Maybe the first clue would have been that the next par opened with the word "seriously."Darkson wrote:That's already a rule - you can retire a player at any time.
If you want to force players to retire, there are ways to do this. We used to play BB with "offseason events" that happen between the seasons: contract disputes, offseason injuries and improvement, etc. It worked okay, but there were a few things we learned about balancing it out. You can't just kill a player, except of course on the field. There has to be some choice, trade-off, reward, etc. And it has to be really, really fluffy. Here are a few ideas.
1) Collegiate BB. When you form a team, roll 1d3-1 for each player to see how many seasons he's accumulated. When you hire a player à la carte, he has accumulated 0 seasons to date. If you play several short seasons, you can give the player that many MVPs or something. Once a player's played four seasons, he retires, no matter how many SPP he has. If you play in a season-free format, then instead set some number like 50-1d20 games or something like that (not a flat number or a bell-curve, as you don't want everyone to be up at once), with 50 (or whatever) being the default for a rookie hired out of winnings.
2) Offseason Events. Obviously, this doesn't work in straight-perpetual, but if you play perpetual with some sort of season distinction then it might. At the end of each season, roll 2d6 for each player to determine what, if any, kind of offseason event happens to the player.
Quick, off-the-head table:
2: The player announces his retirement if he is a star, or is kicked off the team for off-field behavior (stars can get away with anything). The team saves (gains) his base cost, plus 10,000 gold for each improvement the player had, in voided obligations. If he had 51 or more SPP, he is a Hall of Fame player, and the team gains +1 Fan Factor.
3: The player is seriously injured in the offseason, or just declines to age. Roll 1d6+50 on the Casualty Table and apply the result to the player. He doesn't miss any games.
4: The player is caught using performance-enhancing spells and is suspended by the league for the first 1d3 matches of the next season.
5-9: The player has an uneventful offseason.
10: The player gets in a contract dispute with his team, and the team must pay his TV add in Treasury, or cut the player. If the team does not have enough money, it may give the player all its Treasury, then all its Winnings until it can pay the sum. The player will not play until he has been paid in full.
11: The player has a bumper offseason and makes great strides forward, gaining a free MVP award.
12: The player is noticed by the public for his good deeds and charity, or maybe just because he's a great tipper! If he has 50 or fewer SPP, he gains an MVP. If he has 51 or more, the team gains a Fan Factor instead!
3) Every time a player earns a multiple of 100 SPP, roll 1d6. If the result is equal to or less than 1/100 the player's SPP, he retires if he already has more than one permanent injury (niggle or stat loss), or if not suffers a Cas result of 1d6+50 (the missed game is a well-deserved week off). Note that he can't lose AG or ST. In fact, rather than making it a Cas result, you can make it a niggle. This helps balance niggles too, as IME one NI is no biggie but two is a death sentence.
... but the original problem (?) , as far back as 3rd edition, was a gw classic: power creep! Little and big Timmys were whining, "no one wants to play my uber team 
" So, misguided or not, we got rules so we could play a significant portion of our team, instead of having to shelve it....
