I have been writing AARs for Paradox games since 2001 and unfortunately the screenshots for the older AARs have been lost to time and host failure. They are still quite amusing to read, if I do say so myself, but given how I often leave important information, jokes, or easter eggs in the screenshots, they are by necessity less interesting to read than when they were originally published. For reasons of illness I had a lot of time on my hands in 2002, to which the AAR list stands silent testimony.
Austria: From Pawn to Superpower (part 1) and part 2. (April 2001, completed) - My very first AAR. Suffice to say that few people noticed it at the time and I've become a better writer since then.
The Timurid Scientists – (February 2002 – March 2002, completed) - The first documented World Conquest in EU2. Many people believed it impossible at the time. And the same happened with every patch after that until at least 1.05. Somebody would start a bloody "surely now WC is impossible!" thread in the general forum and I or somebody else would go through the tedium of proving them dead wrong. Some people just do not understand that Paradox games are deliberately made so easy for normal players to play (a very sound marketing decision) that anyone who dedicates the time and patience (oh lord, the patience) to actually learning how their games work have zero problems conquering the entire world except where game mechanics explicitly prevent it (and that has only been the case once or twice and can be gotten around). This was the first AAR featuring Chief Scientist, who had a brief career interrupting other peoples' AARs.
World Conquest for Dummies – (April 2002 – May 2002, completed) - Trebizond paints the world purple. Class is in session. Don't annoy the teacher. Several students graduated to writing their own WC AARs afterwards which was great fun to see.
It Came From the Mountains – (June 2002 – January 2003, completed) - The visit of the Transcendant One occasions much distress in Boing (née Tibet). An adventure with, admittedly, certain martial overtones. For fun, it showed how using a very different playing style from that advocated in WCfD worked just as well, though this was definitely not a WC game... Unfortunately, the series of thoroughly justifiable defensive actions taken happened to conquer the world anyway. These things happen.
WAAR of the Worlds – (July 2002 – December 2002, completed) - Prufrock451, a great writer and humorous fellow, modded the game and sent in max tech Zorthon aliens to conquer the world in this AAR. Then he handed the save over to me with instructions to fight back. This came completely out of the blue, but who could resist such a challenge? Not I.
Persian Tales – (February 2003 – March 2003, abandoned) - A few tales told be an unusual traveler who hooks up with some bandits on the trail across Persia. This AAR was a direct result of me rereading the Arabian nights and deciding to try writing a few stand-alone tales in a style reminiscent of those tales tempered by my own sense of humour. My favourite remains chapter 3's tale. Abandoned due to release schedule of latest game at work.
Knights of Opportunity: In Hoc Signo Vinces - (February 2003 – August 2003, abandoned) The Knights visit Europe, Africa, the Americas, and, well, pretty much everywhere else. Abandoned due to writer's block around 1750 once I reached the extremely tedious last wars of World Conquest, when victory was assured and all that remained was mopping up and fighting rebels, and I'd already been there and done that too many times.
TSUNAMI 2 – (July 2003 – July 2003, abandoned) - The sequel to the original marathon MP game tried to get an AAR thread but failed miserably after just two pages. I played two sessions, once as the Teutonic Knights, once as the Mughal Empire. Smashing human controlled Poland and Lithuania and annexing Novgorod with a diminutive Teutonic Order and an alliance of five one-province German AI minors has never been as fun. Thanks, once again, to Mowers for organizing such a fun marathon game. Just a crying shame that so few of the players wrote AARs.
Machiavelli : Europe Arising (May 2003 – September 2003, completed) - A game of power politics and attempted roleplaying (mostly failed) with a good deal of AAR writing. A great game all in all, though playing Austria with horribly competent (not to mention deceitful and avaricious) neighbours was a harrowing experience. It made for good experience in MP warfare, though, and I gave at least as good as I got.
Machiavelli II - The Rebirth (September 2003 – December 2003, completed)- Building the biggest and baddest Russia around coupled with roleplaying induced passitivity on my side was ultimately bad for the game. I should have broken treaties and thrown my power around, dammit.
When MP, true roleplaying, and storytelling TRULY meets....
Asia - the Awakening – (August 2002 – February 2003, abandoned sort of) - A handful of spirits duke it out in Asia. The game was finished but AAR writing dwindled at the end. A fun game was had by all and it later provided the inspiration for going further, much further, as Wyvern and I pooled our forces some time later for...
Throne of Heaven – (June 2004 – November 2004, completed) - Wyvern and I team up as gamemasters (he's the good GM, I'm the evil GM) for an AAR-obligatory fantastic game of intrigue, death, destruction, and many wonders in Asia. With individualized missions and doublecrossing being the order of the day, the participants had a good time. I play Gothmog and, though I rally the powers of evil to my cause, ultimately I and my allies (both the willing and those who tapped into Gothomog's power and were ensnared by it) are defeated (or SO THEY THINK!). The greatest thing was that most of those who believed they were good (and joined up fighting for the good side in the final battle) had, in fact, already slipped into corruption through their earlier choices by being seduced by other forces of evil than Gothmog. See e.g. this post, where I revealed the funnist player seduction of the game upon its completion. Let me just say that some of these their relations came as a bit of a surprise in the final revelation after good's victory: The end of the tale. This game also provided me with some of the greatest defensive wars I've ever played in EU2. Here is the discussion thread – first post explains the rules of the game.
Throne of Heaven2: The Olympian Rebirth – (December 2004 – May 2005, completed in terror) - Wyvern and I team up as gamemasters again for a second AAR-obligatory romp. I play as Autolycos. Watch in awe as the chosen heroes of the gods repopulate the new world trying to accomplish both their own natural desires and those of their whimsical gods... until they finally encounter the Titans. Which alas killed the game, as it slowed down to a crawl with the horde of Titan armies all over the place, and suddenly it was summertime and sessions were few and far between, but hey, it was a great game. Reading the first post of the Game Thread may make you less puzzled as to what is going on. The last five or ten pages of the thread deal with doom and gloom of the players as the magnitude of the Titan invasion hits them makes for great reading (in-between the boasting and general politics). Avernite said it best after the first few invaders were defeated:
Early on in EU2s AAR lifetime we had a couple of great collaborative AARs organized by MrT and open for everybody willing to write. With saves passed around, forgotten, or lost, with people of very different levels of competency at playing, and with everybody completely free to pursue his own goals to the best of his ability, this created some wonderful experiences for those involved.
Denmark: Fellowship of the Kings – (March 2002 – August 2002, completed) - I got the slot as Frederik V of Denmark (1746-1766) as reserve and I slightly improved the nation's standing in the world by overrunning England (annexed), France (set up ready for diploannexation), the Americas (crushing Spain), and a few other places besides. All in 20 years The link is to the story text copied clean and my entries are posts #91 - #95, but really, if you want to read part of it, read the whole AAR and see just how well people can do when they collaborate. Additionally, this AAR provides an exception to my normal writing style as it is much more serious than the vast majority of my work without, if I may say so, it detracting significantly from the quality.
Every Doge Has his Day – by the “B Team” – (May 2002 May 2003, completed) - I got to substitute for Ariel. My first ruler was Leonardo Loredano (1501-1521) and I got handed a Venice that had just suffered a severe reverse. Needless to say, desperate times called for desperate measures, so with everybody bemoaning our beloved Venice's defeat apart from the A-team who were taunting us, I dropped my intentions of a moderately peaceful reign and and went all out on the offensive. In Loredano's 20 years of reign Venice grew from 22 to 60 provinces reversing all previous defeats, defeating all significant powers, and conquering most of Central Europe besides in one of my most concentrated conquest sprees ever. Pietro Loredan (1567-70) distinguished himself in a very different way and was reported in a series of "what I did on my holidays" mails by private Giovanni Bossi as he moved constantly from war to war and, despite all the warring, ended up safely married to the girl his mother had chosen, and finally as for the brief reign of Sebastiano Venier (1577-1578), no joke can truly suffice.
The Righteous BastAARds – (April 2002 – November 2002, abandoned) - Can two right bastards succeed when playing the same nation alternatingly with the goals of a) fixing the problems caused by the other bastard, while b) royally screwing up the nation in a different way for the other bastard to fix?Norgesvenn (leading Cardinal Fang of the Order of the Swinging Sheepshagging Sinner) and I (leading Cardinal Biggles of the Chanting Lefthanded Genuflectors) playing Spain proved that this was, indeed, the case, though it lead to remarkably silly situations, even for us. It begins with maxing out loans due to be repaid on the very first day of the next player's reign without having the money to cover, of course, and escalates wildly from there.
The Phoenix Rising (Beta AAR) – (July 2013 – August 2013, completed) – Full lecture mode as I explain game mechanics chapter by chapter while going on a moderate conquest spree with Byzantium. Most images have somehow been lost, which is strange as all of them were hosted by Paradox (no foreign host services for beta AARs, everything is internal). Possibly a side effect of one of the major forum upgrades since then.
Russian Cheese – An Expansion Test AAR – (October 2013 – December, abandoned) – Follow Ivan and Boris in the Time Bunker as they suffer from a weird cheese fixation and the end of the world as they know it. The AAR was sabotaged by the Conquest of Paradise DLC release in January 2014, which was not nicely backwards compatible and which ”free features” screwed up my nearly completed World Conquest by breaking up my overseas empire in strange ways. I am not bitter. (Yes I am. (Or at least I was when I wrote this originally.))
We Three Kings – (June 2009 – January 2010 + final entry July 2012, completed) – Wyvern, Swuul, and I have a fun 3-player AAR game, where Blasted Numidia, Eternal Egypt, and Pontus of the Secret History go to extreme lengths not to fight each other while gaining ascendancy. Warning: Heavy on propaganda.
We Three Kings II (Beta AAR) – (March 2019 - April 2019, completed) – Wyvern, Swuul, and I have a fun 3-player AAR game, where Awesome Armenia, Exalted Epirus, and Kustomary Kush go to extreme lengths not to fight each other while gaining ascendancy. Warning: Heavy on propaganda. We got around a hundred years of gameplay before the game was released. As many Beta AARs, it is heavy on mechanics demonstration.
The Byzantine Letters – (April 2004 – July 2004, abandoned) - 20 chapters of correspondence of the Eastern Roman Emperors, often with attachments. A remarkably silly romp that remains one of my favourites. From the very start this wasn't intended to be a complete AAR running until the end, just something to tide me over while waiting for the next patch, and indeed the AAR ended abruptly disappointing legions of followers, but they had been warned from post #1, so what can you do?
Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures – (April 2012 – June 2012, abandoned) – An epic tale of the travails of the kings of Denmark as they populate the world with rulers of house Estridsen. (Or Ylving, as the game insists on calling them). This was sadly much shorter than I would have loved, but a period of extreme work-related stress finishing development of a game killed my interest in continuing the AAR.
A Fistful of Dukes MP AAR – (July 2012 – October 2012, completed) – Six AAR writers, each with their own Byzantine duchy. So obviously the emperor was a six-fingered man. A lot of fun was had until the game descended into serial assassination and extinction of player lines, after which we stopped.
Born to Breed: House of the Prophets – (April 2021 - ?, ongoing) – Tales of the Sigurd dynasty as it populates the world with rulers of house Sigurdr, its inevitable expansion complicated by the occasional prophet.
Chopsticks in the Mist – (December 2002, completed) - Nationalist China overruns, well, pretty much everything you can think of with zero opposition and I throw HoI1 away in disgust, never to return to it. The highlight of the story is probably when the opposition has -88% war entry. Or perhaps realizing that most of the world is being overrun by militia.
Chopsticks in the Mist II (Beta AAR) – this AAR was never released to the public and thus only available for Hoi2 betas, sorry.
Blood to the Ankles - And Rising (Beta AAR) – (October 2003 – November 2003, abandoned) - Japanese WC AAR from the Victoria Beta that got frozen in the middle of being released to the public due to the pre-release pirating of Victoria, which caused Paradox to clamp down immediately on any further release of information useful to actually playing the game until such time as the game was actually released and paying customers would have joy of it (a decision I completely support). As the AAR was pretty heavy on exploiting the game for maximum conquest (surprise, surprise) it had to be frozen. Unfortunately, the resultant pause caused me to lose track of it as something else caught my attention and, hey, I had the Victoria release version to play rather than the latest beta. Of all the AARs that I haven't played through to the end, this is probably the one that I wish most that I had. It stops after only 6 chapters when I've just started the conquest of India + Americas but the game itself had progressed considerably further - the Japanese were mopping up Austria-Hungary and something like a WC seemed within reach.
Fruitcake, the Musical (Beta AAR) – (August 2010, completed) - Japan again, this was a Beta AAR showcasing some of the funny things that can happen while betatesting... such as a world-spanning fruit shortage in the Victorian age. And how to exploit it. I like teasing the devteam when I encounter something really silly. It was finally allowed to be released to the public on sufferance the very day before the release of the game, after the other Beta AARs, so long as, to avoid an overreaction from fans, I added copious disclaimers that the bugs had been fixed and that encountering such weird situations is normal during a Beta – which they were, and which it is.
The game is finally in development! Once it is done, I will find time for an AAR.
The Ebbesen Mandate – A Celestial Empire Test AAR – (April 2017 – June 2017, abandoned) – Spiritual/Xenophobe/Pacifist. Inwards Perfection and Agrarian Idyll? Was this to be the first ever peaceful Ebbesen AAR? Readers were skeptical, and they were right. It was a pacifist conquest test game. It was going well, but then I fell ill for a week, and suddenly had a lot to do, and one thing with the other I just never got around to continuing after that so like so many other of my AARs I abandoned it.
The Yor Years - (August 2006, completed) - Here we go again. The Yor are practical, compact, and purple. As such, their destiny should be obvious to the observant reader: They conquered everything with a megalomaniac at their head.
With Malice Towards None. – (August 2006, abandoned) - This writing style sucked big time, so I abandoned the AAR after only two entries.
My Inevitable Greatness – (May 2010 – August 2010, abandoned) Khünbish Jalair's adventures in Calradia, an exercise in finding out just how sophomoric writing I'm capable of. That answer to that question was, alas, rather more than I could stomach myself, so the AAR was finally terminated it in disgust after 14 chapters.
I have been a frequent contributor to GTA over the years. I can heartily recommend participating as a way of expanding one's arsenal of literary goodness.
Death of a King: by a Complete Stranger (September 2006, topic: Death of a King) - a very silly bonus entry to that month's GTA because all submitted entries (including your's truly's) were being held up pending an extra writer. The only GTA I ended up with 2 entries in.
Death of the King – (September 2006, topic: Death of a King) - being the truthful story of Elvis Presley's death told in classic fantasy form. Honestly.
The True Story of the Dreadful Demise in a Doomfilled Duel of Dandy Dan, the Dread For Hire – (July 2008, topic: The Duel) - not only my longest title, I consider this one of my very best GTA entries. One day I may well pick up the protagonist, Harry Sky, P.I. and the setting and write a short story or novella for him. The concept is strong enough.
Genesis – (March 2009, topic: A Cultural Clash) - this one qualifies as probably the weirdest story I have every written. But it works, mate!
A Moment of Horror: An Execution – (April 2009, topic: A Moment of Horror) - loosely based on the life and death of Gilles de Rais.
A Hot Retreat – (June 2009, topic: A Retreat) - Diary entries from a distraught but hot! princess retreating after the fall of the kingdom. I like this entry more than I probably should, but it is short and burns with passion.
The Bibliophile – (June 2011, topic: A Rumour) - A bibliophile will stop at nothing to get his hands on a book from the first days of the first empire, that is rumoured to have illustrations of an instructional nature... A Collector's Edition, in fact. Though it was only hinted at, this entry was set in the universe of my abandoned Mount & Blade AAR, My Inevitable Greatness, taking place in an age later than that depicted in the AAR, and the book he was looking for was indeed the fabled collector's edition of that AAR – an easter egg for those who had read the AAR and were sad that I had terminated it in disgust at the end.
A Rivalry – (June 2013, topic: A Rivalry) - This silly entry was based on unpublished material from my CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures.
Green Bishop – (July 2013, topic: A Game). This is my only GTA entry that I actively dislike. The concept seemed solid enough: life as a mob in a MOBA, seen through the eyes of a mid-tier piece (the green bishop) waiting in a transit hub for deployment in a lane. But the execution of the story and the not at all funny part about the Ice Maiden, which smacks of mysogeny and adds nothing of value to the story due to the lack of meaningful follow up? I must have been in a really bad mood when I wrote it. The reviewers mostly liked it anyway, but they were more generous than the entry deserved.
The True Story of the Famous Fruits of the Kinky Kingpin and Randy Ronny, the Ravaging Raider - (April 2016, topic: Breaking Good) – This is one GTA entry I regret. I tried writing a continuation of sorts to one of my favourite GTA entries from 8 years previously (The True Story of the Dreadful Demise in a Doomfilled Duel of Dandy Dan, the Dread For Hire), but this entry lacked the magic of the original. The story didn't work and an attempt at sophomoric euphemistic fruit-related humour fell utterly flat. It isn't bad by the standards of GTA, and the reviewers liked it... but where I had expected to write something outstanding, I just didn't. One day I'll do Harry Sky, P.I. justice. Whether it is to give him a third GTA airing or writing him a full story.
For the Emperor - (January 2017, topic: Reviving the Past) – A Napoleon-like emperor laments his last throw of the dice in a losing war. But is all as it seems? Is he a completely reliable narrator? Exactly how should ”reviving the past” be understood? This story has multiple layers, and that's before you go into the efforts I took to link it subtly to another participant's prior writing in order to be able to argue convincingly that he was reponsible. I loved writing this one, and reading it years later? Just as much fun as first time around. I can be tricky when I want to. Definitely one of my favourite GTA entries.
The Night Before Christmas – (December 2017, topic: He Knows When You've Been Naughty) – this is a proper Christmas story, by which I mean that it is jolly and that you are guaranteed to end up smiling unless you have a heart of stone. Or no mouth. Possibly my best GTA entry, ever, though revisiting it there are some weak spots I'd like to revise.
Cometh the Hour - (March 2020, topic: An Epidemic) – writing about an Epidemic during the COVID-19 pandemic proved hard for most of the participants in this round, and certainly for me. So I wrote an absurdist romance set in a morally degenerated US anno 2036 or so under the eternal president Donald Trump, where they were bound to lick the pandemic any time now. And that was just the start of the misery and absurdity. I quite like this entry, but I made a serious misstep with the romance resolution and ran out of time before the deadline. Too explicitly sex-oriented, too little implying, a lack of banter and insinuations, and no slightly awkward moments of push-pull as are natural to any new romantic entanglements. So I wrote a better ending for the entry and published it as my criticism of my own entry, and you can find that at the bottom of this post
Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn – (December 2020, topic: Bleak Midwinter) – An added challenge this time was that authors were encouraged to be deceptive, writing in other player's writing styles, including misleading hints, etc. The result was a round of utter mindfuckery, and I participated with a (bad) poem in four verses about the Wild Hunt of Welsh myth, with the names of many GTA writers encoded in various ways, some easy to decipher, some distinctly less so. Great fun. Half were never found, and as for the other half it turned out that encoding ”DensleyBlair wrote this” in the poem when he was the one running the contest at the time and listed as a possible author (he was kind enough to list himself upon my request) was enough to throw most people off the trail.
Europa Universalis I
Austria: From Pawn to Superpower (part 1) and part 2. (April 2001, completed) - My very first AAR. Suffice to say that few people noticed it at the time and I've become a better writer since then.
Europa Universalis II
The Timurid Scientists – (February 2002 – March 2002, completed) - The first documented World Conquest in EU2. Many people believed it impossible at the time. And the same happened with every patch after that until at least 1.05. Somebody would start a bloody "surely now WC is impossible!" thread in the general forum and I or somebody else would go through the tedium of proving them dead wrong. Some people just do not understand that Paradox games are deliberately made so easy for normal players to play (a very sound marketing decision) that anyone who dedicates the time and patience (oh lord, the patience) to actually learning how their games work have zero problems conquering the entire world except where game mechanics explicitly prevent it (and that has only been the case once or twice and can be gotten around). This was the first AAR featuring Chief Scientist, who had a brief career interrupting other peoples' AARs.
World Conquest for Dummies – (April 2002 – May 2002, completed) - Trebizond paints the world purple. Class is in session. Don't annoy the teacher. Several students graduated to writing their own WC AARs afterwards which was great fun to see.
It Came From the Mountains – (June 2002 – January 2003, completed) - The visit of the Transcendant One occasions much distress in Boing (née Tibet). An adventure with, admittedly, certain martial overtones. For fun, it showed how using a very different playing style from that advocated in WCfD worked just as well, though this was definitely not a WC game... Unfortunately, the series of thoroughly justifiable defensive actions taken happened to conquer the world anyway. These things happen.
WAAR of the Worlds – (July 2002 – December 2002, completed) - Prufrock451, a great writer and humorous fellow, modded the game and sent in max tech Zorthon aliens to conquer the world in this AAR. Then he handed the save over to me with instructions to fight back. This came completely out of the blue, but who could resist such a challenge? Not I.
Persian Tales – (February 2003 – March 2003, abandoned) - A few tales told be an unusual traveler who hooks up with some bandits on the trail across Persia. This AAR was a direct result of me rereading the Arabian nights and deciding to try writing a few stand-alone tales in a style reminiscent of those tales tempered by my own sense of humour. My favourite remains chapter 3's tale. Abandoned due to release schedule of latest game at work.
Knights of Opportunity: In Hoc Signo Vinces - (February 2003 – August 2003, abandoned) The Knights visit Europe, Africa, the Americas, and, well, pretty much everywhere else. Abandoned due to writer's block around 1750 once I reached the extremely tedious last wars of World Conquest, when victory was assured and all that remained was mopping up and fighting rebels, and I'd already been there and done that too many times.
Europa Universalis II - Multiplayer
TSUNAMI 2 – (July 2003 – July 2003, abandoned) - The sequel to the original marathon MP game tried to get an AAR thread but failed miserably after just two pages. I played two sessions, once as the Teutonic Knights, once as the Mughal Empire. Smashing human controlled Poland and Lithuania and annexing Novgorod with a diminutive Teutonic Order and an alliance of five one-province German AI minors has never been as fun. Thanks, once again, to Mowers for organizing such a fun marathon game. Just a crying shame that so few of the players wrote AARs.
Machiavelli : Europe Arising (May 2003 – September 2003, completed) - A game of power politics and attempted roleplaying (mostly failed) with a good deal of AAR writing. A great game all in all, though playing Austria with horribly competent (not to mention deceitful and avaricious) neighbours was a harrowing experience. It made for good experience in MP warfare, though, and I gave at least as good as I got.
Machiavelli II - The Rebirth (September 2003 – December 2003, completed)- Building the biggest and baddest Russia around coupled with roleplaying induced passitivity on my side was ultimately bad for the game. I should have broken treaties and thrown my power around, dammit.
When MP, true roleplaying, and storytelling TRULY meets....
Asia - the Awakening – (August 2002 – February 2003, abandoned sort of) - A handful of spirits duke it out in Asia. The game was finished but AAR writing dwindled at the end. A fun game was had by all and it later provided the inspiration for going further, much further, as Wyvern and I pooled our forces some time later for...
Throne of Heaven – (June 2004 – November 2004, completed) - Wyvern and I team up as gamemasters (he's the good GM, I'm the evil GM) for an AAR-obligatory fantastic game of intrigue, death, destruction, and many wonders in Asia. With individualized missions and doublecrossing being the order of the day, the participants had a good time. I play Gothmog and, though I rally the powers of evil to my cause, ultimately I and my allies (both the willing and those who tapped into Gothomog's power and were ensnared by it) are defeated (or SO THEY THINK!). The greatest thing was that most of those who believed they were good (and joined up fighting for the good side in the final battle) had, in fact, already slipped into corruption through their earlier choices by being seduced by other forces of evil than Gothmog. See e.g. this post, where I revealed the funnist player seduction of the game upon its completion. Let me just say that some of these their relations came as a bit of a surprise in the final revelation after good's victory: The end of the tale. This game also provided me with some of the greatest defensive wars I've ever played in EU2. Here is the discussion thread – first post explains the rules of the game.
Throne of Heaven2: The Olympian Rebirth – (December 2004 – May 2005, completed in terror) - Wyvern and I team up as gamemasters again for a second AAR-obligatory romp. I play as Autolycos. Watch in awe as the chosen heroes of the gods repopulate the new world trying to accomplish both their own natural desires and those of their whimsical gods... until they finally encounter the Titans. Which alas killed the game, as it slowed down to a crawl with the horde of Titan armies all over the place, and suddenly it was summertime and sessions were few and far between, but hey, it was a great game. Reading the first post of the Game Thread may make you less puzzled as to what is going on. The last five or ten pages of the thread deal with doom and gloom of the players as the magnitude of the Titan invasion hits them makes for great reading (in-between the boasting and general politics). Avernite said it best after the first few invaders were defeated:
So time consuming to set up and manage, so fun with the right players. A big thanks to those who participated.
Europa Universalis II - Collaborative AARs
Early on in EU2s AAR lifetime we had a couple of great collaborative AARs organized by MrT and open for everybody willing to write. With saves passed around, forgotten, or lost, with people of very different levels of competency at playing, and with everybody completely free to pursue his own goals to the best of his ability, this created some wonderful experiences for those involved.
Denmark: Fellowship of the Kings – (March 2002 – August 2002, completed) - I got the slot as Frederik V of Denmark (1746-1766) as reserve and I slightly improved the nation's standing in the world by overrunning England (annexed), France (set up ready for diploannexation), the Americas (crushing Spain), and a few other places besides. All in 20 years
The link is to the story text copied clean and my entries are posts #91 - #95, but really, if you want to read part of it, read the whole AAR and see just how well people can do when they collaborate. Additionally, this AAR provides an exception to my normal writing style as it is much more serious than the vast majority of my work without, if I may say so, it detracting significantly from the quality.Every Doge Has his Day – by the “B Team” – (May 2002 May 2003, completed) - I got to substitute for Ariel. My first ruler was Leonardo Loredano (1501-1521) and I got handed a Venice that had just suffered a severe reverse. Needless to say, desperate times called for desperate measures, so with everybody bemoaning our beloved Venice's defeat apart from the A-team who were taunting us, I dropped my intentions of a moderately peaceful reign and and went all out on the offensive. In Loredano's 20 years of reign Venice grew from 22 to 60 provinces reversing all previous defeats, defeating all significant powers, and conquering most of Central Europe besides in one of my most concentrated conquest sprees ever. Pietro Loredan (1567-70) distinguished himself in a very different way and was reported in a series of "what I did on my holidays" mails by private Giovanni Bossi as he moved constantly from war to war and, despite all the warring, ended up safely married to the girl his mother had chosen, and finally as for the brief reign of Sebastiano Venier (1577-1578), no joke can truly suffice.
The Righteous BastAARds – (April 2002 – November 2002, abandoned) - Can two right bastards succeed when playing the same nation alternatingly with the goals of a) fixing the problems caused by the other bastard, while b) royally screwing up the nation in a different way for the other bastard to fix?Norgesvenn (leading Cardinal Fang of the Order of the Swinging Sheepshagging Sinner) and I (leading Cardinal Biggles of the Chanting Lefthanded Genuflectors) playing Spain proved that this was, indeed, the case, though it lead to remarkably silly situations, even for us. It begins with maxing out loans due to be repaid on the very first day of the next player's reign without having the money to cover, of course, and escalates wildly from there.
Europa Universalis IV
The Phoenix Rising (Beta AAR) – (July 2013 – August 2013, completed) – Full lecture mode as I explain game mechanics chapter by chapter while going on a moderate conquest spree with Byzantium. Most images have somehow been lost, which is strange as all of them were hosted by Paradox (no foreign host services for beta AARs, everything is internal). Possibly a side effect of one of the major forum upgrades since then.
Russian Cheese – An Expansion Test AAR – (October 2013 – December, abandoned) – Follow Ivan and Boris in the Time Bunker as they suffer from a weird cheese fixation and the end of the world as they know it. The AAR was sabotaged by the Conquest of Paradise DLC release in January 2014, which was not nicely backwards compatible and which ”free features” screwed up my nearly completed World Conquest by breaking up my overseas empire in strange ways. I am not bitter. (Yes I am. (Or at least I was when I wrote this originally.))
Europa Universalis - Rome Multiplayer
We Three Kings – (June 2009 – January 2010 + final entry July 2012, completed) – Wyvern, Swuul, and I have a fun 3-player AAR game, where Blasted Numidia, Eternal Egypt, and Pontus of the Secret History go to extreme lengths not to fight each other while gaining ascendancy. Warning: Heavy on propaganda.
Imperator: Rome Multiplayer
We Three Kings II (Beta AAR) – (March 2019 - April 2019, completed) – Wyvern, Swuul, and I have a fun 3-player AAR game, where Awesome Armenia, Exalted Epirus, and Kustomary Kush go to extreme lengths not to fight each other while gaining ascendancy. Warning: Heavy on propaganda. We got around a hundred years of gameplay before the game was released. As many Beta AARs, it is heavy on mechanics demonstration.
Crusader Kings
The Byzantine Letters – (April 2004 – July 2004, abandoned) - 20 chapters of correspondence of the Eastern Roman Emperors, often with attachments. A remarkably silly romp that remains one of my favourites. From the very start this wasn't intended to be a complete AAR running until the end, just something to tide me over while waiting for the next patch, and indeed the AAR ended abruptly disappointing legions of followers, but they had been warned from post #1, so what can you do?
Crusader Kings II
Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures – (April 2012 – June 2012, abandoned) – An epic tale of the travails of the kings of Denmark as they populate the world with rulers of house Estridsen. (Or Ylving, as the game insists on calling them). This was sadly much shorter than I would have loved, but a period of extreme work-related stress finishing development of a game killed my interest in continuing the AAR.
A Fistful of Dukes MP AAR – (July 2012 – October 2012, completed) – Six AAR writers, each with their own Byzantine duchy. So obviously the emperor was a six-fingered man. A lot of fun was had until the game descended into serial assassination and extinction of player lines, after which we stopped.
Crusader Kings III
Born to Breed: House of the Prophets – (April 2021 - ?, ongoing) – Tales of the Sigurd dynasty as it populates the world with rulers of house Sigurdr, its inevitable expansion complicated by the occasional prophet.
Hearts of Iron I
Chopsticks in the Mist – (December 2002, completed) - Nationalist China overruns, well, pretty much everything you can think of with zero opposition and I throw HoI1 away in disgust, never to return to it. The highlight of the story is probably when the opposition has -88% war entry. Or perhaps realizing that most of the world is being overrun by militia.
Hearts of Iron II
Chopsticks in the Mist II (Beta AAR) – this AAR was never released to the public and thus only available for Hoi2 betas, sorry.
Victoria I
Blood to the Ankles - And Rising (Beta AAR) – (October 2003 – November 2003, abandoned) - Japanese WC AAR from the Victoria Beta that got frozen in the middle of being released to the public due to the pre-release pirating of Victoria, which caused Paradox to clamp down immediately on any further release of information useful to actually playing the game until such time as the game was actually released and paying customers would have joy of it (a decision I completely support). As the AAR was pretty heavy on exploiting the game for maximum conquest (surprise, surprise) it had to be frozen. Unfortunately, the resultant pause caused me to lose track of it as something else caught my attention and, hey, I had the Victoria release version to play rather than the latest beta. Of all the AARs that I haven't played through to the end, this is probably the one that I wish most that I had. It stops after only 6 chapters when I've just started the conquest of India + Americas but the game itself had progressed considerably further - the Japanese were mopping up Austria-Hungary and something like a WC seemed within reach.
Victoria II
Fruitcake, the Musical (Beta AAR) – (August 2010, completed) - Japan again, this was a Beta AAR showcasing some of the funny things that can happen while betatesting... such as a world-spanning fruit shortage in the Victorian age. And how to exploit it. I like teasing the devteam when I encounter something really silly. It was finally allowed to be released to the public on sufferance the very day before the release of the game, after the other Beta AARs, so long as, to avoid an overreaction from fans, I added copious disclaimers that the bugs had been fixed and that encountering such weird situations is normal during a Beta – which they were, and which it is.
Victoria III
The game is finally in development! Once it is done, I will find time for an AAR.
Stellaris
The Ebbesen Mandate – A Celestial Empire Test AAR – (April 2017 – June 2017, abandoned) – Spiritual/Xenophobe/Pacifist. Inwards Perfection and Agrarian Idyll? Was this to be the first ever peaceful Ebbesen AAR? Readers were skeptical, and they were right. It was a pacifist conquest test game. It was going well, but then I fell ill for a week, and suddenly had a lot to do, and one thing with the other I just never got around to continuing after that so like so many other of my AARs I abandoned it.
Galactic Civilizations II
The Yor Years - (August 2006, completed) - Here we go again. The Yor are practical, compact, and purple. As such, their destiny should be obvious to the observant reader: They conquered everything with a megalomaniac at their head.
With Malice Towards None. – (August 2006, abandoned) - This writing style sucked big time, so I abandoned the AAR after only two entries.
Mount and Blade
My Inevitable Greatness – (May 2010 – August 2010, abandoned) Khünbish Jalair's adventures in Calradia, an exercise in finding out just how sophomoric writing I'm capable of. That answer to that question was, alas, rather more than I could stomach myself, so the AAR was finally terminated it in disgust after 14 chapters.
Guess the Author
I have been a frequent contributor to GTA over the years. I can heartily recommend participating as a way of expanding one's arsenal of literary goodness.
Death of a King: by a Complete Stranger (September 2006, topic: Death of a King) - a very silly bonus entry to that month's GTA because all submitted entries (including your's truly's) were being held up pending an extra writer. The only GTA I ended up with 2 entries in.
Death of the King – (September 2006, topic: Death of a King) - being the truthful story of Elvis Presley's death told in classic fantasy form. Honestly.
The True Story of the Dreadful Demise in a Doomfilled Duel of Dandy Dan, the Dread For Hire – (July 2008, topic: The Duel) - not only my longest title, I consider this one of my very best GTA entries. One day I may well pick up the protagonist, Harry Sky, P.I. and the setting and write a short story or novella for him. The concept is strong enough.
Genesis – (March 2009, topic: A Cultural Clash) - this one qualifies as probably the weirdest story I have every written. But it works, mate!
A Moment of Horror: An Execution – (April 2009, topic: A Moment of Horror) - loosely based on the life and death of Gilles de Rais.
A Hot Retreat – (June 2009, topic: A Retreat) - Diary entries from a distraught but hot! princess retreating after the fall of the kingdom. I like this entry more than I probably should, but it is short and burns with passion.
The Bibliophile – (June 2011, topic: A Rumour) - A bibliophile will stop at nothing to get his hands on a book from the first days of the first empire, that is rumoured to have illustrations of an instructional nature... A Collector's Edition, in fact. Though it was only hinted at, this entry was set in the universe of my abandoned Mount & Blade AAR, My Inevitable Greatness, taking place in an age later than that depicted in the AAR, and the book he was looking for was indeed the fabled collector's edition of that AAR – an easter egg for those who had read the AAR and were sad that I had terminated it in disgust at the end.
A Rivalry – (June 2013, topic: A Rivalry) - This silly entry was based on unpublished material from my CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures.
Green Bishop – (July 2013, topic: A Game). This is my only GTA entry that I actively dislike. The concept seemed solid enough: life as a mob in a MOBA, seen through the eyes of a mid-tier piece (the green bishop) waiting in a transit hub for deployment in a lane. But the execution of the story and the not at all funny part about the Ice Maiden, which smacks of mysogeny and adds nothing of value to the story due to the lack of meaningful follow up? I must have been in a really bad mood when I wrote it. The reviewers mostly liked it anyway, but they were more generous than the entry deserved.
The True Story of the Famous Fruits of the Kinky Kingpin and Randy Ronny, the Ravaging Raider - (April 2016, topic: Breaking Good) – This is one GTA entry I regret. I tried writing a continuation of sorts to one of my favourite GTA entries from 8 years previously (The True Story of the Dreadful Demise in a Doomfilled Duel of Dandy Dan, the Dread For Hire), but this entry lacked the magic of the original. The story didn't work and an attempt at sophomoric euphemistic fruit-related humour fell utterly flat. It isn't bad by the standards of GTA, and the reviewers liked it... but where I had expected to write something outstanding, I just didn't. One day I'll do Harry Sky, P.I. justice. Whether it is to give him a third GTA airing or writing him a full story.
For the Emperor - (January 2017, topic: Reviving the Past) – A Napoleon-like emperor laments his last throw of the dice in a losing war. But is all as it seems? Is he a completely reliable narrator? Exactly how should ”reviving the past” be understood? This story has multiple layers, and that's before you go into the efforts I took to link it subtly to another participant's prior writing in order to be able to argue convincingly that he was reponsible. I loved writing this one, and reading it years later? Just as much fun as first time around. I can be tricky when I want to. Definitely one of my favourite GTA entries.
The Night Before Christmas – (December 2017, topic: He Knows When You've Been Naughty) – this is a proper Christmas story, by which I mean that it is jolly and that you are guaranteed to end up smiling unless you have a heart of stone. Or no mouth. Possibly my best GTA entry, ever, though revisiting it there are some weak spots I'd like to revise.
Cometh the Hour - (March 2020, topic: An Epidemic) – writing about an Epidemic during the COVID-19 pandemic proved hard for most of the participants in this round, and certainly for me. So I wrote an absurdist romance set in a morally degenerated US anno 2036 or so under the eternal president Donald Trump, where they were bound to lick the pandemic any time now. And that was just the start of the misery and absurdity. I quite like this entry, but I made a serious misstep with the romance resolution and ran out of time before the deadline. Too explicitly sex-oriented, too little implying, a lack of banter and insinuations, and no slightly awkward moments of push-pull as are natural to any new romantic entanglements. So I wrote a better ending for the entry and published it as my criticism of my own entry, and you can find that at the bottom of this post
Long is the day and long is the night, and long is the waiting of Arawn – (December 2020, topic: Bleak Midwinter) – An added challenge this time was that authors were encouraged to be deceptive, writing in other player's writing styles, including misleading hints, etc. The result was a round of utter mindfuckery, and I participated with a (bad) poem in four verses about the Wild Hunt of Welsh myth, with the names of many GTA writers encoded in various ways, some easy to decipher, some distinctly less so. Great fun. Half were never found, and as for the other half it turned out that encoding ”DensleyBlair wrote this” in the poem when he was the one running the contest at the time and listed as a possible author (he was kind enough to list himself upon my request) was enough to throw most people off the trail.
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