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I would have a single nickel. And given you still managed to plug 3 other Stellaris AARs at the same time I'm not even sure it's really a Nickel, might be a badly repainted Turkish Lira.
CK at least has the excuse that incest is a core game mechanic, so that sort of decision may seep into their forum persona. It would certainly explain a lot.
This is certainly a sentiment we can all get behind. Congratulations indeed Peter Ebbesen.
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As with many threads, I fell far behind. So congratulations to @37th Armoured div, @Midnight Duke, @Macavity116, and @Peter Ebbesen.
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Many congrats, Peter! Been awhile since you've received this honorific. I know it is deserved.
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Yes, about that, I wonder whether I broke the streak with my latest entry.
Born to Breed: House of the Prophets has been an interesting writing exercise so far, going at it with the AAR's gameplay largely following from an established storyboard known only to the writer rather than as is usually done, the reverse, story following gameplay. The challenge to me being to get people into position in game so they can take up existing roles in the storyboard, play those roles, and then justify their actions in writing. (Along with telling any emergent stories that support the main story.)
It originated as a thought experiment. I usually have a specific set of overall goals for my AAR games, but beyond that the story follows the gameplay. What if I were to write an AAR where the gameplay flowed from the story rather than, as is usual, the reverse? How would I go about doing that? And would it make for a good or a bad fit?
When I got CK3 this spring I realized I had an excellent platform for the experiment. Write a story outline with prophets and other major characters at key points in the development of a realm, filling in the details of what each character must achieve through his life – and then play the game, with any character theoretically able to meet the next milestone in the story attempting to achieve it. So House of the Prophets goes story outline => gameplay => AAR based on gameplay.
There's plenty of room for reacting to developments in the game - it is a quite broad outline apart from the key achievements of major characters - but it imposes interesting and ever changing constraints on my play depending on which ruler I am playing, which is great fun.
And I did an abandoned CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures, which unfortunately had to be abandoned after only nine chapters due to work, so with the Northern DLC dropping.... well, the choice of starting ruler was obvious to this Dane.
I played a short 150 year test game before I began the AAR to get a feeling for the norse DLC gameplay, and then I sat down to write the general outline for House of the Prophets, drawing on lessons learned and introducing new twists. Then I began a new Sigurdr game, and this is the game played out in the AAR.
So when e.g. I introduce Gormr the Blood Father in the introduction, who moved the permanent runestone record to the pyramids after he moved the capital to Cairo, that is because my story outline calls for it, not because the game has already been played, and my task when playing is to ensure that this comes to be. And it will - I'll just need to engineer the election of somebody named Gormr at the appropriate time when the decision can be taken. Hasn't happened yet, but it should be easy.
I try not to play too far ahead of the AAR writing, as that has been known to kill some of my AARs in the past, so most events described in the AAR happening decades later than a given AAR entry covers have not actually been played at the time of writing, but it is my goal to make them come to pass no matter how ridiculous things I have to do to achieve them.
When I got CK3 this spring I realized I had an excellent platform for the experiment. Write a story outline with prophets and other major characters at key points in the development of a realm, filling in the details of what each character must achieve through his life – and then play the game, with any character theoretically able to meet the next milestone in the story attempting to achieve it. So House of the Prophets goes story outline => gameplay => AAR based on gameplay.
There's plenty of room for reacting to developments in the game - it is a quite broad outline apart from the key achievements of major characters - but it imposes interesting and ever changing constraints on my play depending on which ruler I am playing, which is great fun.
And I did an abandoned CK2 AAR game, Born to Breed: The Estridsen Lectures, which unfortunately had to be abandoned after only nine chapters due to work, so with the Northern DLC dropping.... well, the choice of starting ruler was obvious to this Dane.
I played a short 150 year test game before I began the AAR to get a feeling for the norse DLC gameplay, and then I sat down to write the general outline for House of the Prophets, drawing on lessons learned and introducing new twists. Then I began a new Sigurdr game, and this is the game played out in the AAR.
So when e.g. I introduce Gormr the Blood Father in the introduction, who moved the permanent runestone record to the pyramids after he moved the capital to Cairo, that is because my story outline calls for it, not because the game has already been played, and my task when playing is to ensure that this comes to be. And it will - I'll just need to engineer the election of somebody named Gormr at the appropriate time when the decision can be taken. Hasn't happened yet, but it should be easy.
I try not to play too far ahead of the AAR writing, as that has been known to kill some of my AARs in the past, so most events described in the AAR happening decades later than a given AAR entry covers have not actually been played at the time of writing, but it is my goal to make them come to pass no matter how ridiculous things I have to do to achieve them.
This worked well enough for the first ruler, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye for whom I chose a passive-voiced narrator of a modern retelling of Sigurd's legendary courtships with his four fair roses (and if the tales I spin seem rather implausible, I maintain that they are more plausible than the gameplay mechanics that shelter behind the results
), and as Sigurd approached death, this is where it gets interesting.The storyboard called for Sigurd's best grandson, genetically speaking, to become king, and that was his grandson Sverker, a herculean genius.. and a very young boy. It seemed unlikely he'd be able to get the votes to gain all Sigurd's titles, but all my story rules call for is doing the best I can as soon as I can to achieve the story milestones, so sooner or later, surely I'd be able to make him king even if I had to engineer a "caretaker king" before his rule, so to speak.
If Sverker didn't inconveniently die before achieving the goal, that is.
So I got the idea of doing the next set of tales as Sverker's diary entries, starting in childhood when he stole the secret of writing on vellum from his elders, and continuing through his life for better or worse, and I introduced him by some pompous future historian talking about how King Sverker's autobiographical writings were a national treasure.... while hoping desperately that I wouldn't have to do a "self-professed king, but his importance to literature surely justifies his title" fail-safe entry later on if he should happen to die before being crowned.
When I was able to end his first diary entry (age 7 - and Counting) with "Hoarding scraps of vellum, I WILL CONQUER!" I knew I had a winner.
Sverker has turned out to be a quite interesting person to write. Cynical, Just, and Fickle are the character traits the game assigned this herculean genius, to which I added "bad at intrigue but thinks he is good" (he got an abysmal intrigue stat), "just a bit too smart for his own good", "a bit too convinced of his own superiority", and "bad at understanding other's motivations, and especially bad at understanding women's". His route to the throne has turned out to be anything but straight - but he's working on it, and I am changing my writing style slightly with each entry to reflect his age and understanding of the world. It has proved quite a challenge.
Writing somebody who is cynical - especially in a humorous AAR - comes easy to me.
Fickle rather less so, as it too often comes across as random or as an excuse for backstabbing or arsehattery just for the heck of it in the hands of mediocre writers, and I am not a good enough writer to write a genuinely fickle person without going too far. So I decided that since he was a genius, I would implement his fickleness via rationalization. He would not consider himself to be fickle at all, as he'd be a mostly stable, trustworthy, and steady person, at least on the big issues. He'd erratically change his mind and behaviour on small things - something I would primarily show via other's reactions to him or treatment of him, not make explicit, because this simply isn't something he thinks about - but he'd also be able to change his mind, loyalties, affections, etc. at the drop of the hat on larger things, if he got new information and could rationalize the change in the given situation, something I wanted - and still want - to do as seldom as possible to make it more of a personal quirk than a defining characteristic. For such a character to function it needs an anchor and occasional foil, and I have provided one - his bethrothed Viola, the wicked witch of Wessex. Playdates have never been so fun.
Just - that's the really difficult one. "The character has a strong sense of justice" is what the game helpfully tells me, but it is difficult enough to get anybody to agree what justice is today, much less a thousand years ago. I mean, in one way it is easy. Somebody who almost always acts in according with the law and desires the rule of law is just. Likewise somebody who is fair, impartial, and just, as in acting properly/morally towards others the way people are supposed to in his culture.
The big problem here for me is the regrettable fact that many modern readers have trouble accepting the inarguable fact that through most of recorded human history until quite recently (and some would say it never stopped but only dwindled in magnitude), different rules of behaviour and standards of what is right, proper, and just to do to other people existed depending on how like you they were, or, in other words, "OTHER = POTENTIAL VICTIM (if nobody whose opinion matters care and you feel like it and the risk is worth it)".
Oh, we all know it in the abstract, and so long as one generalizes or writes at a distance (e.g. the army overran the town, killing the menfolk and enslaving and raping the women) there are few problems, but I am writing first-person viewpoint here, and as Sverker grew into adulthood an obvious problem arose. Sverker is just, and he'll generally treat people as is culturally appropriate depending on which culture/in-group they belong to and whether he encounters them at home or on viking, and to hell with what modern notions of justice, morals, or human rights say, and he won't even pause to consider whether he is doing the right thing, because he knows he is. Any questioning of whether the way he is taught is right will require time, experience, and probably prodding with a big stick.
And he is also remarkably frank in his diary.
I am sure you see the problem. Take the example above and substitute "we" or even worse, "I", which requires further details in first-person viewpoint as the person either describes what he did or avoids mentioning it (which requires a reason), and nothing changes to the fate of the town... yet everything changes in how it impacts the reader.
So I decided to approach the question of justice and treatment of foreigners in the spirit of the best viking story of them all, Røde Orm (The Long Ships) by Frans G. Bengtsson. But I am a lesser writer, and it shows. (EDIT: Incidentally, if you have not read Røde Orm, you owe it to yourself to do so. In a Scandinavian language if you master one, in translation if not.)
As a result I am both amused and appalled at my latest entry in his saga, chapter 13, where Sverker goes on his first raid and later gets married, since even leavened with some rather questionable humour and some frankly absurd bedroom gymnastics, there's no question that the otherwise so genial Sverker leaves that chapter rather less likable than he entered it. The boy is becoming the man, and it shows.
At this point I am really happy that the story outline called for Sverker to mostly stay at home being diplomatic rather than go raiding, and the upcoming chapter 14 will be a slow climb down from excessive details of Sverker's early-life diary entries as adult responsibilities take up more of his time.
So why did I write all this? To entice the casual reader to visit my AAR? Well, that too, but also to illustrate some of challenges and the perils of writing first person viewpoint.
Thanks, @coz1. Looking at the list, my last was 11 years ago for My Inevitable Greatness, an amusing AAR I wrote for Mount and Blade but had to abandon when the writing became too puerile to sustain even for me. (At least when I was torn between cringing and grinning while writing the raid section of Born to Breed chapter 13, I could console myself that I have done worse - much worse - in the past.)
I'm afraid it has been mostly BETA AARs and multiplayer AARs from me since then, which explains the absence of other recent WOWs.
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As for making a nomination, I am afraid that will have to wait until tomorrow.
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True writAARs write their work into a metric kilogram (sic) of words
I am no true writAAR
I am no true writAAR
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True writAARs come in many forms. The measure of a writer is determined by the entertainment and information that the writer brings to his readers not by word count. Anyone who exposes him/her self on the forums is a writer. You, sir, are a TRUE writer of AARs!
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The time has come to pass on the award, and I am pleased to say I have an excellent nominee currently active in the CK3 AAR forum.
What, you may well ask, has the candidate done to deserve this coveted awAARd? I can put it no better than I did in my first comment in the AAR:
This is both fascinating and weird and altogether different, and while perhaps a bit long-winded at times, more often the tale attains an almost dream-like quality.
While I find myself mostly not caring about either characters, dynasty, or realm (and sorry about that), I yet find myself reading on for the interesting exercise in writing, knowledge of the subject material, and the occasional poetry that fits the setting, because poetry is hard and so easy to write badly, and I do so appreciate when it isn't. Further, I like steppe AARs, and it is rare to see a well-written one writ' straight, as it were, rather than treated as a tale of Steppe Dummies.
So you are obviously doing something right. Keep up the good work.
As I am still of that opinion and as @filcat has not previously been named WritAAR of the Week, it is clearly past time to remedy that lack, so join me in congratulating @filcat as WritAAR of the Week for the strangely compelling CK3 AAR: The Secret History of the Bargas.
What, you may well ask, has the candidate done to deserve this coveted awAARd? I can put it no better than I did in my first comment in the AAR:
This is both fascinating and weird and altogether different, and while perhaps a bit long-winded at times, more often the tale attains an almost dream-like quality.
While I find myself mostly not caring about either characters, dynasty, or realm (and sorry about that), I yet find myself reading on for the interesting exercise in writing, knowledge of the subject material, and the occasional poetry that fits the setting, because poetry is hard and so easy to write badly, and I do so appreciate when it isn't. Further, I like steppe AARs, and it is rare to see a well-written one writ' straight, as it were, rather than treated as a tale of Steppe Dummies.
So you are obviously doing something right. Keep up the good work.
As I am still of that opinion and as @filcat has not previously been named WritAAR of the Week, it is clearly past time to remedy that lack, so join me in congratulating @filcat as WritAAR of the Week for the strangely compelling CK3 AAR: The Secret History of the Bargas.
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Congrats @filcat! I have written that the mark of a great writer is to entertain and enlighten, you have succeeded in both areas. Sometimes I feel like a checkers player watching a chess grandmaster.
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Wonderful to see this mesmeric, poetic and exhaustively-researched AAR get the attention it deserves! Congratulations, @filcat!
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Congrats @filcat! I need to check out CK3 AAR's more and I will certainly take a look at yours!
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