Retro Bowl Roster Guide: Salary Cap, Draft, Trades and Morale

Retro Bowl hands you a roster, a salary cap and a pile of coaching credits, and the in-game help text is fairly clear about what each of them does. This guide sticks to what the game itself tells you on the Roster, Draft, Free Agents and Staff screens of the browser build hosted on this site, so you can plan an off-season without guessing.

Star players and the salary cap

You only manage your key players. The game's own wording: "You can have up to 10 key players, so long as you don't exceed the salary cap." The options let you switch to a 12-man roster with a $200m salary cap instead. Everyone else on the squad is hidden, and their share of the offense and defense ratings comes from your coordinators. If you want to go back from 12 to 10, the game first asks you to cut the roster down to 10.

When you try to sign someone who would take you over the cap, the game tells you how much room is left and asks you to cut or trade first. The cap can also be raised for good from the Front Office by spending coaching credits to "persuade the league commissioner".

The rookie draft

• There are 3 rounds and you get 1 pick per round, unless you have traded for more.
• Potential is hidden until you scout a player from his profile page, and the number of scouts per draft is limited.
• A coordinator with the Scout trait lets you scout 3 extra players.
• If you skip, the game offers to sell your remaining picks in that round for coaching credits.

Since scouting is limited, spend it on the positions you actually need to fill rather than on the top name in the list.

Free agents and trades are different things

The Free Agents screen has two lists. Free agents are players who went undrafted or are out of contract, and signing them costs coaching credits plus cap space. Trades are players under contract elsewhere; you pay for them with one of your future draft picks. Other teams also make offers for your players in return for picks, and you can refresh either list for credits.

Two limits matter here. You cannot trade after week 8, and the week of the deadline gets a warning message. After that you can only cut players or sign free agents. And no team will take an injured player or one whose attitude is toxic, so those players can only be cut.

Morale, toxic players and meetings

Player attitude runs from Toxic through Bad, Poor and Ok to Good and above. The loading tips explain the cost of a toxic player: he brings down his teammates' attitudes after a loss, and cutting a toxic player improves team morale. Cutting anyone who is not toxic harms morale instead.

The Meeting button on a player's profile spends credits on one player per week: raise his morale, raise his condition, level him up (extra reps, game film, or tips from a hall of famer), extend his contract by a year, or talk an older player into delaying retirement by a year. Once a player has "reached his potential", the level-up option is closed.

Coordinator traits

Coordinators come with one trait or none. The ones listed in the game are Experience (instant level up), Talent Spotter (instant potential increase), Motivator (morale boost), Negotiator (toxic players do no harm to teammates), Fan Favorite (+1% fan happiness per game), Physio (5% condition per game), Likeable (5% XP per game, but morale drops if you fire him), Positive (tiredness does not hurt morale) and Scout. Most of these apply to one position group, which the trait text names, so read it before you hire.

Thinking about the next contract

When a contract runs out, the player says how many years and what salary he wants, and he goes on the free agent list if you do not re-sign him. A player with low morale will refuse to sign at all, so fix his mood before his deal ends.