Pay-dirt Dynasty
Pay-dirt Dynasty is the ultimate in Fantasy American Football. You are an NFL Coach. You sign real-life NFL stars, select them for your team and their performances each week determine your success. It’s your chance to coach real-life NFL players, and show that YOU are the best coach in your league.
Every week you have to decide which players to select, signing new players, doing trades with other coaches and predictions for the results of NFL games. Gridstats is a “hands-on” game, where to reach and stay at the top you have to be wheeling and dealing every single week of the season.
How it works
There are sixteen teams in each game of Pay-dirt Dynasty (to ensure a competitive market for the NFL stars), divided into two conferences of eight teams.
Pay-dirt Dynasty is a game of football management. Your squad is made up of twenty current NFL stars and your results are determined solely by their performances in real-life every week. Each turn you have to select a lineup from your squad, made up of seven starters and seven backups (Pay-dirt Dynasty only concentrates on the so called offensive “skill positions”). A standard lineup is one quarterback, two running backs, one tight end, two wide receivers and a kicker, though you can play a tight end or wide receiver instead of the second running back and a wide receiver instead of the tight end if you choose to do so. Your players stats for the week are taken from their real-life performances, with every single game played in the NFL during the previous weekend days being used. It’s important you select the right players. There’s no point having one of the top scorers in the NFL if you haven’t selected him in your lineup!
Scoring
Players score according to a number of categories. Normally only the starters’ scores count, but if a starter fails to score in real-life then his backup’s stats count instead. Players score running touchdowns, passing touchdowns and receiving touchdowns the same as in real-life, except that to score a passing touchdown you must have one of your players throw a passing TD in real-life and another (or even the same player) catch a TD in real-life. You don’t score if you have someone catch a TD pass but no-one to throw it to him and vice versa.
Conversions and extra points are also scored as per real-life, again subject to the restriction that for your team to make a conversion or extra point you must have scored a touchdown for them to convert. Field goals are scored normally.
In addition to real-life touchdowns players may also be allocated bonus scores for good performance.
Players score according to a number of categories. Normally only the starters’ scores count, but if a starter fails to score in real-life then his backup’s stats count instead. Players score running touchdowns, passing touchdowns and receiving touchdowns the same as in real-life, except that to score a passing touchdown you must have one of your players throw a passing TD in real-life and another (or even the same player) catch a TD in real-life. You don’t score if you have someone catch a TD pass but no-one to throw it to him and vice versa.Conversions and extra points are also scored as per real-life, again subject to the restriction that for your team to make a conversion or extra point you must have scored a touchdown for them to convert. Field goals are scored normally.
In addition to real-life touchdowns players may also be allocated bonus scores for good performances (these are instead of their actual scores, not in addition to them), reflecting the fact that in real-life often one player does the bulk of the work moving the ball down the field while another actually takes the ball into the endzone. A player is awarded one bonus rushing touchdown for every 80 yards rushing, one bonus passing touchdown for every 100 yards passing and one bonus touchdown reception for every 5 receptions he makes, or every 80 yards receiving.
Coaching and strategies
The stats your players and your opponents players produce for each game may be modified by strategies called by you and your opponent. There are a variety of strategies available (e.g. Run based offense adds a rushing touchdown to one running back, but subtracts a passing touchdown from your quarterback) which you may wish to use in certain circumstances.
You can use strategies to enhance an area of strength in your team, mask a weakness or to try to disrupt your opponent. The success of strategies depends upon what you call, what your opponents call and the investment each team has made in their coaching levels (these coaching levels represent your offensive line, defensive line and defensive backs).
Game results
The regular season follows the NFL regular season, played from September through to late December/early January, with the playoffs in January (so pay dirt) goes into hibernation between February and the August - when it restarts for the following season). Turns are normally run and posted on Tuesday night with orders for the next turn due to be emailed back to me (sean.connors45@icloud.com) by the following Saturday before the player plays. You can leave it as late as you like but once the game starts no further emails will be excepted and only the backup can score now.
Each week you play one other team in your league and the result of the game is simple - if you outscore your opponents you win, if you don’t, they win. At the end of the season the teams with the most wins go forward into the playoffs, trying to reach and win the Gridbowl.
Playoffs
At the end of the regular season the Two divisional winners, plus the six best teams three from each conference (known as “wild-cards” go into the Gridbowl playoffs. These are run at the same time as the NFL Playoffs with similar scoring rules to the regular season. However, in the playoffs teams are also allocated “bonus” scores according to their performances during the regular season. Consequently success in the playoffs is based upon a mixture of your regular season performances and any players you have in your team who are also active in the real-life playoffs.
There is often a scramble amongst the contenders at the end of the regular season to sign “playoff performers”. Teams who haven’t got a chance in the playoffs and are building for the following season can often cash in by trading these players at inflated prices!
Roster management
Pay-dirt is a trading game. You have a limited income every turn (which is biased towards helping losing teams to recover by giving them more income, though you can increase your income by investing in marketing, merchandising and so on) with which to pay your players. The more successful your players are, the higher their wage demands become, so you need to continually be signing players and shuffling your roster to keep your finances under control, and keep your team competitive.
Pay-dirt isn’t a game where you can sign the “perfect team” and then simply watch them win all season. Eventually you’ll need to address escalating wage demands and sign cheaper, up-and-coming players and make a profit on your high-wage players.
Poaching players
If a player is drastically undervalued then other teams can approach them and tempt them away by offering the player a significantly higher salary (at least 50% higher than his current salary). The player’s current team always have the chance to match such an offer, and if they do decide not to match it they receive compensation when the player moves teams, so they’ll have more money available to go out and find a replacement.
Every player has a value, and it’s up to you to decide how much a player is worth to you.
Trading and signing players
Every turn you’ve got decisions to make about signing, trading or waiving players. You can offer your own players for trade, make bids for unsigned players or approach underpaid players from other teams. In all cases you decide how much to bid for a player. If another team decide he’s worth more then they can increase your bid the following turn (though they have to bid at least 50% more than you), otherwise you sign the player.
Included for your interest how the game starts this is pulled direct from the rule book. I will not be putting the full pdf up as that is only for those that buy in but what I have done is included this example and the condensed idea above.
SETUP RULES
2.1 NEW STARTS When a new league sets up each team begins with 500 TP (trading points/games currency)and no players signed. 25 TP’s are added at the end of each of the three bidding rounds. This ensures that no team can run out of TP’s during the setup stage. Bidding is competitive and all bids in a round are counted before a player signs for the team with the highest bid. Only I see the full set of bids and only the winning bid is announced.
2.2 RESTARTS The game is inactive outside the football season, and is restarted by the GM at the beginning of the new season. A new league roundup, fixture list, player list, team report and turnsheet is issued to each player that has one or more turn credits. Other teams will be made available to new players as standby places. At the start of a new season each teams Marketing and Coaching levels are halved, Facilities decrease by one level and all holdouts are cancelled.
2.3 STANDBY PLACES When a new coach is appointed to a team with fewer than 100 LPs then their balance is increased to 100 LPs.
2.4 INITIAL BIDS Bids must be in whole numbers of losing points, and the highest bid gets the player. The amount bid is paid out immediately, and losing bids are ignored. Where equal highest bids are made by different teams then the winning bid is decided at random (in a video live via Facebook page). During the initial bidding rounds if one or more bids are made for a player then he will sign immediately for the highest bidder.
2.5 NO BIDS If a player fails to submit a set of initial bids for some round then the computer will make up random bids instead. It selects players that no-one has bid for (at random) and signs them for a modest bid. Note that you’ll normally only get rubbish this way, but you may get lucky. Note that this only applies if you submit no bids at all: you may choose to submit fewer then ten bids in a round (common in later rounds if you were successful in early rounds and have few spaces left on your roster).
2.6 FINAL ROUND After the third round of bids has been processed the computer attempts to fill up any empty places in the team selection by making further minimum bids at random (this is to minimise the damage done to the team if the coach fails to submit orders for a bidding round).
2.7 FURTHER SIGNINGS Further free agents may be signed later during normal play (with a slightly different system).
2.8 CASH LIMITS If you attempt to spend more losing points than you have available then some of your bids are reduced to 1 TP (starting with the last bid made and working backwards until you can afford to sign all the players you bid for).
2.9 ROSTER LIMITS If you attempt to sign more players than will fit on your roster then the new players are signed and waived immediately. Note that it is possible for someone else to sign a player that you bid for, and then exceed their roster limit and be forced to waive him again. In this case the player concerned will still appear as a free agent on the player list, even though your bid was rejected.
2.10 NO TRADING POINTS If at the end of the first or second bidding round you have less than 10 LPs then the GM may allow you to waive one player to allow you to make a full set of bids for the remaining bid rounds. Once the bidding rounds are completed teams may overcome the problem of lack of TO’S by raising bonds (see 1.24).