A Refreshed Enthusiasm

So, having gotten all the “WORDPRESS MUST DIE!” venom out of my system, I had still basically shelved the whole Game AAR play through idea. Yeah, I’d also said that it would be some time before I considered Beta Testing a another game…turns out that ‘some time’ basically meant today. And much like I feel my eagerness to do an AAR starting to flow back, too.

Part of it is probably stubbornness…”Dammit, I said I’d do one and no punk SYSTEM is going to hold me back!” However, I also happened to find a link on a forum to the blog site that turned me around on its’ own. It’s called The Blue Casket, and it’s basically a repository of AARs for a variety of games. Nothing special there. However, what DOES stand out is that they are all actually highly entertaining, and often laugh out loud funny.

There’s Fallout 2 as played by a character named Trogg, a blithering idiot who refers to anything he encounters as a notpuppy and can’t remember simple instructions. There’s Empire : Total War as seen through the eyes of a smart mouthed English bastard spouting delightful lines like these :

Seeing his men in difficulty, the General charged in force with his bodyguard, filling the buttocks of the presumptuous pox-victims with cold steel.

Back in the sunny climes of England, we sail for the fair city of Glasgow, that we might politely inform the snail-fellating whoremongers of the Sun King that have taken up station in the firth that they might do well to fuck off back to the wine-soaked sow of a mother they first came bawling into this world from.

Two light vessels collided as we made our first pass, the Spanish admiral not being able to see for the semen of his first mate’s cock in his eye.

And then there’s the piece de resistance…it’s a Hearts of Iron 2 AAR. What makes this interesting is that the guy is posting as EVERY major political player, but in a style where they’re talking as though they are players of an MMO game. For anyone with an appreciation of the History of the 1930’s-40’s, it is often fall off your chair funny. That one has 17 chapters (it was unfortunately never totally finished) and can be found here. A sample :

Lebrun (France): Awww… man… are you sure you don’t want to play, like… Bhutan or somebody, instead?
Avenol (League of Nations): Ohhh… this is terrible! First a war in Africa… and now another one, in Europe.
Roosevelt (USA): *ahem*… Now, them Reee-publicans… have bin tellin’ you… that I’m a woah-mongah!… That I like WOAH!… … Well I don’t… like… woah!… I HATE woah! We all… hate… woah!… But we GOT woah!
Lebrun (France): WTF, man… are you on drugs?
Roosevelt (USA): Lol, no… I’m on campaign! Election coming up in November! Vote for me!
Hitler (Germany): Can Nazis vote?
Roosevelt (USA): Ahhh… you’d be a Lindbergh supporter, then. He’s not running this year.
Stalin (USSR): What about Commies?
Roosevelt (USA): They’d vote for me. Except we call them “Socialists”.
Hitler (Germany): Aren’t Nazis “Socialists”, too?
Roosevelt (USA): Errr… I’ll have to check with my political advisors on that…
Mussolini (Italy): Voting is for FOOLS!
Roosevelt (USA): Now, now, Benito… let’s be a bit more tolerant. We do things differently over here… one man, one vote.
Mussolini (Italy): And so do we… so do we. ONE man, ONE vote… ONCE!
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): Are you clowns finished yet? I’ve got an emergency on my hands here… I really need help!

Lebrun (France): Holy crap, man… you’ve already lost your capital! That really sucks.
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): I know it sucks! That’s why I’m askin’ for help!
Roosevelt (USA): War is evil! I’m gonna embargo both of you.
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): Roosevelt, STFU. Is anybody gonna DO anything?
Avenol (League of Nations): I’ll… I’ll add it to our agenda…
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): Thanks a lot. Is anybody WITH A BRAIN gonna do anything?
Stalin (USSR): Send me all your gold, and I’ll send you some Tanks.
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): Cool, thx. Here it is.

Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): … well… where’s my Tanks?
Stalin (USSR): I got to build them first. Takes four or five months. Each.
Alcala-Zamora (Republican Spain): WHAT??? You creep! I’ll be annexed in five months! Give me back my gold!
Stalin (USSR): Can’t… I already started building them.
Hitler (Germany): Lol.
Mussolini (Italy): Lol. What a noob.

Having read those (and several more from the site) and some of his suggestions for how to go about things, I’m actually somewhat happy the whole Fubar happened. Fuck putting up a bunch of photos with a little description of what that is or what’s happening. The whole point of this, and especially this blog, is to share my WRITING with people. This is my spot to masturbate my healthy little ego until I shoot a load of hot words up on your monitors (possibly the creepiest thing that I have ever typed).

So, with THAT in mind I have a new take on this whole thing. I need a game that lets me wax poetic and bring a creative side to this whole experiment. It also has to be a game that is slow paced enough that I’m not having to practically hold down the damn screenshot button in Fraps out of fear of missing something. Right now I think that my choice will be…The Guild.

Hard to describe game…part character development type game, part economic/political game, part pseudo RPG game. Anyway, you can do A LOT of things in it. I intend to try a bunch of everything. And since in reality I am still getting a handle on how the game works, that could actually work to my advantage as I can write about my character bumbling from one fuckup to another in certain areas. Now I just need to pick an occupation, though I personally kind of love writing as a moronic, alcohol imbibing priest…

No time line on when this will start because I don’t know how long it will take to get enough good material that I can make a post out of it, or how long writing those up will take (since I’m going to try and write in character). All in all, though, I am a LOT more excited about this project. I get to stretch out those creative writing muscles, and with a lot less need for multiple photos lining up and shit like that, the chances of a formatting issue fucking up the works are much less.

And on another note…wow, I don’t remember Windows Live Writer having this nice a layout or this many options before! Very nice.