I’ve been playing APBA since I was 10. Over the years, I’ve noticed things that sometimes fall in the space of “do I ignore it and keep it real” or “do I take advantage of it and have it be a little odd.” Setting up your outfield based on the other team’s error numbers, playing high shot forwards during penalty kills, etc. Since I don’t want to clutter my regular blog with this, I’ve set up this one to be the place for my brain droppings when it comes to APBA.
Mike,
As you know, most penalties in hockey occur by the defense when the offense is possession of the puck. In APBA hockey, however, the penalties are only generated from the offensive player’s card, and are charged to the offensive player. I find that to be unrealistic.
Have you ever considered devising a system where the penalty is somehow switched to the defense instead? I’ve been working on one (since we can’t change the actual cards) but it is far from perfect. If you have ever done that, or something close to that, I would love to hear from you. I can be reached at dwreese@bellsouth.net
Problem is if you place it only on the offense giving the penalty (like Strat does) you skew way too much towards inaccurate penalty numbers. Think of the average hockey time sequence as “a bunch of things happened, and here’s the most important” and it makes sense why penalty numbers on the offender’s card.
The soccer game uses both systems, where you can both draw and cause a foul, with the high draw or high cause players getting extra numbers. However, this still has some drawbacks because figuring out who got the foul is done the same way that hockey does things with “high #”, “2nd highest #”, “3rd highest #”, etc. When going that route, if you have the three top numbers being 40-39-1 or 40-2-1 you’re going to get the same distribution. It’s all part of balancing accuracy vs. playability.