[ 01 / 03 / 06 ] Not that he has a shot either way...

Not long ago, Jim and I were idly speculating on how it is possible that Bloodbowl, a game which should by all rights be wildly popular, still meets with only a small niche following. Ever since that conversation, the topic has been at the forefront of my prefrontal perambulations. While several possibilities present themselves, the one I find most intriguing is this:

Is it at all possible that Bloodbowl's name has been holding it back all of these years?

Seriously, what does Bloodbowl actually lack in a hobby game? Its concept has the universal appeal of sport, its flavor text is entertaining, the rules are easy and for the most part effective, the miniatures are great, and the buy-in cost is very low. Even without consistent or complete support, the game has more to offer than either of the GW battle games, rules which are no better or worse, figures which are no more or less interesting, a background which has no less potential, and a much more affordable price point, yet those games still take up every table at the local game shop.

You can put teeth to an argument that GW itself has no desire to see Bloodbowl succeed over the cash-intensive core battle games, as the same low buy-in that should make the game wildly successful would also take a huge toll on the company's profits, but considering the fact that even when the game was well-stocked, actively marketed, and generally given fair-haired treatment by the parent company, it just never took off.

And again I ask, could it just be the terrible name?

Show of hands, how many of you have ever been embarrassed to tell a family member the name of the game you're playing? How many of you have described Bloodbowl to a girl in place of answering a query about the name of the game you're playing? Have you ever reacted to Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons with the save elusiveness? I've done it and I've heard it done by others. There seems to be a generalized anxiety in the community over the game's name. But why?

Really, when you step back a bit and consider the name objectively and literally, it really is no surprise that it is a minefield. Bloodbowl, when spoken, places the forcefulness of its pronunciation in the first half of the word, and just sort of trails off in the second. A listener without familiarity or with only marginal interest (which is any girl you ever talk to) is likely to hear little more than just "Blood" and process only that. The inclusion of the "bowl" portion of the name, even when not overlooked, does little to mitigate the severity of the first part, and is not effective in its role of grounding the name in the sporting genre, as even when the listener is likely to associate the word "bowl" with sport, which is not always, it is likely not to be fully processed in the first place.

Thus, the listener is left with a first impression of the game which amounts to "Blood-somethingorother" and most sane and rational people will not be anything other than marginalized by a game whose name means nothing to them beyond simple and undescribed violence. The game may as well be called "Murder" or "Rape" for all the good that it's present name does it in casual conversation.

And that first impression is important. Even when you're not chatting up a girl and feeling awkward about discussing your hobbies, the game doesn't always fare well because not all gamers are attracted to games which are founded upon overly violent concepts, and many of us are wise enough at this point to know that those games which are overly violent in nature tend to have many things going against them, namely rules which are painfully immature and rarely balanced, as well as players which can likewise be described as painfully immature and rarely balanced. Many gamers are simply expectant that a game with such a name is not likely to be an enjoyable pursuit without substantial convincing, and in the absence of an existing and effectively evangelical league, the opportunity to alter that impression may not exist.

This is all very speculative, by its very nature, but the rhetorical question that I will leave you with is this, would Bloodbowl be a bigger game if it were called Goblin Rules Football instead?

[ 03 / 06 / 06 ] If you're so great, why is there yolk on your shoulder?

When reviewing any new league system, I find that there is one quick and simple test which will reveal all that I need to know about how well the designer grasps the concepts required to prepare a balanced and effective set of rules; does it include Starplayers?

Before we get into why Starplayers are so bad for the game itself, let me first point out how poorly they were designed and utilized in the game even had they been a good idea. While these issues might be ultimately irrelevant given that the systemic failure of Starplayers will in the end require their complete removal, it is still useful to look at the general failure of the design as an example of how poorly thought-out the specific design was in order to ultimately lend an extra bit of weight to the decision to exclude them entirely based on their general design flaws.

The existing Starplayer roster fails in two very dramatic ways - availability and variety. Anyone who has ever played Norse (no, not the diminutive brush lackey, the race), High Elfs, or Amazons in a Starplayer league can tell you that there just isn't much to choose from, and can also tell you that the Human, Chaos, and Orc coach suffers no such paucity. One of the great failures of the Starplayer system is, and has always been the simple fact that they weren't evenly, or even marginally distributed among the various rosters. It is beyond clear that no thought whatsoever was ever put into balancing the characters through the various rosters, not in numbers available nor in potency of individual ability - lest we forget that while the Human team not only has the pick of most of the characters in the game, they also can choose from several players with five, six, even seven skill bumps while the Dark and High Elf coaches find themselves with their single, rather uninspired and marginally-skilled choices. Such haphazard, thoughtless game design is simply unpardonable, and the continued indifference shown toward the problem is surely simply a sign of the general trend toward exclusion of Starplayers in leagues, though with the personalities involved, it could be a continued ignorance or indifference to the magnitude of the error just as easily.

And yet, even if the dreadful masters of this sorry little game of ours were to wake up to the disparity of their silly Starplayer mechanics and come down from the mountain with a list of character options granting both variety and a full sweep of skill level choices to every roster in the game, the game would ultimately still be no better for the effort, for even had the Starplayer system been well-executed, the core notion is so hopelessly-flawed that correction can only come through exclusion.

Starplayers are a failed concept because they undermine and sabotage the core concept of the continuing game - team development. In any league setting, Starplayers do so much damage not only tot he balance of squads due to the shortcomings of their specific design discussed above, but also to the simple basic impetus for having a league in the first place that their inclusion by any commissioner is an unpardonable offense.

At the most trivial level, Starplayers give teams the benefit of experience without the process of attaining it. If the predicate of a league experience is developing a squad of players, and one assumes it is as this is pretty much the only aspect of the league system, then beginning play with players who already possess advanced abilities is simply to invalidate the entire process. How can any coach be expected to still find full satisfaction in team development in a setting where the need for team development is thus trivialized?

Beyond the marginalization of experience, however, are more sinister impacts upon the health of a league, for not only do Starplayers unbalance teams and diminish the value of experience, but they also undermine the entire development process. Starplayers are, quite simply, experience black holes. These characters cannot continue to gain SPP's, and yet they are the players on a team most likely to score TD's and Casualties. All of the potential experience which they fail to earn is simply lost to a team. Had the Starplayer not been on the squad, it is entirely likely that the team would still have scored about as many TD's, and caused about as many casualties, and the entirety of those SPP's would have been earned and kept by the squad.

The long-term impact of this loss of SPP's to the Starplayers is a complete slowdown in team development, with particular deficits for skill players who need the development in order to fully-realize their place in the game, and who are already marginalized by the presence of the Starplayers in the first place. Thus, teams with Stars will develop more slowly, and in a less appropriate fashion than those without.

The astute observer would conclude then that this is a self-correcting problem - teams without Starplayers will develop more fully and more quickly than those with them, and in time the difference will become fairly indistinguishable, but that is not truly the case. First off, Starplayers give teams access to players of skill levels which simply are not found in normal play. players with five skill raises are agonizingly rare, players with six and seven the stuff of urban myth and yet there are a variety of Starplayers in these lofty heights, and several teams have access to more than one such player! The reality is that the Star-less teams simply cannot hope to ever catch up to the skill level possessed by many teams with them. While the teams at the shallow end of the Starplayer talent pool often do eventually surpass the need for them, those teams with a greater selection, particularly the Human team, simply have no need to ever develop their own players as they will never grow a team as talented as that which they can begin the game with.

All together, the case against Starplayers is overwhelming. In both theory and practice the concept has failed miserably. Therefore, it really is a fair gauge of league quality. Groups who fail to grasp a systemic failure of this magnitude cannot be expected to adjust for any of the more subtle shortcomings which can be found within the game, and the new coach should have every expectation that the league will be unsatisfying on a variety of levels.

And, Griff has a chicken on his head.

Balanced TR Leagues, How and Why

[Reposted from the house rules section of the website - as so many of the columns reference this system, it seemed only appropriate to present it here as well.]

All teams will have a static Team Rating of 150 at all times. Any combination of players, staff, and re-rolls may be purchased to meet this mark, and any of these may be removed to make the mark as well. All teams must meet this TR restriction prior to and after every match, and thus must make alterations to their roster following each match to return to the TR threshold by any means they wish. A team may never have a TR of greater or less than 150. All new and replacement players added are rookies, and must meet the normal maximums of the roster. Veteran players removed are lost permanently, and may not be recovered in the future. Re-rolls added and removed are done so at the normal base cost at all times. Fan Factor for all teams begins at 1. Teams do not purchase fan factor, instead, it is only gained and lost through post-match rolls. Finally, there is no treasury or winnings rolls, and, as a result, no gate rolls.

The formula for computing TR has the following changes:

Fan factor no longer figures into TR.

Without a treasury, there is obviously no treasury component to TR.

SPPs are not figured as before. Instead, only the number required to advance to another skill roll is used in calculating a player's value, i.e.:

SPPs	TR Value
0-5	0
6-15	1
16-30	3
31-50	6
51-75	10
76-125	15
126-175	25
176+	35

This is certainly the most dramatic departure from the baseline of the game found in these rules, and it is the foundation upon which healthy leagues and competitive matches is built. I wish that I could take full credit for this idea, I like to think that I was at least close to it at times, but Chet Z was the real innovator and from his idea I have arrived at this implementation.

The reason this system works is that it is the first to effectively strike at the heart of the persistent problem that the game has had with long-term balance and the ability of new teams to play old teams enjoyably.

The key to the success of this system is that it is the first to handle well the long-overlooked core source of disparity in the game, the balance between bench depth and team skill. Ever since the inception of the 3rd edition of the game, this problem, that veteran teams have both long benches and more skilled players than opponents with fewer matches under their belts, has persisted. Previously, attempts to balance matches in league settings have made two terrible mistakes.

First, they have always concentrated on establishing a one-match artificial balance or handicap to make a match between disparate teams balanced. This has always meant that teams would either see their rosters or abilities diminished or increased, but only for that match. This is a system that will never feel right, and will never result in long-term health for the league or the teams within it. Coaches resent systems that leave their toys on the bench unused, and coaches similarly dislike having boosts to their team that make development seem irrelevant or inconsequential. Further, neither team after such a match is any closer to being balanced when next they meet, the state of disarray is maintained, and the match probably wasn't particularly well-balanced in the first place. A league needs to be managed at a higher level than the single-match perspective. A decision must be made about the envelope in which all teams will operate within, and that frame of reference needs to be small enough to make all games interesting (I will never say balanced, or fair, experience should lead to advantage, but games need not be the farcical drubbings they tend to be in the current model either), yet wide enough to allow for enjoyable team development.

The second mistake made by every league management system seen to date is that they have all completely overlooked the root cause of the imbalance between teams of different levels of experience - the misalignment of the bench vs. experience axis. The status quo in Bloodbowl has always seen the teams which least need bench depth as the only sides with that commodoty, meanwhile, fresh teams that lack the skills to succeed without a constant flow of replacements rarely have more than the starting eleven. Ultimately, this leads to matches where the veteran team comes in full and never even needs to put four or five of those players on the field, while the newer team often finds itself down four or five players by the second half. These are th games that are not fun. Eleven players against eleven players is almost always interesting, or at least almost always has the potential to be a fair match. Sixteen players against seven or eight is never going to be either fun or interesting, yet this is precisely what we see time and time again in disparate matchups. The veteran team has the skills to not only knock the other side off the pitch, but also to weather the opposite's attempts to knock them off the pitch while they're at it. The veteran team also has no concern about the odd injury, as they will always have more players on their roster than they will have occasion to use. Meanwhile, the younger team, suffering under the attrition of being on the wrong side of a team that has developed an ability to put them out well beyond a new squads ability to suffer such losses is also hamstrung by a short bench afforded them by the low starting budget of the traditional league system. It is not skilled teams against unskilled teams that causes uninteresting disparate matchups, it is the inability for one side to keep eleven players on the field as the game progresses that undermines these matches.

Therefore, it is clear that the missing element required to keep all matches in a league of various levels of experience is to extend the benches of young teams, allowing them to keep the full eleven on the pitch longer, and to shorten the benches of veteran teams, and allowing casualties to affect their performance. The ideal axis for team development, therefore, would be one where young teams are able to field nearly-full rosters, and where the most skilled and senior teams in the league have only a couple of backups waiting in the wings. Along the development track, this bench-depth to skill ratio would shift cleanly.

The usual attempts at new team management systems traditionally only address one side of the ratio. Typically, notions such as salary caps and appearance fees do an acceptable job of limiting the veteran team, but nothing is done to elevate the junior. Similarly, handicapping systems that give the junior team a one-match boost do nothing to address the unbalancing depth of their opponent (and further, one-match player-granting handicaps actually encourage long-term disparity by slowing spp growth of the team's roster players). The only effective way to address league balance is to simultaneously deepen the benches of younger teams while shortening the benches of older teams