[HN Gopher] Dice baseball: a tabletop tradition
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Dice baseball: a tabletop tradition
Author : sogen
Score : 59 points
Date : 2022-11-18 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (baseballgames.dreamhosters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (baseballgames.dreamhosters.com)
| Sigh42 wrote:
| For anyone interested in a modern version of this, I strongly
| recommend Deadball[0] (specifically 2nd edition). It uses RPG
| dice and a few stats to build a fairly realistic but still breezy
| game. You can use real player stats to build teams, or roll up
| your own. I know some fans who run entire leagues for fun.
|
| 0: http://wmakers.net/deadball
| BryantD wrote:
| Came here to make the same recommendation! Deadball is great.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Deadball looks exactly like the 'modern reboot' I was imagining
| while reading the main article... Differing tables of results
| per player, with RPG elements for evolving the results tables
| over time.
|
| I can also imagine a (probably computer-aided) variant, where
| true player stats are known only to the person who 'owns' the
| player, approximate stats are based on results in actual games,
| and there's a system for trading players between seasons.
| cmaggard wrote:
| Echoing this, it's a fantastic game for what it is. The author
| also just finished funding a Kickstarter for a "Junior" version
| of the game as well.
| streptomycin wrote:
| _Dice baseball, for any visitors here who may not be aware, was
| played by untold thousands upon thousands of kids -- and a few
| adults too -- over the course of more than a century, and seems
| to have faded as a popular pastime only since around the early
| 1980s._
|
| I may have missed it, but does the article really neglect to
| mention that probably a lot of the reason is that people now can
| play sports video games? Tabletop is great, but video games let
| you do so much more.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I grew up playing APBA with my friends and tried to write some
| automation tools in BASIC on my TRS-80 in Jr. High. A few years
| ago I wrote a simple Node app to scrape Baseball Reference data
| and create plausible, reverse engineered Strat-O-Matic cards as
| PDFs. Sometimes I feel like I enjoy just playing with baseball
| stats more than actually simulating a baseball game.
| emptybits wrote:
| Loved reading this. I was unaware these boxed editions existed
| but I do recall using my AD&D dice as a kid to make a "baseball"
| game. I was obsessed with the probability of singles vs doubles
| vs triples vs home runs at the time and how to balance that with
| the poly dice. Anyways, it was probably the late 1970s and I had
| neither real stats nor the internet and I have no idea what my
| rationale was but I recall the game design process was far more
| enjoyable than the game. (Personal note ... boy, was that
| foreshadowing!)
|
| Anyways, in the article, my eyes were drawn to the roll outcome
| tables and they all seem to be making triples as likely or more
| likely than home runs. Yikes. In reality, it's the exact opposite
| by a large degree. Example ... in the 2018 MLB season (pre-
| pandemic, full season), 853 triples occurred while 5,656 home
| runs occurred. And triples are becoming less common over the
| decades for a variety of reasons. But even in the 1950s, home
| runs were two to three times more likely than triples per at-bat.
|
| Anyways, none of this matters, just sharing something nerdy. I
| enjoyed the article, thank you!
|
| [1]
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?key=&i=triples+in+mlb+201...
|
| [2]
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?key=&i=home+runs+in+mlb+2...
| sogen wrote:
| What changes would you suggest to the tables to make the
| triples more inline with a realistic game?
|
| Do a reroll maybe?
| emptybits wrote:
| Sure, but in the spirit of these games I guess there needs to
| be a balance between simplicity and realism. A single roll
| and table lookup is simple and fun but not finely grained so
| not realistic if limited to 1D6 or 2D6. So maybe a re-roll,
| like you suggest, but then maybe that doesn't have the same
| easy flow.
|
| Nowadays, dice with more sides are common so that allows a
| simple 2D10 roll and a percentage lookup table. Maybe that's
| the balance.
| sogen wrote:
| Thanks for the d10 idea!
| permo-w wrote:
| man this article really drags it out
| davegauer wrote:
| I visited the article only to make sure it mentioned the novel
| "The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop."
| by Robert Coover.
|
| I was thinking about that book just yesterday. I find something
| about the way it goes "all in" on a tabletop gaming system deeply
| appealing. Probably for the same reasons I find pencil and paper
| RPGs and programming computers appealing.
| sogen wrote:
| Will definitely read that book next!
| fogus wrote:
| The system in UBAInc is pretty well fleshed out in the book and
| at one time in the rings-era WWW there were people creating
| their own versions of the game -- some very good.
| pauljonas wrote:
| Universal Baseball Association, J Henry Waugh, Prop -- Dice
| Game
|
| http://sagarin.com/sports/dice.htm
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm _barely_ old enough to have played this and can strongly
| recommend Bottom of the 9th as a modern take that captures much
| of the same feel:
|
| https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/166286/bottom-9th
|
| No affiliation, just played it at a game convention some years
| back and was _very_ impressed--and got a strong nostalgia buzz
| for dice baseball, which I 'd _almost_ forgotten having played at
| the time. Very solid game design.
| sogen wrote:
| Bottom of the 9th and
|
| Baseball Highlights 2045
|
| are great, specially like playing on the app, since it does all
| the scoring and bookkeeping.
| spaceprison wrote:
| my baseball nerd friends really seem to really enjoy
| https://pocketpennantrun.weebly.com/
| sokoloff wrote:
| This is a heavily augmented version as compared to the games
| covered here, but some of my strongest memories of gaming as
| child with my dad were playing Sports Illustrated's 1971 baseball
| game*.
|
| It was a lineup-based game with actual players, the dice
| mechanics were a single die of one color (black, IIRC) with
| numbers [1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3], a white die of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5],
| and a white die of [0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4]. The dice were read as
| "black die in 10s, plus the sum of white dice in 1s".
|
| The pitcher rolled first, capturing the walks, HBP, strikeouts,
| etc. If the pitcher result was NULL, then the batter rolled for
| the result (with different results vs right and left handed
| pitchers). Each player had a running speed, which was used in
| tables when the manager decided to steal a base or try to stretch
| a hit into an extra base or tag up on a marginal fly ball. It did
| a fairly good job of capturing the actual results to match the
| statistics from the season.
|
| We each picked four teams and ran a league, did an All Star game,
| playoffs, and World Series. Along the way, I had to keep track of
| all the stats, calculate the averages (damn fine way of making me
| do math exercises), etc. From over 40 years ago, I can still
| remember the game, the mechanics, the worn out spots on the stats
| sheets as I updated them.
|
| * -
| https://spookyshobbyshop.com/SPORTS%20ILLUSTRATED%20BASEBALL...
| sogen wrote:
| Thanks for sharing it!
| elijaht wrote:
| I had a College Football game with the same dice (Bowl Bound),
| and a similar experience with my dad! Had a regular season,
| kept stats, make rankings. Was an absolute blast and something
| I remember fondly
| [deleted]
| gz5 wrote:
| Long but appreciate why it is long. Thanks for taking the time.
|
| >We strongly recommend, for you adults who'd like to teach kids
| how to play any tabletop baseball game, you first take them to
| see an actual ballgame...or at least watch a game on TV with
| them.
|
| Would add listening (radio) and playing (including stickball
| variants) to that list. These games are great if you have that
| context, and much more difficult to get into without that
| context.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Very true. I find that watching a sport that I've played AT ALL
| is much more entertaining than, say, curling (pls no sarcasm
| about curling here, folks).
|
| Even golf, which I haven't played since high school, is more
| relatable to watch because at least I've done it.
| themadturk wrote:
| I love watching curling during the Winter Olympics...my
| favorite version of the Olympics, and curling is just really
| high on my watch list.
| whartung wrote:
| Couple of years ago we had a power outage during the world
| series.
|
| So it was my wife, the cats, and I curled up on the couch with
| a pocket radio listening to the game by the light of an
| electric lantern.
|
| It's hard to express what a wonderful experience that was. The
| national broadcast call (ESPN I think) was very good. I'm just
| not a great fan of my teams current radio team, but this was a
| really good call. Sitting in the dark was just icing on the
| cake that helped us focus on the game.
| gz5 wrote:
| I feel like the radio experience is a 'you'll only know it
| when you see (hear) it' type thing. A great radio team makes
| a huge difference. Was lucky enough to grow up with the Mets
| announcers of the 80s (Bob Murphy, Gary Cohen, Gary Thorne).
| Spent many nights (long after my official bedtime) with my
| clock radio (smuggled under my covers) delivering magic.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I found the color, font, and spacing of the text very hard to
| read so I might have missed it but... what is the appeal of
| playing "baseball" where everything is just random chance based
| on dice rolls. Real sports isn't random chance. There may be some
| element of that but it's mostly about skill and strategy.
| COGlory wrote:
| I absolutely was obsessed with MLB Showdown as a kid:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLB_Showdown
|
| Card collection + dice game simulation. Was so much fun.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Never played this game but spent hours as a kid playing strat-o-
| matic baseball with my friends and solitaire style.
|
| https://www.strat-o-matic.com/product-category/baseball/boar...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The group I was in switched to Pursue The Pennant when that
| came out.
| sogen wrote:
| Seems like there's still an active community around it!
| sogen wrote:
| Can't find the source, but I remember reading that Eddie Vedder
| of Pearl Jam used to play dice baseball with one of the Ramones
| while on tour.
| bdcravens wrote:
| In the late 80s/early 90s I came across a version that had a
| twist - you'd create a starting lineup using baseball cards, and
| the stats (minimally) affected the odds.
| sogen wrote:
| I think that's the APBA one which uses cards.
| samizdis wrote:
| I had not encountered dice baseball before reading the article,
| probably because I was brought up in the UK, where the equivalent
| dice game was Owzthat [1] - for cricket. All of my
| contemporaries, when we were aged seven to 12, played - and most
| of us carried a tin in a pocket.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owzthat
| badbadboogie wrote:
| Picked one of these up last winter. Fun save for the fact that
| it's pure chance. I Shay's prefer at least a little strategy or
| skill.
| docandrew wrote:
| I read a story about some Marines in some kind of disciplinary
| situation who took up "stopwatch baseball." You start a
| stopwatch and then try to stop it exactly on the minute. If you
| do, that's a home run. If you are a tenth of a second early,
| that's a triple, two-tenths a double, etc.
|
| Needless to say, they were very, very, very bored.
| jamezzzboy wrote:
| TLDR
| cfeduke wrote:
| I played a dice baseball game that I learned from my father when
| I was growing up. I had little interest in baseball itself, but
| for whatever reason this game where I tracked all the players'
| stats for a league on paper, set up home and away games, and then
| rolled four dice to see if there were strikes, doubles, triples,
| etc., was super appealing to 10 year old me. There was no real
| complexity, no decisions to make, just roll dice and record, and
| then calculate the stats for the players after each game and at
| the end of the season.
| narush wrote:
| Dice baseball is an inside joke in my family. We always make fun
| of my dad for playing "way too much when he was a kid, instead of
| going outside" -- this is at least according to my Grammy.
|
| He stopped playing dice baseball when his older brother got his
| first computer. It allowed you to make super basic spreadsheets
| (or something that felt like spreadsheets, I don't trust his
| memory a ton) -- and the first spreadsheets he made were about
| dice baseball. From there he made spreadsheets about his
| highschool baseball team, and from there he decided he loved
| computers and went back to school to study them.
|
| 30 years later, here I am on HN :)
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