Tabletop Sports Weekly 4-14-2003 (1674 total words in this text) (1632 Reads)    Happy Monday!  And welcome to another edition of Tabletop Sports Weekly. The past week has just blurred by for me.  To say this would be a busy time for me is an understatement.  Along with school, job, family and the internet activities, I'm also coaching my sons in Little League Baseball. So, things have been hopping for me, but everything is fitting together pretty nicely so far. I realize this isn't gaming related, but that's never stopped me before! ;) I took my oldest son to see an Arena Football game yesterday.  We went to Conseco Fieldhouse and watched the Indiana Firebirds come from behind to beat the Dallas Desperados.  This was my first Arena Football game live, and I'll say that it was better than ANY NFL game I've ever attended.  The atmosphere was absolutely amazing.  Conseco Fieldhouse is also a tremendous facility.  For a $5 ticket it's an amazing value.  If you have an AFL team near you, I highly recommend you check this game out live.  It's faster, harder hitting, and more exciting than television can portray.  I only wish that we had gone earlier in the season, as there is only 1 home game left. Ok, now onto business... I spent a lot of time with the website last week.  It may not show at first glance, but I've started publishing the archives for Jim Gordon's Sports Game Digest.  I also reviewed Replay Baseball, finished the code for the Sports Game Museum, and have started the archive process for Tabletop Sports Weekly.  Publishing the archives takes some time, but by the end of the month, you should be able to read the entire history of BOTH publications at the website. I also have a few other reviews to publish, but I like to give each game at least a week in the "top spot" on the web page.  Even for games that get poor scores, the exposure should be worthwhile to the gaming producer. We had another huge bump in subscribers this week.  My mailbox is absolutely flooded with mails from folks that have "re-discovered" TSW.  Hopefully soon, we'll be back to the 1700 members we had before I shut things down a year ago.  I think I'm only a month behind on my email now! ;)  I plan to spend the majority of tomorrow catching that up. As for my tabletop gaming activities, I ran another 10 matches or so with Wrestling's Finest.  I'm amazed now at how the game flows for me.  I never would have imagined it when I first started playing, but now I can knock off matches in no time.  Dave Arlington put it best to me, "the learning curve eventually pays off". I also spent a decent chunk of time working on my own games.  I have a written design plan now for a basketball game, and almost have my boxing game polished enough to have it tested.  I've also continued to mess with my wrestling game.  I'm not exactly sure why, as I'm more than pleased with Wrestling's Finest and Legends of Wrestling and Face to the Mat.  It's just something that seems to fuel me every now and then.  And lately, I've had breakthrough after breakthrough with the basketball and wrestling games. I also spent a bit of time this week with Dynasty League Baseball and Big League Manager.  With Spring arriving, I always have the itch to roll a few dice.  Generally, I'd play Replay or perhaps Strat or APBA.  But, these games got my attention this week.  Dynasty sure is a great game for rolling a game or two.  I'm not sure that I will ever have the patience or the eyesight to roll an entire season with the game.  But, for a couple of games, it sure does provide a TON of strategy, and a realistic experience that I don't think is matched by any other game.  I really get that "managing" feeling when playing Dynasty, that is somewhat missing in the other games. As for BLM, I guess it's one of those games that I'll break out every now and then because I WANT to enjoy it.  But, so far, it always leaves me scratching my head and frustrated.  The rules aren't that great in my opinion, and I'll probably never figure out the stupid big chart with the blue squares! ;)  I'm really looking forward to Wayne Poniwaz's Excel version, as it might help me figure this blasted game out...LOL That's all I've got this week.  I'll see ya next week! -Jeff Downey jeff@tabletop-sports.com www.tabletop-sports.com ============================================================== >From Matt Floray: ============================== >From Lee Harris: Another great read, and an issue I picked up on is that of "asking for stats". I find myself spending a lot of time now making season cards for Statis Pro football, and theres one or two sites that have a lot of good stats but always theres a lot of hard work manually tweaking stuff, mixing and matching and cross referencing. It would be great to get official stats but whenever I try to write to NFL.com, or Sports Illustrated or even Elias Bureau, no one ever replies. Whats the big premium on such information, I mean, OK, someone had to collate all this data and information is power they say, but what the heck do they think people want this for. Even if I explain its all a non profit for fun kind of thing for tabletop enthusiasts, nothing comes back. I've even offered to pay for stuff. Someone, somewhere has to have all this stuff in a handy zip file, and how great would that be if we could get a copy. Freedom of information? I dont think so! Sadly, the end result is this information just gets lost and is never really used to its full potential. I mean, this is not a marketable asset, as I doubt more than a  handful are interested, so what are these people gaining? Its great that MLB.com seem to have historical stats but the NFL only show the last year or two and even hobbyist stats sites dont have a complete set of old data. I understand in the real world, everyone likes to put a value on things, but I've spent many years running a very large internet golf tour for free, and I've always enjoyed the tabletop style of hobby where people do things for free, for the love of the game, and I think its a shame more big organisations dont do more for releasing information, which, lets face it, is not going to make them a raft of money but could be used by people who willingly give their own time and effort to create things for other people to freely share in. =============================== Lee, Stats Inc. will sell you any football stats you want from 1991 to the present. In the past, they had an online service that you could join and go in and log any stats from any of those years.  All the stats from their books on football, baseball, etc., were available and some that are not in any books. It was great.  Alas, they canceled the service because of lack of members. Matt ============================================================== >From Bob Jinkerson: Jeff and Readers, I am finally getting around to posting.  First of all, it is great to have the TTS Weekly in my mailbox again.  I love reading everyone's thoughts and activities in the tabletop world. Thank you for your kind words regarding "Wrestling's Finest".  I have been the proud owner of the game for just over two years and I count Tommy Vogel as a very good friend, along with others I have met through the game.  I have three ongoing projects with WF--my own Federation which is called the PWF (People's Wrestling Federation) encompassing every wrestler who is available; a yearly tournament using the "Top 10" of each year.  I began with 1962 and am getting ready to start 1976; and finally St. Louis in the late 70s using wrestlers who actually competed here during that time.  I am using Harley Race as my World Champion, as he actually was, but am conducting my own Missouri State Heavyweight Championship tournament. In baseball, I finally completed my All-Time Cardinal Championship team tournament, which was won by the 1934 Cardinals, better known as the "Gashouse Gang".  My primary game for this was Negamco, but I also used Strat O Matic, Extra Innings, APBA and Program IV at various times.  I am in the first month of my replay of the 1996 Cardinal baseball season using Strat. Those have been my primary projects of late.  I have lots more in various sports that have been gathering dust for awhile. Jeff, it is great to have you back. Bob Jinkerson (ed- It's fantastic to be back! ) ============================================================== >From Mike Clark: In a recent newletter, Jeff mentioned how he had thought Real-Life Basketball was the best until he played other newer games and then went back to Real-Life Basketball and saw the flaws in the game.  And he used the term "ignorance is bliss" to describe how great the game was before he was aware of the flaws.  I can relate. Many years ago, I was a young teenager with a paper route trying to save for college.  To save money I bought inexpensive games that allowed me to rate my own players.  I had Extra Innings baseball, Program IV football, and Real-Life basketball.  I thought they were all great.  I knew they were not perfect but that was okay with me.  I either lived with the few flaws I was aware of or made my own fixes.  I knew other games existed, but I had not seen them and thus I had nothing to compare mine too.  I was in my own little heaven with these games. Then a couple of years ago, I rediscovered the hobby and the on-line community of  tabletop sports players.  Through their discussions and through playing newer games, I became more aware of the flaws in my games. The flaws became less tolerable.  And so I ended up replacing each with newer and better games.  Today I am playing Replay baseball, Second Season and 1st and 10 football, and Above the Rim and Midcourt basketball.  As I sit playing these new games, every once in awhile the old games call out to me from the shelf.  I pull them out and play a game or two.  It just feels right to be playing them.  But by the end of the game I am again aware of the flaws.  I consider what I might do to fix my old games, but decide that I would rather use my precious little time playing rather than redesigning. So the games go back to the shelf.  But I keep watching the forums in hopes that someone with more time than I have and more creativity than I have will come up with the perfect fix for my old games. Mike Clark (ed- Excellent post mike!  I go through the same thing quite regularly.  One of the old baseball games that I played for "fun" was Brettball.  It was a cheesy game endorsed by George Brett.  It's not big on realism, but I still break it out every now and then just to play) ============================================================== (END of TSW) ==============================================================    [ Back to Tabletop Sports Weekly Archives | Sections index ]

All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest (c) 1998-2012 by Jeff Downey and Tabletop-sports.com