Since the most recent LFA update thread had a few posts about playbooks and I started writing out a lengthy reply, I figured I'd start a thread for it.

In my >100 seasons of single player, I never bothered to touch the playbook or gameplans, generally figuring that it would be too harsh on the rest of the CPU league if I optimized like that. How did everybody here learn the art of making a playbook? I keep doing Google searches and finding the same 2-3 forum threads which don't say much beyond a discussion of scheme fit for plays. I don't really know how many plays it should include, what the run/pass ratio should be, and when I enter my tendency preferences to autogenerate some plays they don't seem to reflect my preferences too well.

Some of the forum literature I read mentioned gameplans being much more important than the playbook, is that generally true for people here?

Not really asking for a "how to make playbook" guide, especially since we're all in direct competition, but this is a part of the game I want to dig much deeper into and I have no idea where to start. Thanks guys.

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Detroit Vampires

I also found the guided playbook generation settings to be completely ignored.

I first started by having 175-180 generated and manually creating the rest. Since then I've increased the number I create manually and even edit plays during the year, which I didn't do much the first few seasons in 8.

I still auto-generate over half my plays but I pay more attention to the primary receiver distribution in the playbook so when I am game planning and want to take advantage of a matchup, I have enough plays available to exploit the matchup. I find it easier to edit the auto-generated plays to maintain variety then create everything from scratch, but I do create quite a few.

This season I am looking at the formations more following the discussion we had about the QB alignment during the live staff draft. I'm going to be looking at under center vs pistol vs shotgun relative to the routes assigned.

One of the best things about this league is those with knowledge love to share. Even though we are in direct competition, we still have to play the games. Some of the best competitors in history would tell you what they are going to do, how they are going to do it, and challenge you to stop it.

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I'll throw in my 2 bits. This is something that has intrigued me for some time but as you would expect most that are good at it don't want to give away their secrets. I wouldn't consider myself to be very good at it. I get lucky every now and then.

I would agree each game plan is much more important than the playbook. As the game plan is what is actually being run and hopefully has a game flow to it. The playbook is just where you gather your game plan from.

I've seen it common that guys don't change their game plans for the entire season and quite often they do okay and some do real good. I change mine often, almost weekly.

When we first switched to FOF8 I got all excited about the playbooks and game planing and made an entire playbook by hand. We sucked the first year in FOF8 (2048 season). The next year I just had REX do it and we did better. Then I spent a lot of time studying it and what seemed to work. I spent a lot of time tweaking it and studying opponents plans and habits. The 2051 season I spent A LOT of time studying opponents and game plans and we did pretty good. I think mostly because I notice some game plan habits from some key opponents and I was able counter those habits.

Since then I've made small tweaks to our playbook. Don't know if it's been for the better or worse as this last season we didn't do good. Nothing seemed to work but towards the end of the season I noticed a habit in my own game plans that I think lead to our bad year, besides the improvement of the teams we played against.

One thing that has interested me is the run/pass ratio people have. Right now we have 60 running plays and 140 passing plays.

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Joined: 2030 - Moved to Miami in 2052
Conference Champs - 2051

Looking back on 2054 when we were last good offensively, my ratio was 136:64 Pass:Run in a Spread offense. Last year was swamp donkey-ish and we ran a 139:61 ratio in a West Coast offense.

I tried to throw that playbook out but it was incomplete. I tried again and the garbage can dropped it. Seems like that is all that playbook is good for...

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Lots to think about here, thanks again everyone. I spent some time yesterday making a few plays from scratch, no idea if they're well-designed though lol. It's reassuring to hear that the guided play generation doesn't do much.

In single player, when I was rexing all the playbooks and gameplans, no matter how good my TE was, he never put up better than 700-800 yards in a full season. I can see that this hasn't been an issue whatsoever for this league, even on the CPU controlled teams (the TE I inherited is coming off some very impressive receiving seasons). So I gotta make sure he continues to get the ball. I'm guessing that's mostly a matter of including enough plays where he's the primary target.

EDIT: One other thing I just remembered. I've already found myself wanting some formations that don't appear possible in the play designer, such as a strong I with the TE on the left. Is the play system just not that robust?

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Detroit Vampires

I'm not sure I understand your question.

In an I formation, the strong side is based on where the TE lines up so if the TE is on the left, it's just a Strong Left I formation vs Strong Right when he is on the right side.

I always assumed the play flips from left to right where appropriate; otherwise, you'd have to waste a second play spot for the same play for strong left plays. This would be the case for all symmetrical formations and if you didn't include both versions of the same play your offense couldn't run it, which wouldn't make much sense.

Moving the TE from Right to Left on asymmetrical formations will make a difference and these are listed separately in the playbook.

The help file lists some assumptions that explain why the playbook is not more robust and outside of those assumptions you could say the playbook is somewhat limited from a creativity standpoint. I think Jim's assumptions explanation suggests this is for simplifying something that could be not only intimidating to new GM's but also very complex to code.

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The bold part answers my question, I thought something like this might be in place.

Specifically about "strong I": maybe it's not the standard nomenclature, but I'm referring to an I formation where the FB is offset from the rest of the backs either to the strong or weak side, which doesn't appear to be a formation in the game. Just interesting because I see that one in real life a lot more often than pro formations.

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Detroit Vampires

I will throw in my two cents, maybe a nickel.

The playbook is to have at our disposal plays for any sort of GP you might want to run based on your roster and possible oppoent rosters. Obviously 200 plays is what you want.

In the community a lot is made of a handful of charts from the help/philosophy docs. But the Offesnive style chart isn't absolute so it isn't all power runs by a Smashmouth team get plus 2X and short passes -2X.

Personally I think the Fit is very important, no evidence whatsoever for that claim as I have only run Solid or Best fits since the game came out when paying attention. But it seems coherent with my assumptions about the game logic.

The fit is largely determined by the QB depth, RB thingy, type, protection and obviously formation. And since a recent update also primary hole/route.

In my other league we ran for 3000+ in a Spread offense out of shotgun in 122 and 212, yes we had the personnel but still that demonstrates that it isn't like running out of Shotgun is something you can't do.

Another example, this team here last year was Smashmouth, in general the PA passes were Best Fits and the others Solid, the PA had 1 YPA more than the regular passes, my other Spread league where the converse is true in general and PA has been about 1 YPA less. Not huge sample sizes here but anyways I like Fit over pretty much any other factor when designing the plays just because, plus it is fun.

Even with Smashmouth, Spread, now Air Coryell you can find plenty of plays of all depths, targets, types to fit your roster and be ready for different situations and opponents.

Variety is king, no sense making more than a couple plays of the same type. Even though we run a lot do we really need more than 4 runs to each hole...no, absolutely not. How many 789 routes do you really need in each personnell package, make a handful at most.

Sometimes with this rule in place, you will have some limitations. In Smashmouth I had to make all 113 passes PA, keep in a blocker, and only XZ could be the primary. Now with Air Coryell there are no Best fit runs and for Best fit you can't have 6 in Pass Pro form what I have seen so far. Oh well, work around it.

The plays themselves I like to believe that matchups and little players actually coexist in space even though my attempts at confirming that have been pretty futile. Or just incorporate real football route combos. Overloads, Sails, Curl/Flat, double slants, weakside screens, post/dig whatever if you don't know what the fuck I am talking about just think about stretching the D vertically and horizontally. Try to put Zone defenders in binds or make a play that will toasts Cover-3 or Tampa-2 or Press-1 etc. Also is nice to have plays that cover all bases when you fuck up the GP, anecdote: with old unsaved plays the game gives you an 113 pass play XZ 21 and it runs it sometimes a dozen times a game to great success because it has a route to beat Press-Zone and a route to beat off-Man.

Final note, for those who think this sounds hard/time-consuming. Just Generate 200 pass plays and 200 run plays with the modifier at 0, take a gander at what Formations/depths/alignments the CPU spits out, play with the settings if you want to try to force a Spread play a 7 man protection or something.

Then you can either rip through them pretty quick one by one or just generate and modify as others suggested. I highly recommend changing the play names as well or (not having done this but sounds nice) adding useful names ike 3rd10, FS, C3 or something like that.

Most importanly just enjoy it how you want. The 2 teams we faced in the playoffs ran the same damn GP all year, we won the first game with a plus 2 TO margin, we lost hte 2nd one with a -2 TO margin. So it is nearly "all" smoke and mirrors.

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Fargo Sodbusters
GM since 2041
17 Division Titles
3-1 Bowls (2056, 2061, 2064, 2065)

It is just asinine. If you want you can run Weak out of a 2 back set with 1 TE and flip it in your head- there you have what you want.

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Fargo Sodbusters
GM since 2041
17 Division Titles
3-1 Bowls (2056, 2061, 2064, 2065)

Also, some may have noticed the Durham runs 113 the whole damn time he is like frigging McVay. Saw that and was like that is cool (endurance/roster leverage, way easier GP prep) and "never" have to worry about familiars.

Would love his thoughts.

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Fargo Sodbusters
GM since 2041
17 Division Titles
3-1 Bowls (2056, 2061, 2064, 2065)

I get it now. You were talking about an offset I formation. You were asking if they had a Weak I formation where the FB is offset from the I and the TE is on the other side.

There is no offset I in the game, which is why I thought you were asking about a regular I formation.

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My question was whether that flip actually happened in the game in situations when it would make sense, TurfToe seems to have indicated the answer is yes.

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Detroit Vampires

I have to assume it does - I have no clue on what actually happens. lol

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CFL Champions: 2018, 2041, 2057-2058, 2060, 2062

I'm in the boat with getting about 200 plays. I run an Air Coryell, so I'll create about 20-30 plays that I want to run out of the 113, 113t, and 212. Then I generate about 150 plays using the setting of 15, which gives me a good variety, but focuses more on short passing because my QB is a short passer. I will then round out the playbook by generating about 20-30 plays using the 0 setting, which gives me a lot more Air Coryell specific plays.

Then I go through and try to balance my shotgun, pistol, normal formations by making adjustments to plays. I review the Primary receiver spread and try to get my preferred balance. Then I go through my PA plays to make sure they make sense. Generally I have to do a lot of fixing here because my Short Pass QB and Air Coryell system, I end up getting a lot of PA plays that are Digs and Slants. You might need a handful of those for short yardage situations, but I like to make sure that my PA plays are stretching the field a little. (Why go through the trouble of a run fake if you're going to just throw a 2 yard Dig? Just run the ball for 2 yards). Last I check to see that I have enough run plays and that they are balanced across formations.

I think this gives me the tools to game plan when I want to or have Rex do it when I don't. I tend to mix it up depending how busy I am in real life.

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Another different approach. Hard to find two people who say they do it the same way!

As for me, I ended up doing the whole thing manually yesterday. Created a spreadsheet with the # of plays that should fit different specifications (formation, personnel, run/pass, target, route), my goals were:

1. Cover pretty much every possible situation and have at least a handful of plays targeting every receiver just in case a matchup presents itself.

2. Generally keep my existing personnel in mind when designing routes and plays.

Neither of those two goals were "fit the Air Coryell system with most or many plays", despite my OC being Air Coryell, so we'll see how important it really is. It just seemed to compromise every single other goal I set for the playbook when I changed existing plays so that they would best fit my system. It made me move the QB in or out of shotgun when I didn't want to, or send a receiver deep who I wouldn't want to send deep, etc. To me, it wasn't worth it. Obviously haven't seen the on-field product yet.

I think what this really means is I don't have the right WRs for Air Coryell, so it's not surprising that I can't reconcile all of this neatly. Ultimately, though, I chose to base my playbook on my personnel + my own football principles, which happen to fly contrary to Air Coryell (I'm a strong believer in dinking and dunking). Looking forward to finding a different OC next year! I wasn't thinking about playbooks this past staff draft, having never made one before.

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Detroit Vampires

mmmm...last two years I took this approach trying to recreate the Air Raid Offense, it wasn't good.

This year I went with a 140/60 split and worked to incorporate more short/screen/deep passing. Tests of said GP in Single-player is returning some insane numbers (30+/game) -- I really hope we are competitive this season

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A little late, but does anyone know how much this engine simulates? If you have a bunch formation and attempt to manufacture a pick play, would the FoF engine understand the tomfoolery you're going for?

(( I wish there was a little graphical engine that displayed the play taking place. Now I'm not getting crazy, but if FoF9 had a view mode that looked anything similar to Goal Line Blitz 2, I'd be willing to pay 60 bucks for that sucker. ))

No pick but having many players run short routes seems to help open things up in that area.

There seems to be little to no spatial reasoning in the game but just a count of players short or deep zone for example.

The help discussion on running gains is quite informative and may provide a glance as to other Sim calculations as well.

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Fargo Sodbusters
GM since 2041
17 Division Titles
3-1 Bowls (2056, 2061, 2064, 2065)

Already looking forward to reviving this thread next offseason as I attempt to start from square one again (or, more likely, a pre-made playbook like people were suggesting the whole time but I thought I was smart enough to wing it).

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Detroit Vampires