All the Action - No Bruises - Your chance to be an NFL coach

Gameplan version 2.15 is the latest version of the award winning PBM game, introducing a new basic gameplan, new plays, special teams strategies and individual scouting reports.

In Gameplan you are an NFL coach. Every week you have to prepare to face an opponent within your league. You decide what plays and formations to use, when to call them and then watch the game unfold. The best teams during regular season, qualify for the play-offs. As in real life you've also go the college draft at the end of the season, giving you the chance to sign new players and replace your fading stars. You choose who to sign, based upon your strengths and weaknesses and the way you want to build your team.

Gameplan is a coaching game. whilst their is a roster building element to the game your success and failure will depend upon your ability to choose the right plays to beat your opponent, exploiting his teams weakness and making use of your teams strengths. You'll be using an expansive playbook of around twenty offensive formations, forty offensive play-calls (runs and passes) and twenty defensive play-calls.

Each turn you have to send in a gameplan to face your opponent for that week. The plays you use will depend upon your teams strengths and your opponents weaknesses. You need to use a mixture of plays to keep him/her off balance, and prevent him/her from adjusting too much to one or two calls - if you call a play too much their team will start to see it coming!

Your teams strengths and weaknesses are rated according to your players skills, with offensive and defensive players rated in - inside running, outside running, short passing, long passing and quarterback protection (pass rushing for defenders). There are also special team ratings for - Kicking, punting, kick and punt returning. Your balance of strengths will probably determine the style of play you use. If you've lots of inside running strengths you'll probably run a power offense, trying to set up play-action passes to take the advantage of the defence looking for the run. If you've lots of short-passing strengths you may run a more balanced offence, using screens, draws and traps to stop the defence keying on the pass.

Your plays are called according to your gameplan, which has a number of situations: first and second down, short yardage (specialist calls when you only need a yard or two for another set of downs), long yardage (when you've really got to pass to have a chance of making it), third down and so on. In addition you've got other situations such as change up (after half time, when you're losing and need to do something different),change down (after half time, when your winning and want to eat up the clock) and hurry-up (when you're losing and its desperate, and you need to score as quickly as possible). Different situations will call for different mixtures of play-calls and formations.

When you receive your game results you get a full play by play report of the game you've just played, showing the play-calls chosen by both offence and defence and the results of the play. In addition you'll receive full stats from your game, full details of all the games played in your league that turn and a scoring report for your next opponent, giving more detail of his last game, and the plays he used during that game.

At the end of the season the top teams go into the play-offs and all teams participate in the college draft, signing new players and replacing their fading/retiring veterans.

Gameplan has three versions. The "standard" game is Gameplan Basic, played by the majority of players. In Gameplan Advanced instead of using the set situations detailed further up this page you get to define the situations yourself, According to the score, down, yardage to go and position on the field. It's more complicated, but does give you more flexibility if thats what you want. Gameplan Super-bowl you don't actually call plays yourself, but give strategy ratings and then the computer makes the play calls for you.

Its generally recommended that new players start with Gameplan Basic, and then move to one of the other versions if they feel it will suit them best.