mister__joshua
Joined: Jun 20, 2007
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As a player I've always enjoyed the idea of amateur Blood Bowl. The grass-roots side of the game. It's why I got involved in BB7s, and why I ran Grind for several seasons. The idea appeals to me.
With the advent of Custom Rulesets and Rosters I have an idea to bring amateur styled blood bowl to the masses, without all the complicated house-rules and self regulation. The idea itself is quite grand, but I'll start with the basics.
To emulate grass-roots amateur blood bowl there are 2 main things that I considered:
- On the pitch the teams and players should feel worse than regular BB.
- Teambuilding should be a struggle against growing costs and injuries.
To achieve this I intend to use a combination of a single custom roster, skill access, skill development, and spiralling expenses. There is a lot of fluff and background to the league (based on the merchants and mercenaries of Tilea) but for now I'll keep this strictly mechanical.
The Rules & Roster
The roster I've created to achieve this can be seen here. There are a few key things about it that aren't immediately obvious.
1) All the player cost 145k+ and a roster must be 12 players. This means that a starting team has a TV of 1740 at the minimum, meaning they'll hit Spiralling Expenses as soon as their FF increases or they skill a player. Teams have 1800k to spend on players. This is important as battling against increasing expenses is hard, making replacing injuries or buying improved positional players is tough.
2) Teams can't begin with a re-roll. Priced at 100k (200 to buy after creation) obtaining re-rolls will be hard. They will also add a lot to your TV for expenses purposes.
3) Skill access is changed, and not all players get all access on doubles. This will result in the different player types serving different rolls on the team, and will see a reduction in some skills. Doubles become more valuable. Each player type only has access to 1 skill category for normal rolls and a second one for doubles.
4) Skill progression is slowed. Players will need to acquire more SPPs to reach each new level than before. This will result in less skilled teams taking the field.
How this works out will require some testing, but I'm quite confident it'll prove tough, fun and engaging.
The Association
Now, for the next part I didn't want to run this Amateur Blood Bowl as a League, but rather as a whole Association. What I mean by that is that it's almost a separate game, a local variant of Blood Bowl (like Gaelic Football or Aussie rules) and the ruleset/roster will determine all of the teams in the association. Within the association there can then be separate leagues, tournaments etc. running at various times, and with different unique rules. Grind as a league would switch over to be part of this (which is a 8-a-side variant) but I'd also like there to be 11-a-side leagues and different people running the different tournaments, if it proved popular.
Until the Custom Rosters are available I'll hold off recruiting, but I wanted to get the idea out there for some feedback, and to see if anyone wanted to run some numbers on it. I have roughly, but it's always good to get a second opinion.
Cheers
Josh |
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jdm
Joined: Nov 30, 2011
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 Posted:
Dec 14, 2015 - 18:25 |
 
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As I've no experience with any formats I'm afraid I can't give you any feedback beyond saying it looks fantastic and I would play it in a heartbeat. Fingers crossed it gets up and running. |
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mister__joshua
Joined: Jun 20, 2007
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Thanks. Grind had 25-30 players at its peak so I'm hoping we could top that. |
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"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - The Dude
Mr. J's LRB7 / Forum |
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Throweck
Joined: Feb 23, 2013
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Dec 15, 2015 - 13:40 |
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mister__joshua
Joined: Jun 20, 2007
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Thanks! I think the idea is pretty solid, but it'll require some testing to see if the balance is right between team advancement, player replacement and spiralling expenses. I'm hoping when it's ready I we can get a reasonably large number involved.  |
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"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - The Dude
Mr. J's LRB7 / Forum |
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jamesfarrell129
Joined: Dec 23, 2009
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Dec 15, 2015 - 17:02 |
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My first thought is that with players costing 145k+ you are never going to be able to replace people, especially with Spiralling Expenses kicking in straight away. Maybe a better option would be to go with standard(ish) costs, keep the expensive rerolls, but change the Spiralling Expenses cut-off to kick in straight away (and maybe have small steps so it would increase quick).
As it stands, assuming an roughly-average roll of 4 for winnings each game, with -1 for SE, its going to take approximately 5 games to replace a single player... and that's assuming you don't roll a 1 for winnings like I always manage with league teams  |
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NAF name: sandwich |
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mister__joshua
Joined: Jun 20, 2007
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This is why I think it requires testing, but it doesn't quite work out like that. The average winnings for a game is around 50k with an even record, minus expenses. So that's about 4 games to replace a player. Maybe that's too much. The problem is that it can't be done how you suggest as the Expenses level are not a controllable measure. My original costings were a touch cheaper. The basic humans were 140 which doesn't sound much different but saves around 60TV. Maybe the whole roster could be moved down, but the teams will develop slowly anyway so the expenses are supposed to be close or teams will sit below them for too long. |
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akaRenton
Joined: Apr 15, 2008
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Dec 15, 2015 - 19:15 |
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Seventyone
Joined: Dec 02, 2010
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Dec 15, 2015 - 19:36 |
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mister__joshua
Joined: Jun 20, 2007
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This isn't a replacement for Grind, more of an evolution. It's something I always wanted to do eventually. The goal is to capture the theme and feel of Grind but package it in a way that's easy to access, repeatable and automated. People could create teams and jump straight in without even having to read the (currently many) rules. The over-inflated costs are there to make the team-building tough, in a similar way to the earning re-rolls rules worked. |
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"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man." - The Dude
Mr. J's LRB7 / Forum |
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