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Custom Leagues Basic Terminology

Custom leagues are a powerful feature but as a consequence of that they are also fairly complex. There are a few basic concepts that will be helpful to anyone who wants to create a custom league. The purpose of this page isn't to go into deep detail on how to manage it all, but is intended to cover the terminology and try to explain how they relate to each-other.

Rulesets

Rulesets are the most central aspect of a custom league. They dictate most of how the league works, ranging from the rosters available (which also can be custom created) to how skill progression works for the teams that are associated with it. Rulesets also allow configuration of the various client options available in the FFB client. Rulesets can be thought of as a collection of house rules for playing the game although every game played is associated with a ruleset, even in the "official" division matches.

Leagues

Teams are not directly connected to a ruleset. Leagues form a foundation environment to play games in, and could be seen sort of like a local game group who have decided to play the game in a given way. Within a league, the commissioners will have powerful access to the teams that are part of the league, regardless of the actual ruleset being used. A league can be set up by anyone, and can be associated with an existing ruleset such as the official BB2020 ruleset that is maintained by FUMBBL staff, any other ruleset created by someone else, or with a completely new ruleset created by the league organizers.

A team can only be part of a single league at a given time since it decides which rules should apply to the team.

Groups

Groups are, as the name implies, a way to group teams in a logical fashion. The group functions as a host for tracking scores for teams, and a place to set up tournaments.

A team can be part of more than one group at a time. It is also important to note that the way leagues are created, they also create a "home group". FUMBBL can not have a league without a group. The group part of a league isn't required should organizers want to manage the league in some other way. A consequence of this is that a team can be part of a league without needing to be part of the "home group".

Divisions

A division is a higher level segmentation of teams and is used exclusively to separate the official competitive play games from player-run leagues. It's somewhat of a legacy system that has been around long before rulesets were a thing on the site. Fundamentally, a division has a ruleset associated with it which teams operate under when they don't have a league (which is the case in the competitive division). The League division is where all player-run leagues are hosted.