The game is played using the rules and charts from the 1982 version of Football Strategy as published by The Avalon Hill Game Company, except as identified here.
The game allows for Overtime to be played. If overtime is warranted (game is tied), select the option to continue into overtime. The game will ask you if you want to continue the overtime after every score or change of possession. It is up to the players to recognize when the overtime should end.
During the regular season, there will be one 10-minute overtime period. If the game remains tied with 5:00 (or less) remaining in the overtime period, and the game is not at a prompt allowing you to indicate the game is over, the two players should coordinate on a call to create a turnover. (I would suggest using a 2-B call) This should then bring up the "Overtime continues" or "Game ends" prompt. At this point, both players should select "Game ends", which will record the end of the game as a tie. It is also the players responsibility to self-limit themselves to 2 timeouts during that OT period.
For the purposes of this event, we will use the current NFL Playoff overtime rules. (The official rules can be found on the NFL web site.)
Briefly, the most recent change specifies that both teams will get at least one possession in overtime.
If the receiving team fumbles the kickoff in overtime, this counts as their possession. That means that the original kicking team will win the game with any score.
Normal Kick Offs, Field Goal and PAT attempts are resolved by a 2-die chart as shown within the game.
With the current changes to NFL kickoff rules, 1 will be added to the die roll on all on-side kick attempts.
This means that on-side kicks are only going to be successful on a die roll of 1.
Special cases for kickoffs are resolved as follows:
If a PENALTY is rolled, the dice are rolled again. The penalty is applied against the receiving team.
If a second PENALTY is rolled, the penalty results cancel out and no penalty is applied. (This remains true regardless of how many penalty results are rolled.)
If a FUMBLE is rolled, the dice are rolled again. The kicking team recovers the ball at the final location of the play.
If a second FUMBLE is rolled, then the receiving team has recovered the ball. Possession will continue to flip between teams as subsequent fumble results are rolled.
If a FUMBLE is rolled and the result is a LONG GAIN result that would be a touchdown for the receiving team, the receiving team is considered to have fumbled the ball after crossing the Goal Line. This gives the receiving team the Touchdown.
Punts into the End Zone are automatically resolved as a touchback, except for the Long Gain result which is resolved and applied.
Extremely slow play may be penalized. A complete regular-season game should take well less than 2 hours to complete. If I receive a complaint about a slow player, I will examine the game logs to determine the time spent by that player - and if appropriate, the player will be notified that their pace of play is unacceptable. I do not have a hard limit defined yet for what will be unacceptable, but it will at least require that the game has taken more than 2 hours to complete and that more than 2/3rds of the "wait time" can be attributed to one player. The second occurance will result in a warning. Third and subsequent instances will result in the game being recorded as a forfeit.
Note: While the playtesters and I have done our best to ensure that results are calculated correctly, it's possible that there might still be mistakes in the game. If you find that something happened that doesn't seem right, please let me know so that it can be fixed.
However, the results of the game will stand as recorded. (Consider it to be a particularly bad call by an official - they do happen.)