How do you prefer to start your text sim career?
 

Poll coming.

I prefer to play fictional, simming through one cycle of players to get a "mature" league, in that once I start running a team, I want every player in the league to have come in through the amateur draft.

Real players, current year. Way too much brand new information in a fictional universe to get my head around, need to start from something I know.

I can't really answer this, since it seems to depend on the game. I would probably say "historical start, sim to present day," but there's only one game good enough to do that with from the historical perspective, and that's OOTP. I've never tried an FOF historical career because I'm put off by the inability to change the league structure to match real life. Without the historical option, I guess I'd go with the "fictional players and sim to generate some league history" option.

There is no option for real players, current year with historical career statistics so I went with Historical start.

Since I'm a relative newcomer to both baseball and football (i.e. I haven't grown up with it around me), I prefer to create my own history in both OOTP and FOF. With FM and EHM though, I usually want to play with real players.

That would just be real players, current year. Whether they have career stats or not is pretty much irrelevant, isn't it? They are the same players who accumulated those stats, so it's not like they no longer are those players if you haven't imported their career stats.

What he said.

Fictional. No league history.

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It depends on the game I'm playing and the mood I'm in. But generally, I prefer fictional players over real/historical players (been there, done that, reviewed the printouts) and an accumulated history over no history. With no history, you have to rely on the ratings, which is better with some games than others.

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Which is just one more thing that differentiates me from my Good Twin above. :)

The main impact is in the Hall of Fame and career records. I don't want to wait 20 years (or whatever it is) to see people entering the FOF HoF, and I'd like a full set of career records to compete against. This is the real player equivalent to creating a history in a fictional universe.

If league customization is an option, I always prefer a new, fictional, smaller league. In OOTP I'll start an 8-12-team fictional league in 1900 or something, playing as an owner right off the bat.

In FOF, where that's not an option, it has to real players, current career. If it's going to be NFL league structure, NFL teams, I can't get into a league with 1,500 random names I've never heard of. If it were an option to run a smaller fictional football league, then I'd switch to fictional players.

It does depend on the game. But I usually like to sim for a history whether it's real players or not, accumulate some history and then step in. It's a lot more fun when you're not dealing with real players or at least, towards the end of the when the real players are done and have 50/50 fictional/real players.

Entirely dependent on the game and my mood.

OOTP I tend to play fictional, small league and gradually expand.
FOF I go historical or current day.
TPB I go straight historical.

Depends, usually one of two: The first one, fictional players - new league, but start with all teams having to draft their teams first and I can only draft rookies. The second one, real players - historical league, no draft.

Fictional players, no league history. If possible, I like to imagine that the start of the game is the start of the sport. With most text sims, that's kind of impossible though. I like to start with a small "universe" and then work it up through expansion if possible (which is to say, it's not with most sims).

2nd place for me would be Historical players with a league history. That's why I like FM and EHM. I feel like I'm stepping into a mature universe.

There is no option for real players, with four/five years of sim to generate game stats, so I guess I can't pick any of the above...

Game stats are important to me over RL stats.

Says it all.

I've "evolved" into this kind of start, and I'm also a strong supporter of it. Back when I started playing FOF, instead, I couldn't do without real life players. Now, I really don't care. Hell, I even change the teams, to create my alternative reality!

I like to sim a ton of years with fictional players to generate a history. Then I review the history, and start playing.

Unfortunately, the only games that make this easy to do is FBB and FBCB. I think I also saw an option for multi-season sim in BBCF too, but I'm yet to try it.

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Once again, ML summed it up perfectly.

BrianD had a good response. I'd also add that I want the opportunity to break Walter Payton's single season rushing record with LT, or Dan Marino's records with Manning, or Jerry Rice's receiving records with Calvin Johnson. Isn't that part of the allure of a text-sim that crunches numbers so well?

I like to start current day because it's too much new information at one time...otherwise

Fictional, no league history. I'm 28 years into a fictional OOTP 6.51 league right now, and it is the most interesting league I've ever played. I kept this one small, 12 teams, two divisions, first two teams in each division in the playoffs. I think because it is small I've been able to get a feel for the entire league like I've never gotten before.