@Austregisel @KingHaydenIII @DorlasAnther
Hearing your stories like this is awesome, as the creator/lead around here that's been putting in countless hours for so many years to help enable extra cool games such as these for you guys. At least half of my motivation in modding comes not from the desire to tinker / script neat stuff but from my hope that at least some decent percentage of our players are getting the most out of all the little and big things HIP does for their gameplay experiences -- most behind the scenes, although some of course quite visible.
Also, I really like to see that my ideal vision for how CK2 campaigns should be played is indeed being realized to an at least noteworthy extent, hopefully helped along with the huge amount of mechanics in EMF aimed at encouraging such playstyles. That is, in the stories you shared, you all experienced great rises and falls, setbacks, vindication: the perfect recipe for building a rich campaign narrative.
In contrast, there are always going to be those that feel absolutely compelled to never allow any setback, even an imagined potential one that could happen in the future, and they usually would like to annex the whole map if they could without clicking 'Declare War' and 'Offer Peace' enough times to induce carpal tunnel, and these sort of folks tend to be the most vocal users which I encounter, so good stories shared are very refreshing to me.
Asking to get ideas on what to play.
I am the HIP lead, the EMF lead, titles, titles, titles, etc.; not only that, but I have been since a year after I started playing CK2 not longer after initial release. Thus, I'm incredibly enamored with this game (particularly what we've made of it at HIP-- truly cannot go back to vanilla).
I'm also a strong believer that a modder should actually play their own mod in more than just a testing / observation capacity for real & long campaigns (some of which motivated me to do some pretty nice, though informal, AARs on our Discord-- link to our Discord server is on
http://hip.zijistark.com/ if you're interested) in order to stay in touch with the "feel" of the mod's gameplay and polish. Therefore, even when I may have laid CK2 to rest otherwise, I've still been playing crazy ass HIP campaigns for years, motivated by this modding principle.
TL;DR: I've spent countless hours playing countless campaigns of HIP over 7 years (since inception). I truly cannot even remember the vast, vast majority of them off the top of my head, despite the fact that I'm only considering the ones which really immersed me and kept me playing for more than 60 years (at least 3 generations of rulers, basically). Thus, it's actually quite difficult for me to go into the kind of detail that the others have so far, so I'll just answer your question directly and briefly suggest a couple campaigns I've done which might appeal to you:
[1043] Duke William Iron-Arm de Hauteville of Apulia
Start as an OPM with a titular duchy, freshly granted to the former mercenary and famed commander and warrior William Iron-Arm (so nicknamed for his impenetrable defensive skills at swordsmanship in a combat performance in a particular battle against the Muslims in Sicily [Syracuse in particular, IIRC] as a (pseudo-)mercenary(/-adventurer) commander (before being actually landed with a castle in 1043), whom historically went on to create one of the most interesting dynasties in the era. His predecessors drove out both the Muslims and the ERE from Southern Italy, united Sicily and, with Papal blessing, created the first Kingdom of Sicily -- not to mention later forays into Antioch and even a [just barely failed] bid for the throne of the Byzantine Empire.
You get access to special CBs which will make it much easier / actually possible to fulfill your historical destiny if you so wish.
[867] Form the Saint-Empire Romain, a version of the HRE which will become a de jure "HRE of the West" (or just form the standard HRE)
EMF has completely changed how 'form the HRE' games work, and I've done this type of campaign so many times it's insane. I can't seem to get enough of HRE restoration runs. They can also be done from the 936 start, but I haven't had time to do one yet since that's new on SWMH since the latest release only.
There are special unification CBs for any King of one of the traditionally Karling kingdoms (i.e., France, Aquitaine, Lotharingia, Burgundy, Italy, Bavaria, and Germany) that basically work as if you have a [virtual] permanent weak claim on any such neighboring traditional Karling kingdom. It's a very nice balance of getting fun out of conquest and empire-building but only with CBs that make you actually have to plan and be very aware of everything else happening in the former Carolingien/Frankish Empire in order to opportunistically make gains.
All the while, you're going to be holding possibly a multitude of kingdom titles whose succession laws likely diverge (and if not, well, Gavelkind, yo) as you near forming the HRE variant of your choice, so the risk of losing it all and ending up the new Karling-equivalent dynasty of Europe (bunch of independent kings of your dynasty) and then having to recover from that and somehow still unite the former empire is always right around the corner the closer you get to your goal.
Once/if you achieve your goal, it's all about the glory of the empire. You could choose to try to consolidate the rest of continental Europe (whichever is more appropriate for your chosen HRE variant -- in the regular HRE, you might want to bring the western kingdoms into the fold, and in the SER, you may want to expand into Iberia or bring Germany/Bavaria into the fold). I usually like to grow a bit more in European hegemony while I'm working on clever new ways to plant the seeds for any way I can to get a hold of the ERE throne so that it may be destroyed in union, leaving only one One True Christian Empire.
I usually start these games as a Count or a relatively weak Duke, as then I must race to somehow become King of one of those traditionally-Carolingien Kingdoms before some AI manages to unite the HRE on its own. I haven't tried this setup, but I imagine that playing an MP game where multiple players start as Kings of any of those Kingdoms would be thrilling as you struggle against each other to unite ("NO, unite under MY banner-- not YOUR banner!" "No, YOU! Enjoy your regency, BTW..." *plot to assassinate succeeds*).
Ah, crap, I had so many other starts I wanted to recommend, but I've spent way too long writing this already... Ah well, maybe I'll come back to it, or I'll see you on our Discord server. Happy gaming!