Gridiron Dynasty

The Player's Guide was written using information gathered from coaches playing Gridiron Dynasty, the FAQ, and Developer Chats. Special thanks to Buckicoyote for compiling and organizing all of the information. If you have a correction or addition, please let us know here.

It is first come, first served. When it is announced that sign ups are open, you can take a look at all of the Division III teams that are available (unless you have previous experience in a world that will allow you to start higher). You can choose to pick an established team and try to keep it at a high level of performance or try to build up a struggling team from scratch. If you choose a high performing team, you will be competing with other high performing schools for the best players at a disadvantage since you do not have excess recruiting money from the previous season nor the coaching resume of the other coaches at these schools. If you choose a rebuilding project, you can build up your recruiting money pool as your team improves, though you can only save 25% of your remaining money each season. Both ways are challenging but it is up to you to decide which challenge you want to face.

At the start of your season, you should set your practice plan. You need to set up for both your team practice sessions and your positional practice sessions. Your practice time will total 180 minutes. It is generally accepted to not spend more than 20 minutes (some say 25) practicing any one formation or individual drill. There is also general acceptance that you shouldn’t practice more than 2 offensive sets and 2 defensive sets. There is debate on how much time to spend on special teams. Many spend no time at all while some spend up to 5-10 minutes. In order to maintain current skill levels, you should spend about 7-8 minutes on a skill.

Each player has attributes that are important for their position (See recruiting section for details). There are eleven tools for practicing at each position. Each tool will have a different impact on player attributes.

Note: This is intended and written for D-III coaches. If you are coaching at a higher level, then you likely already know the information contained in this section.

Your team has a roster of 50 players and all of them are on a scholarship. Each year, when seniors graduate, you will have new scholarships available to replace them. To recruit them, you will need to spend recruiting money. Each season, you are given $3,000 per open scholarship to help you recruit. If you do not spend it all, a maximum of 25% will carry over to the next season if you have filled all of your scholarships. This is an important concept if you want to compete for the best players when your vision increases. You also need to decide which positions that you need to recruit. The positions are QB, RB, WR, TE, OL, DL, LB, DB, K, and P. Please note that you won’t be recruiting a Center, Guards, and Tackles on the offensive line but instead are just recruiting Offensive Lineman. The same is true for Defensive Lineman, Linebackers, and Defensive Backs. How many players you have at each position depends on which offensive and defensive formations that you will be using.

You can follow these general guidelines as to the number of players at each position:

Please note that the minimum number of players on the chart will only give you 36 players. You need to choose where the other 14 players will go. Also, you may go with 1 kicker and no punter or vice versa if you wish to save an extra roster spot. In this case, the kicker or punter will perform both kicking and punting duties. Each position has core abilities to look for when recruiting. Below are the Core Attributes, Secondary Attributes, and a list of what to look for in a Solid Player and a Star Player at each position.

Now that you know what to look for, how do you get these players on your team? As a new coach, you probably want to avoid battles with other schools for your recruits. Your funds may be lower than theirs since they could have carryover money from previous seasons and money earned by their conference during the post-season. If you battle, you will could lose out and then not have the funds to recruit other players. If you run out of recruiting money before filling all of your scholarships, the AI will sign players for you. You want to avoid the AI signing any players for you because they will be below average and your assistant coach will use any remaining money that you may have in your budget.

The first thing that you need to do is search for recruits. Under recruiting, click on the search function. Put in your criteria and search for players. As a new coach, you probably want to stay as close to your college (under 360 miles) for your search as possible. You will also need to stick with projected D-III players because higher level players will not sign with you. Once you have found players, you can move them to your summary by clicking the check mark box on the left side of the screen or opening their profile (click the recruit's name) and performing an available recruiting action.

You now have all of your players (and hopefully some backup players so you can avoid battles) that you are interested in signing on your summary page. At 12:00 PM EST on the day recruiting starts, you can start using your tools (other than adding a watch) to recruit these players. The following is a list of the available recruiting tools:

During the recruiting period, you will also be able to schedule up to three pre-season exhibition games. These are important so that your players will have time to practice and improve. Two of these games must be played before your freshmen join your roster. The third game can be played before or after they join. If any players are hurt in an exhibition game, you may lose them for the regular season. The earlier you play your games, the more time they will have to heal but your freshman will not get to play. If you play after freshmen are added, they will get a practice in but you could lose some players for the regular season due to injuries.

As soon as recruiting starts, you can schedule pre-season exhibition games (max of 3) and next year’s non-conference schedule. You can challenge any team to an exhibition game, but it is best to stay at the same level as your team. These games are simulated at 2:30 AM EST. Make sure you have a depth chart and a game plan set up before the game is played. Exhibition games are important so that you can start improving your team. You only practice on days that you have games (both preseason and regular season). You can also start scheduling your next year’s non-conference schedule. You need to have 5 non-conference games. You can request a home or an away game. AI controlled teams will automatically accept while user controlled teams can either accept, decline, or counter. You must have all of the games scheduled prior to the end of the post-season or the computer will try to schedule them for you. If you do not schedule the games yourself, you may not end up with 5 non-conference games the next season.

Before playing any games, you will want to setup your depth charts. When you go to set your depth charts, you must first set your basic depth chart and then the advanced depth charts if you wish to use them. The basic depth chart is used if you do not set your advanced depth charts and is also used to determine who starts a game (important for promised starting jobs during recruiting). For starting purposes, the game looks at basic depth chart and the base offense/defense of the main active game plan to choose which formation is considered for starters. If a player is set in the basic depth chart as a starter according to the base formation and participates in one play in the first half, he will be credited for a start. Each advanced depth chart is set up according to formation (formation specifics can be found in the Gridiron 101 section.

In the advanced depth charts, the players will fill the positions in the order that you choose to place them on the chart (i.e. top player will be used first). If a player is not on the depth chart to fill a needed slot, the sim will choose the player to fill the slot and your team will suffer for it.

The effectiveness percentages deal with when players will be substituted into your line up. A setting of 90% will mean that when a player is fatigued (or injured) to a 90% level, he will leave the game. The next player on the depth chart will take his place. Fatigue is used in conjunction with stamina to determine how effective a player will be. Players with a higher stamina will be able to play with more fatigue than players with a lower stamina. The recommended effectiveness setting for a player with average (50) stamina is 60%.

Distribution determines who runs the ball when considering QB and RB runs. This can be used as percentages or as straight numbers. For example, you could set the QB at 10, RB1 at 50, and RB2 at 40. This would meant that the QB would run the ball 10% of the time, the #1 RB will run it 50% of the time and so on. Straight numbers could be set up as 1, 5, and 4 for the same results. You can use any method that you like. For receivers, the numbers indicate which receiver will be looked at first in the QB's progressions. The higher numbered receiver will be looked at first. If he is covered, the QB will look for the #2 WR in the progression of reads.

Game planning is the part of the game where you choose how you want your offense and defense to play. You can choose to create custom game plans or use the default game plans. Each game plan has 3 sections: base settings, offense, and defense. You specify when to use each game plan in the active settings section.

The base settings for each game plan sets up your base formations for offense and defense. This will effect which players are considered to be starters on your team and if you don't set any specific offense or defense settings, these formations will be used throughout the game. You can also set your base style (aggressiveness) and tendency (run/pass split). Your base offensive style is used throughout the game to make decisions around when to punt, kick a field goal, or go for a first down.

Under offense, there are settings for each of the four downs. For each down, you must choose from 1 – 3 formations, for long, medium, and short situations. The first thing that you need to do is set the yards for each situation. For example, on first down, Long could be set to 11 or more, Medium to 6-10, and Short from 1-5. You then can choose 3 offensive sets to use (you can use the same set more than once). You then pick the tendency. The following chart gives a breakdown on the affects of tendency choices:

Style is used to determine how aggressive the team will be playing. If you choose an aggressive setting on offense, your team will be more likely to make a big play but also more likely to turn the ball over. (It also seems that more sweeps will be run on aggressive and more runs up the middle on conservative.) There are then three check boxes. They are normal, red zone, and inactive. Normal formations will be used outside the opponent’s twenty yard line. Red zone formations will be used inside the opponent’s twenty yard line. Inactive formations will not be used. A formation can be used for both normal and red zone. Also, more than one formation can be used in each situation as well.

The defense is set up similarly to the offensive settings. For each down, you must choose a yardage for short, medium, and long. You then need to choose a defensive set to counter each possible offensive formation. You choose the tendency next and finally the style. High aggressiveness on defense will cause more turnovers but you are more likely to give up the big play. The tendency marks the type of play, run or pass, that your defense is looking for out of the offense and therefore be in a better position to defend against it.

The active settings section is used to set when each game plan is used in a game. You will need a minimum of three game plans for every game. You will need to set up a main game plan, a game plan when you are winning, and a game plan when you are losing. You may also set up two more optional game plans. You can pick the time and amount you are winning or losing by for the different game plans to become active. For example, you can you can choose for a game plan to go into effect when losing by 7 or more points with 5 minutes left to go in the half. Note that these settings take effect at both the end of the first half and the end of the game.

During the 3 days of the job period (after the renewal deadline and prior to when new coaches can get teams), you can try to move up to a new division or laterally within a division to a new team. You will lose all of your accumulated recruiting money with any change. To change jobs, you must apply for a job. To do that, you go to the office tab and click on jobs. You will get a listing of all of the jobs available in every division. You may only go up one division (i.e. D-III to D-II) at a time. Pick the school that you want a job at and click on the apply button. Your loyalty will take a hit when you apply for a job at another school. (If you apply for more than three positions in D-II after one season in D-III, your loyalty will drop to a C+ and you will not get any job in D-II.) The penalty is higher for moving laterally to a new team within the same division that you are already in (i.e. D-III to D-III). The jobs list will list the qualifications of each job and during this time indicate which jobs you may be qualified to take.