Hello everyone, and thank you grayghost for this wonderful honor.
I'd been hoping to announce a new post for 'Tannenberg', but I'm having a bit of a spat with the (custom) event sequence coming up and didn't want to wait longer to thank you all for your support. Hopefully in the next day or two.
'Tannenberg' started as a combo - a 'present day' conversation/analysis between Cat (me) and a mysterious knight, followed by a history book style for the actual AAR. I soon abandoned the conversation. I know many of Tannenberg's readers enjoyed it, but I felt it curtailed what I could or couldn't do with the game. For example, Cat and the knight ended up in a fight with 'modern' Teutonic Knights. Well...the Teutonic Knights ended in 1497 in this timeline. Certainly I could have gotten around this, but having to continually rewrite things to make the present plausible promised to be too much. Plus, I already have a narrative/'story' in "Resurrection."
As for the characters in Tannenberg....I start with two or three traits I want to emphasize for a given person. Usually there are a handful of these 'people' active at any one time, and I just try to make ingame decisions and custom events based on what they would want.
Oft times what'll happen is I simply play the game, and as I write up the post I'll "rationalize" what happened from their point of view and that will open up new ideas for me. For example, the current crisis started as a "Temporary Insanity of Monarch" event coupled with knowing the 'monarch' secretly wanted to dissolve the order.
In the middle of a big war, the AI started offering generous peace terms ... something like five provinces. I realized this 'monarch' wouldn't accept anything less than complete surrender. Knowing the Grand Master was growing more paranoid and unreasonable, it seemed the Grand Commander - his former second-in-command - would do anything to save the Order ... including launch a coup d'etat.
People compliment me on my political intrigues. Well...thank you. I don't know if I'm so good at it, myself. 'Tannenberg' often leaves me completely bewildered! All I do is make sure there are two or more characters who both (usually) want the same thing - to help their country - but have radically different ideas on how to get there. It's this motive, with a few notes on their personality, that brings them alive for me. It's conflicting motives that allow me to tell a politically oriented tale.
Again, thanks grayghost and everyone else for this wonderful honor!