The Living Rulebook VS House Rules

[McDeth]

I play Living rulebook rules plus the Experimental Kicking rules, although i am keen to get the On - Pitch spellcasters onto the Pitch.

Problem is with playing in the MBBL2 as well, it can get alittle confusing as there are so many rules such as jam, trip and stiff arm which i am still getting used to.

[NightDragon]

I like your point Mestari. It highlights the stupidity of Ageing. My main gripe though is that ageing has been brought in purely as a competition rule not as a fair and logical rule. My teams are living to me. I paint them for days, take hours thinking of names, sponsors etc. As far as I can see ageing has been put in as a rushed idea to fill a hole, which works, but kills the fun out of player development. Laters DD.

[longfang]

Some teams need aging more than others. Orc teams for example can become very stagnent in developing past a certain point. Ok you know the team intimately but it prevents you from developing new players very easily because you constantly field the same eleven players and your lesser developed players don't get fielded. There you are stuck with Block/Dodge, Stand Firm, blitzers and Tackling linemen, all protected by high armour and skills. Very rarely do you get someone killed, or crippled. Your team becomes stuck in it's ways and can't adapt to a new team or coach entering your league. A team with a higher player turn over can constantly build new players and develop ideas to counter tactics.These teams will hardly ever have a full roster, never have much cashand only have one or two super stars. But they always have more chance of developing a player who can be really special! Give me Aging and a team that will constantly evolve over a solid but stagnant team anyday. This game is as much about suprising your opponant as it is having your team tactics solidly in place.

[Mestari]

Personally, I'd much more prefer the players retiring instead of getting older.
It can be reasoned much better. Naturally, it kills the fun from the player development as well, but I'd rather see my 7th skill star retire than become a niggled, useless bastard. Then I could put him on a hall-o'-fame list or something.

I won't start coming up with new rules now, but as an idea, retiring could also be suited separately for each team (or group of teams):

Weak teams get less players retiring than the power teams:
Orc blitzers decide to become bosses of their tribes and go burning and looting, while halflings have no-where else to go. Now the halflings are screwed as bad by the aging as others, but players voluntarily retiring after getting new skills could be used to promote team equality. Maybe low-medium-high possibility player retiring tables.

I'll return to the subject on monday.

[GalakStarscraper]

No THANKS!

Listen guys I think I've played with just about every variant of team growth limitation there is with Blood Bowl.

The old methods had forced retirement. I watched leagues fall apart as a team's favorite stars where forced to leave the team. No thank you. The rules should NEVER force retirement EVER EVER EVER. That takes a key decision for a coach down to a dice roll and it is the very rare coach that will think this is a good idea. At least with aging if I fail I get a Niggle. In most leagues, experienced coaches LAUGH at a single Niggling Injury (at least I do). So the player misses 1 in 6 games ... big deal ... compare that with the old alternatives of the failed roll meaning the player left the team.

Anyone who hates aging or team capping is usually a power gamer. As long as the rest of the league are power gamers removing the aging rules as a house rule is a simple thing. I personally want to always have the say in who does and does not retire from my team after playing with aging for a while, I cannot agree with any team cap method that removes that ability for me.

Galak

[neoliminal]

Ideally aging would be a slow process that made a player worse incrementally over time. It would be subtle enough that you wouldn't notice the player getting worse, until one day you realized that player was more of a hinderance than a boon. This is the decision that NFL coaches face every season. Is the player still good enough, or should I put in another guy?

The BBRC spent months going over different systems. Oh, god, how I dread to even think of all of them.

John -

[DaFrenchCoach]

I wanted to begin a new league with pure 2K1 rules set, and when meeting my friends, we agreed that it should be great if we would be allowed to, ... So we will use some house rules, trying to keep them in a 2K1 rules set spirit (no beardie teams with sponsors, ...). We can consider by looking the whole story of this game, that house rules were the best and the weakest trait of it... During a long time, after all, interest in this game was kept with internet house rules... that said, everybody knows the game dicreases, and need an online computing conversion before falling into disgrace


About ageing... The idea is very good, but it's a fact it depends too much on the SPP... What I want to say is the idea of progressive dicrease of the stars (tribute to time) is very good, but let's imagine a player earning very quickly SPP, it's not really ageing... Of course the fact he becomes a star should make him less attentive to his body, and so he may loose some stats, or having a niggling injury (ies) ...

Maybe it's a silly remark, but why not a system based on 1/ SPP 2/ Matches played ? We could avoid cheating due to the fact the skills shouldn't be gained without rolling, so no time left without playing in order to avoid ageing... What do you think about this ?

Experience Ageing roll Number of matches
Rookie None None
Experienced One 2

...

I guess the bad think should be linking experience and number of matches...

[GalakStarscraper]

I play Living rulebook rules plus the Experimental Kicking rules, although i am keen to get the On - Pitch spellcasters onto the Pitch.

Problem is with playing in the MBBL2 as well, it can get alittle confusing as there are so many rules such as jam, trip and stiff arm which i am still getting used to.

Now come on McDeth ... only 3 players have Jam in the MBBL2 out of 80 teams, 1 has Trip Up, and about 6 have Stiff Arm. The game automates most of the skills. Yes, I understand that you need to be aware of the differences, but 90% of my matches in the MBBL2 don't really have any new rules to worry about during play. That said I'm not belittling the confusion either. If you are not used to checking for Stiff Arm and blitz someone that has the skill, its a nasty surprise, so I do understand.

Galak

[NightDragon]

Well I'm no power gamer matee. I run many teams just for the fun of playing them. My opposition to ageing is purely based on what I have said already. If your team suddenly becomes too rigid then it is up to you as coach to retire the more expendable players. I have done that recently with a number of teams. I have been running a Hall of Fame since the start of 3rd edition and only one player has ever made it past 251. Laters DD.

[sean newboy]

Galak it should be noted that McDeath is currently playing against 2 of 3 of the Jams and 1 of the 6 Stiff Arms.

[sean newboy]

Galak it should be noted that McDeath is currently playing against 2 of 3 of the Jams and 1 of the 6 Stiff Arms.

[GalakStarscraper]

Well I'm no power gamer matee. ... If your team suddenly becomes too rigid then it is up to you as coach to retire the more expendable players.

The problem is that you are the rare exception ... in a no aging system, most coaches just allow their teams to grow ... I've seen TR 500 teams in my life .... no other word for that type of team other than "wrong".

Since 90% of BB coaches don't have the self-discpline of you to retire players when the teams stagnate aging is needed for them. You DD are the exception unfortunately instead of the rule.

Galak

[Mestari]

Galak:
Having also tried out practically every team limitation rule available, I know the problem of forced retiring. Most coaches hate it. Many people don't like aging either, because of the same reason they hate forced retiring. I don't think they are necessarily power gamers (although they act like one) - they just don't like the idea of getting a good player crippled/retired because of a roll outside of a match. Getting a player killed seems more acceptable to them than a stupid roll after the game.

I agree that for most of the leagues aging is a better option, especially after the coaches are made to understand how insignificant a single niggling injury is.

However, as I said, personally I like the possibility of high-end players retiring out of their own free (2d6) will. I know it won't be popular, so I don't even think of suggesting it to become an official rule - this is the 'house rules'-forum, after all.

I was thinking about perhaps after a failed roll you'd roll perhaps a 1d8 to determine how many games the retiring player plans to play before finally retiring, so you can use his new skill roll for some time and plan ahead for his retirement. The retiring might also be used in conjunction with a bit-watered aging roll.

Also I think the point I mentioned yesterday that now halflings and orcs (for example) are screwed equally bad by aging (assuming they get the same amount of star player rolls)) - and retiring rules could be used to make the different teams a bit more equal. Halflings and goblins never retiring, while the stars of the more powerful teams would be sometimes tempted to change the sports carrieer for something else.

[NightDragon]

Just out of interest Galak, do have a TR max that you think teams shouldn't go past? It is fairly easy to notch up quite a number without having any massive stars on your team. DD.

[GalakStarscraper]

Somewhere under 300.

Galak