are 20k. Traits are 20k. Skills that are from an "unavailable" category (for which doubles must be rolled) cost extra (IIRC, it's 20k per, but it might be 20k for the first one and 10k for each additional
Example:
Diomedes (Ghoul) - 7/3/3/7 Block/Dodge/Side Step, 1 Completion, 5 TD's
Ghouls cost 70k.
Block is a 20k Skill.
Dodge is something Ghouls start with, so it's free.
Side Step is a 10k Skill.
Cost of Diomedes:
70k + 20k + 10k = 100k
IF I purchase him, then he appears on my roster as listed above (and the Cost column in the spreadsheet will be 70k - even though I paid 100k for him).
For Discussion:
(The quoted sections are thoughts on the points above pulled from discussion held on the League's web community)
1. Players with less than 6 SPP's (who have not earned their first skill roll) Quote:
I'm leaning towards letting coaches hire them as though they were new players -- ie No Additional Cost. For one, this gives incentive to coaches to have these players earn some SPP's. And it'll also balance the "I paid 160k for a player who only provides 13 bonus to my Team Rating" issue -- because you'll get more for your buck.
2. Discount Value of Lowered Stats and/or Niggling Injuries Quote:
The value of lowered stats shouldn't be too difficult to figure out by comparing similar player types (using Humans as the baseline average). But the value of a Niggling Injury ... that might be a bit more difficult to determine. Any ideas on how to proceed with this?
3. Players that aren't re-hired: What happens to them? Quote:
My first idea is this: Other teams who could hire them have opportunity to do so. This means that the reset has to have several phases:
1. Rehire Returning Players (Everyone does this over the course of a week or so)
2. Non-Hired Veteran Draft (In reverse order of how well a team did) - you need to pay their full rehire fee, however. So if Gahan decides not to rehire Conor mac Nessa (for ... say ... 120k), then Brad would have the opportunity to do so.
3. Fan Factor + Re-Rolls + Rookies
4. New Season Begins
Comments? Thoughts? Flames?
Zombie - Feb 12, 2004 - 04:21 PM
Post subject:
Best way is always to have two divisions, one for new teams and one for old teams. Have some of the most die hard coaches play a team in each and you should have enough to make it work.
Gamethyme - Feb 12, 2004 - 05:57 PM
Post subject:
Zombie wrote:
Best way is always to have two divisions, one for new teams and one for old teams. Have some of the most die hard coaches play a team in each and you should have enough to make it work.
See, we LIKE the idea of player retirement, etc. We have an Undead and a Khemri team - and once they pass their final aging rolls, there's almost no reason for them to ever retire any players. By forcing a Rehire (and draft for non-rehired players), we keep things interesting (and the Regeneration Ability doesn't become horrendously unbalancing like it tends to do in the long term).
And the new teams desperately want to challenge the established teams -- but after three or four 4-0 losses, they get discouraged and lose hope and drop out of the league. It's happened in all the past leagues I've been a part of. We had great players with good attitudes - nice people who were FUN to play ... but there was only so much they were willing to take on the field. Having the draft means that there are experienced players available (for a price) to the newer teams - because the more experienced teams won't be able to afford to hire back their entire roster.
Zombie - Feb 13, 2004 - 01:04 AM
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In the long term, regeneration is actually pretty bad. It's 4+ compared to the apothecary's 2+. In the short term, it's great as it keeps your players on the field. But it's not as good at keeping your players alive as a good old apothecary.
Just kill those players!
Tutenkharnage - Feb 13, 2004 - 06:49 AM
Post subject:
On average, how many games did each team play in Season One?
Have you considered improving your Handicap rules?
How much money does each returning team have on hand to repurchase players, re-rolls, etc.?
Have you seen the rules for The Crush posted on www.tbbf.org?
And finally: What sort of SPP rules are you using that you can talk about Undead and Khemri players clearing their 7th (and final) ageing roll??? 
-Chet
Gamethyme - Feb 13, 2004 - 08:08 AM
Post subject:
Tutenkharnage wrote:
On average, how many games did each team play in Season One?
We're not sure yet. This is several months off, and coaches schedule their own games.
Quote:
Have you considered improving your Handicap rules?
Yes. But handicaps are a tricky thing, as evidenced by the sheer number of handicap discussions here and elsewhere. And we have at least one team who hires lots of freebooters and star players (who he doesn't field) just to keep his team rating low so he can get those handicap rolls.
Quote:
How much money does each returning team have on hand to repurchase players, re-rolls, etc.?
Teams will start with 1,000,000 total PLUS bonuses earned from the End Of Season Tournament. But that bonus can only be spent on Fan Factor and/or Re-Rolls
Quote:
Have you seen the rules for The Crush posted on
www.tbbf.org?
Yes. The problem with The Crush is that teams that do well enough will be able to afford all of their players back. If every team in the League suddenly suffers from embezzlement or extortion or something of that nature, then even the top teams won't be able to hire their entire roster back. We're actually okay with this - the established teams WANT to be able to play the rookie teams on a somewhat equal basis.
Quote:
And finally: What sort of SPP rules are you using that you can talk about Undead and Khemri players clearing their 7th (and final) ageing roll???
In the LRB, you only get a maximum of 7 SPP rolls. You make aging rolls when you make an SPP roll. EVERYONE only gets 7 rolls, but the various undead teams will have roughly half the niggles and other injuries that other teams get. Meaning over the very long term, they are unbalancing.
Quote:
-Chet
Eric
Zombie - Feb 13, 2004 - 08:12 AM
Post subject:
Gamethyme wrote:
In the LRB, you only get a maximum of 7 SPP rolls. You make aging rolls when you make an SPP roll. EVERYONE only gets 7 rolls, but the various undead teams will have roughly half the niggles and other injuries that other teams get. Meaning over the very long term, they are unbalancing.
What he meant is that very few players ever make it to that point. You would have to play a khemri team for 10 years before one of your players got that far. And then he'd probably die the very next game!
Melifaxis - Feb 13, 2004 - 08:47 AM
Post subject:
If you had a lot of new coaches, you might want to consider a reset format. Give every coach a new TR100 team (having learned from the prior season they should compete a bit better), and then have the season I champ defend the title against the season II champ 
Gamethyme - Feb 24, 2004 - 12:24 PM
Post subject:
Melifaxis wrote:
If you had a lot of new coaches, you might want to consider a reset format. Give every coach a new TR100 team (having learned from the prior season they should compete a bit better), and then have the season I champ defend the title against the season II champ
The concern with that is that we (most of us involved) want to see our players progress and become stars. If all players just become freebooting star players at the end of the season, then some coaches may lose interest. One coach is even talking about painting player names on the back of their jerseys - and that's a lot of work to have just go away at the end of the season.
Melifaxis - Feb 24, 2004 - 01:21 PM
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After season II you could let each coach choose which of his two teams he/she wanted to use from there on in. It just gives the inexperienced coaches a chance to compete a little better from TR100 on the second go round. For existing coaches, it's a fun sidebar to try a new team. After that you can go back to status-quo
Gamethyme - Feb 24, 2004 - 01:27 PM
Post subject:
Melifaxis wrote:
After season II you could let each coach choose which of his two teams he/she wanted to use from there on in. It just gives the inexperienced coaches a chance to compete a little better from TR100 on the second go round. For existing coaches, it's a fun sidebar to try a new team. After that you can go back to status-quo
And then for Season Three? YABBL is (admittedly) in a growth cycle right now that can't last forever ... but I suspect we'll have regular (if slow) growth for a long time to come (combined with occasional attrition).
(YABBL, BTW, is Yet Another Blood Bowl League - the name of the league)
Zombie - Feb 24, 2004 - 08:04 PM
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By the time you get to season 3, you should have enough teams and coaches to have two separate league. One for TR 100 teams, and the other for experienced teams. All teams from the minor league are promoted to the big league at the end of the season.