SOM Rule Book Project

[Update: July 3, 1998. If you've visited this page before, you may wonder when things will be updated. Well, never. SOM's release of a new rule book made this project less important. With my time already at a premium, I decided to divert my spare time to working on other site projects. I apologize if this disappoints anyone.]

Hi,

My name is Jim Furtado and I'm the creator of the BasebaLL Think Factory. One of things that I enjoy most about being on the Internet is participating in the Strat-O-Matic (SOM) Baseball Mailing List. I've played baseball games for years but haven't always been able to share my passion for baseball with others. On the SOM Mailing List, I've found others like myself -- SOM fanatics.

On the SOM Mailing List, the discussions range from who is the best player in baseball to tutorials on mathematical probability. (Thanks, Vince Velten.) I've learned a lot, laughed quite a few times and hopefully added something to everyone's enjoyment of the list.

A topic of discussion which keeps coming up on the list is the lack of a comprehensive rule book for Strat-O-Matic Baseball. SOM's baseball board game is designed to be played under three sets of rules -- basic, advanced and super-advanced. Unfortunately, SOM only wrote a basic rule book with add-on sections for the advanced and super-advanced rules. This leads to confusion for both novice and veteran game players as they must jump back and forth between sections.

About three years ago, my face-to-face league switched from another simulation to Strat-O-Matic. I did a quick compilation of the rules to help my league members learn SOM. I planned on placing my work on my web site. Unfortunately I had a hard drive crash and lost my work. I've wanted to re-type the rule book for sometime, but things kept popping up.

In the last couple of weeks, the rule book discussion has popped up again. With that in mind, I decided to begin this rule book project. With the help of the members of the SOM Mailing List, I hope to produce something that will assist players of Strat-O-Matic Baseball.

I recently finished a first draft of the rule book. Originally I planned to have a limited group help me proofread and re-write the first draft. After receiving some feedback, I've reconsidered and decided to get as many people as possible involved. I've placed a zipped Microsoft doc version and an html version on this site. The doc version has a short table of contents and the formatting is better. The html version was created by importing the doc file into my html coder, so formatting is pretty shoddy. The html version also lacks a few graphics and all game symbols.

Please keep in mind that this is a first draft. In order to get the project going, I did not spend a great deal of time formatting or proofreading. Please look over what I have done so far and help me by submitting feedback. Anyone assisting me will get full credit for his effort. The final version will include a table of content and index.

I'd like to thank everyone who has pitched in already. In advance, I'd like to thank everyone who plans on contributing.

Jim Furtado

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Original material Copyright © 1996-1999 BasebaLL Think Factory This page updated December 28,1997.

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