The Basics of OOTP 14 are not as simple as one may think. First, unless you have played previous versions of the game, the graphic interfaces and directions may not be straightforward nor may the management aspects of the game.

Essentially, this game enables you to replay historical baseball leagues from the past and the game comes pre-loaded with all data and players of the major leagues from 1901-present (or through to the year of the game you are playing). When you start a game, you get a series of walk thru instructions that let you pick whether you want to play a historical game or a simulated imaginary league, and if you go historical (which nearly all would do), then you pick an era, deadball, 1920s/30s, 40s/50s, etc. and then a season, and the game loads it up, and you are ready to go.

after that, there are tweaks you want to do to make the game work more favorably. ininitially, you will want to manage one team (the one you root for) and let the AI manage the other teams.

in the next section, we will discuss rules tweaks.

Before you actually play, there are rules tweaks which you can go through. on the Game pull-down menu, there is a menu involving rules of the game. you need to find that. Then, cycle thru all of the rules options.

the main tweaks that are helpful that can simplify play are as follows;

1) you want to decide if you want a financial system in place. if you play with financials, then you will have to manage and general manage with salary caps, revenue etc. and you will be limited as to who you can sign, cut, put on waivers etc. and you will be grossly limited as to how you build your team. this is much more like real life baseball, but frankly, it's a pain in the butt. usually i like to turn off the financials and concentrate on building a winner. kind of like i was George Steinbrenner and my finances were a bottomless pit. my advice is to play without finances, and then turn them on later once you've mastered the basics of the game, because the finances are a game unto themselves.

2) you need to decide if you want to play with a DH in one league, both, or none at all. playing with a DH enormously simplifies lineups and replay. it also lets your pitchers pitch complete games. on the other hand, playing without a DH is the way baseball was played until 1974, and its the NL way of playing. So this is a huge decision.

3) Roster size - unlike real baseball, you can set your major league roster size at 30, 40 or even 50 players, and thus carry more pitchers and players and carry added depth, especially if you play without a DH.

4) league structure - you can modify the league structure. for example, if you want to go back in 1901 and see what it would have been like to have eastern and western division play, you can now do this. and simulate the results.

there are many more rules tweaks like these. go thru and learn them, and get to know them. the rules tweaks make each game and replay different.

1) Players

a useful feature of OOTP 14 is the editor for each individual player/pitcher.

utilizing the editor, one can change the offensive and defensive performance characteristics of any existing historical player.

also, one can create new players or introduce players not in the database, such as 19th century players.

for example, one can unretire an historical player from the OOTP database, say a HOF level players, and then modify his statistical performance using the editor so that he plays according to his lifelong record, or according to the average of his five or seven best seasons. this is a useful feature if one wanted to see how, say, Honus Wagner might compare to Alex Rodriguez.

going further, referring to the prior section, on rules, on global rule tweaks, one can establish for the game as a whole that it be played in a run-neutral context--one can pick a year that averaged around 4.10 runs per year lets say--and then put players from different periods in that context using the editor.

there is an additional feature of being able to play an all-star/HOF league at the outset of OOTP 14, which allows you to play stars from different eras of the current 30 major league teams without resort to creating them with the editor.

a final useful feature of the editor is to adjust defensive positions--using the editor, an outfielder can be allowed to play LF and RF, an INF can play 2b, SS and 3B, and a C can be allowed to play 1B and 3B. This can be useful if one's roster is overpopulated at one or more positions. a few minor tweaks with the player editor can produce a roster of players able to play two or three positions each, and then the pileup becomes moot as each player can play more than one position.

also you can import face photos from many sources and insert them into the database instead of using the (sometimes very silly) generated photos. so long as they are small, they will work.

there are many more applications of the player editor that can and should be said, but as this is but an introductory guide, one should leave it here and allow you to explore on your own.

2) Parks

Another useful feature is the ability to edit parks and park locations.

For example, if you wanted to edit the LA Dodgers and make them the Brooklyn Dodgers, or you are simply playing a historical game with the Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins, you can go into the Park editor and substitute an actual photo of Ebbetts as well as jigger the geographical locale and the park dimensions and park factors.

There are on the web various sites that keep track of park factors and park dimensions for all of the parks now and defunct, as well as dimensions to all directions and wall sizes.

So, for instance, if you are curious if Barry Bonds could have hit 73 Home Runs in the Deadball Era parks which were often 505 feet to CF and 400 feet down the lines and 495 feet to LCF and RCF, you can try that thesis out.

In truth, he probably can't--Babe Ruth in 1921 faced most of those parks and hit only 59--it's pretty well documented he hit about 40 more that would have been homers in 2001.

But I leave you all to it.

OOTP 14 is probably not the best game for individual game replay. if you want to replay individual games, or play a ball and strikes game, then you don't want this game, you want to go with one of the XBOX baseball simulators with a joystick.

however, for running entire season replays, OOTP 14 is extremely fast--it can run an entire season replay in a very short amount of time, while you are working on something else, in a diminished window, and then you can pull up the results with all the stats.

Another useful feature is contained in global rules tweaks, and that is the playoffs--you can customize the playoffs.

For example, instead of having 2 division winners play, or 3 division winners play with a wild card, one can customize the playoffs to 2 division winners plus 2 wild cards (8 team league) or 3 division winners plus 5 wild cards (15 team league, 8 playoff teams each league) thus producing more NBA/NHL like playoffs.

Utilizing customization of playoffs allows one to go back in time and see if some of your favorite teams, like the 1980s era Yankees, might have made it as a wild card, had they been afforded the opportunity, and once in, might they have won the World Series one of those years.

There are many such "what if" questions that can and should be answered like this.

Note on product endorsement: Curt Schilling, who sunk his entire life's fortune into a gaming company that failed, endorsed OOTP long ago as the ideal baseball simulation. The guy who pitched with the bloody sock and reversed the curse in Boston.

You have to admit, that's a decent amount of street cred, love him or hate him.

This is merely an introduction to OOTP 14. There are many, many more things that could be said or written about it. There are online fora and many discussions about this game online. This guide is merely an introduction to some of the interesting aspects of OOTP 14.

It should be noted that OOTP 15 is out now, which will have updated the player databases through at least 2013, possibly later, and which introduces even newer features, and one should of course take a look at that as well. It will occupy more space on the hard drive and the graphics may be superior, but you may also need a newer computer to run it. C'est la vie, and let's play ball!