Just throwing new ideas until I forget them
Ruleset : let everyone play like he want. After all, this is a part of fun in solitaire, do it like you want. When we played the nascar league, every "raceway owner" used the rules he wanted. It will no affect the game, since any playbook or team can be used in any ruleset. The only thing we need to do is a summary of each stadium, with field surface used, ruleset used (with a little explanation), et voilĂ** !
Weight: once again, freedom. I always liked Reginald idea of a main weight limit, dispatched between the athletes. It allows very personal teams. We should just stick to several limits to make it fair. In a iron squad let's create a linemen weight limit, and a skills players limit, and then let people dispatch the weight as they want.
College or pro : and what about personal teams too ? Freedom. On the nascar championship I participated, some guys used realistic cars (I used a dale eanarth real car, for exemple), other used custom paints...even a pink car named "Rosalie"
. It's part of the fun. If you want to make your fav college or pro team, you should be able to do it. If you want to create your own, same thing.
Timing : it depands how we manage the game. Direct live broadcasted game, with coaches interventions : we need a time limit, because of each people schedule. If some games are played "classic" without any intervention, any timig will be good, I believe.
Shipping : there are many ways of protecting a team. Here's an attached image of what I do when I have to ship figures. SOlid as rock. It's a piece of styrofoam, with holes cutted in it. I put the figures in bubble sheet, then I put a piece of cardboard on each side.
Imagine one card box, each stage is made the same than on the picture. One stage = one team. Almost no risks.
For me the two crucial things are the playbooks and the way we'll use them with our teams : dice, random or real coaching decisions like I said before.
Real coaching (on broadcast internet tv) is not such a weird idea. I remember my history class, that during WW2, some russian soldiers played chess to spend some time...without any chess board. Actually if you know the game, you don't need a
physical board to play.
Same thing for miniature football. It's not an action game (not speaking of real pass throwing). Imagine a typical solitaire play. A solitaire player using random decisions or dices for play calling is actually a
game operator. He move the figures (chess pieces), switch the game on and see how it develops. He's watching two teams playing.
With the broadcast direct live chat (really easy to interect with the broadcaster, it's like messenger, skype or stuff like that), you are just be able to replace the dices and random effects I spoke about, by two living coaches watching the game on the side of the field, and yelling orders with his motorolla headset...or like a coordinator watching tv screens in his silver tower in stadiums.
even if we don't develop that idea for solitaire play by mail league, I believe it's an idea we could devellop for another way of gaming. Just need 3 peoples : one game operator, receiving the teams and playbooks, and the 2 coaches watching the game and calling the games referring to the playbooks they sent. 3 guys, because with only 2 one guy will have access to the opponent playbook.