OOTP's Random Debut Mode
An unusual kind of replay
OOTP’s Random Debut Mode
Originally, I was hoping to find a complete Random Debut save to report on.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to locate one. I spent some time going over a few OOTP forums, but was unable to find anything complete enough for this blog.
But I don’t want to give up on talking about random debut mode. It’s unique, it’s wild, and it’s something that everybody in the replay world needs to know about.
The premise is pretty simple. All players who have ever appeared in Major League Baseball history take part. The game creates players at random at the beginning of the save for an entry draft — usually creating enough players for 44 players per team.
Now, those players enter at different stages of their career. This is set up so that you don’t just have a team of rookies. It’s important, of course — you need a balance of rookies and more established players to have an even balance. But, of course, this means that some players you’re really interested in might have short careers due to age.
There’s an entry draft before the beginning of every season, comprised of random rookies from the entire history of baseball. You can control how many rounds this draft has, allowing you to speed up or slow down the generation of historic players (though, obviously, you don’t want it to be too slow, unless you want to be forced to use extremely marginal players).
Those rookies are true rookies. However, keep in mind that they are created at the age they first entered MLB, not as high school kids just entering professional baseball. We’ll talk more about why that matters in a later post.
Unique Attributes
There are a few aspects of this setup that are completely different and unique to OOTP:
You can develop players into something they weren’t in real life. This is controlled by OOTP’s development engine, the amount of talent change randomness you allow, as well as whether you use statistical recalculation or not. Some people prefer “what if” scenarios that allow unknown players to turn into stars, while others want things to “feel right.”
The replay can last decades — or centuries — instead of just a single season. Of course, that means you’ll probably need to rely on the computer to play most of the games for you. However, this also means that you can write an entire baseball history book or two extremely quickly.
Players who had high peaks but short careers can have high peaks and short careers — and those who lasted a long time can also last a long time. But, of course, you can change all of this if you like.
It’s really only possible with games that have complex general manager modules and allow for player development. It’s also the sort of setup that can only be done on a computer, of course. Your Strat cards sadly aren’t going to be able to develop by themselves.
Tips
Here are a few tips I’ve picked up in my research:
You can cause more players to be created at the beginning if you add teams before the game is created, and then delete them again after the players are made.
Players you delete before the initial draft will be regenerated as new rookies later on. In other words, if you’ve got a 40 year old Albert Pujols in your initial draft, you can delete him. He’ll come back sometime later as a 21 year old rookie. Remember, though, that this works best if you make sure that extra players are created first.