Gameplan Baseball is a simulation of Major League Baseball. You are the manager of a Major League ball-club, taking your team through a 162 game regular season. If you're good enough and qualify for the play-offs you continue and try to reach and win the World Series.

In Gameplan Baseball we try to make the game work the same way as in real life, with realistic decisions to be made about team management. The choices you make are the same as you'd have to make in real life.Sometimes you'll have to make tough decisions, whether to sign better pitchers or batters, or develop your stadium and income sources to improve your future finances.

In addition to the management decisions about signing and cutting players you've also got to shuffle your roster from game to game. You've injuries to contend with, as well as players losing form. You have to decide which pitchers will be in your starting rotation and which will operate from the " bullpen". You have to decide when to rest your star batters, and who to use as pinch hitters and when to use them.

Your objective is to win the World Series against teams run by other players drawn from all over the country (and around the world). During each turn you play three three-game series (so a total of nine games are played each turn). You have to make a mixture of decisions: both "playing" decisions and "management" decisions as both are equally important for a Baseball manager.

Each batter and pitcher is rated according to four skills. For batters they are Hitting, Power, Speed Fielding. For pitchers they are Accuracy, Control, Quickness and Stamina. The better a player's skills are the more effective he will be, but the higher his wage demands will be. Gameplan Baseball is as much about financial management as coaching - you can't build a "superteam" because you've only got limited finances, so the key to success is getting the best value for money out of your roster.

Each turn you have to decide who'll start in the batting lineup, and who to use as pinch hitters, or in platoons (specialists who come in when you face a left handed pitcher). You've also got to decide on the batting order. Most batters need some rest during the season, otherwise they'll be less effective during the play-offs (assuming you reach the play-offs) so you've also got to try and rest them as you go along, without sacrificing your playoff chances. As well as the decisions about batters you've also got to decide on your starting rotation for pitchers, and who to use in the bullpen. For each pitcher you'll decide when to take him out of the game and the situations in which you'll bring in particular bullpen pitchers.

In addition to these "game-day" decisions you've also got to make roster decisions and financial decisions during each turn. You can sign players from the free-agent list, or make trades with other players. Whilst on the free agent list players' values (and their wages) drop, so you'll commonly find you'll need to leave some of your over-priced veterans on the free-agent list and then resign them when their demands have dropped to more realistic levels. Other teams may sign them in the meantime but if you lose a player to another team you do get compensation. You also have to make decisions about sending players to the minor leagues, either to turn their form around, or perhaps younger players you wish to develop.

During the play-offs each team participates in the college draft, signing new talent to their rosters. These are usually "promising" players packed with potential who'll need a season or two to mature. At the end of each season each player is also assessed for gaining or losing abilities. This is dependent upon a player's "potential" - a player loses one point of potential each season. A player with lots of potential is likely to gain skills quickly, particularly if his form during the season was good. A player with no potential will start to lose skills. Either way, players' wage demands increase as they get older so you'll need to decide whether a player is continuing to provide value for money.

Each turn you'll receive up to a dozen pages of reports: a full roster listing with current form, injury details, lineups and so on, plus detailed stats for all of your players. You'll also receive full boxscores for all games you played, and outline reports on all games played in your league that turn, as well as details of free agent signings, trades, injuries and all the other news y you'll need around the league. You also have the option of receiving extra reports - there are many optional stats listings, you can receive play-by-play listings of your games and so on. For those who really want to see all the stats from their games the option is there if you want it, though the extra listings won't give you an advantage over other managers (though they may well increase your enjoyment of the game).