Ok, time to nominate my successor
I decided to nominate
loki100 , because of his continuous encouragement of the AAR that sprout in less frequented areas of the AARland ( say, Rome or the (RIP) AGEOD area ). One person feedback means a lot more in a forum where there are less active readers than in others and loki never fails to encourage posters to continue their work.
So, congratulations,
loki100
Well this is both a surprise and rather embarrassing. I've not been at all active since time and other demands forced me to stand down as DM so my activity and commenting has slipped to near 0. This hasn't been helped by spending quite a lot of time rescuing AARs from the AGEOD forum and the frustration of realising the multi-voice 'how to' AARs are probably unsaveable.
Anyway grumbles out the way.
I've written a fair bit elsewhere on the role of comments. This forum is unique and its not just a combination of (relatively) large volume of activity allied to consistently high standards of interaction. Its that there is such a range of AAR styles available. There always will be good gameplay AARs and here many are both exceptionally well written and often funny. Equally the improvement in the quality of the graphical work over the last year or so has been remarkable. What stands out is the more risk-taking history/narrative styles. I don't think I have seen anything like that on any other AAR forum (certainly not in the volume or quality). Lord D has given one reason - many of the individuals who set this forum up and established the culture that still dominates were keen to use AARing as a way to test out writing styles (a mindset I share fully).
But there is another reason. Which is the nature of the comments. Elsewhere, these are often sparse and related to a specific element in the update. Here, people speculate over character, narrative structure, the nature of history writing as well as respond to the update. That, I think is something unique and to be cherished.
So if you want AARland to carry on (as something other than a repository of descriptions of gameplay), then commenting is as much a building block as writing. So go forth, leave comments, speculate, tell the writer that you really liked an idea/paragraph/screenshot/bad pun. If we don't (& it is a we), then the variety here will diminish.
As to places to find AARs. I know that many people only read AARs for games they own or are playing. And that is one way to use this resource. But there are gems all over the place (one of my minor peeves is its easy to lose sight of Mount and Blade as it is not linked to this forum). I'd urge you to visit Rome/AGEOD et al (but then as the latter is on the way out, perchance not now), there are some fascinating stuff in there and as Ricardo Rolo says, if you opt to write in one of the quieter corners (those games or the older versions of the main Paradox franchise), then you do appreciate all the more regular comments.
I'll respond to comments at the end of my (undeserved) period in the sun.
