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AARland bAAR Talk - Episode One

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Mr. Capiatlist

Mr. Capiatlist

Mademoiselle Gothique (she/her/hers)
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Dec 4, 2003
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Yay! A new thing to listen to! I'll have to listen to it tomorrow (well, later today)!
 
Thoughts whilst I listen

The realism discussion reminds me of some of the talk about the Jurassic Park franchise - these days we know a lot of dinosaurs (and particularly the velociraptors) had feathers. For the latest film there was a lot of discussion about whether or not the makers should update the dinosaurs. Of course they didn't for the reason (which I think is likely correct) it would be very weird in-universe for these things to dramatically change part-way through.

Also as for accuracy I tend to think one or two small details go a very long way to heightening the verisimillitude of a particular place and time.

As regards to a reader I am fairly relaxed about reading things which re-hash old historical myths (like woad-Scotsman). There is no doubt though I much more enjoy AARs that show a bit of research. That said I do agree with @loup99 it does depend on the story. Of course, as one plays the game one is likely to diverge more and more from history (ie with @coz1 having a rather different England in the 14th century). Of course this presumes they are aiming for historical accuracy. If someone is doing something more off the wall then it will sometimes fit.

As for writing, I would put it like this:
CK2 - best for narrative AARs or AARs with narrative elements, due to its character focus
Victoria II - best for multi-generational historybooks
HoI4 - best for historical narratives, because although the progress of WW2 may go very differently there is so much good material about what that world was like it makes it easy to portray. Especially historical peoples, etc.
Stellaris - best for those who enjoy more "fantastical" narratives
EU4 - the jack of all trades, master of none
Imperator - I suspect will end up being like EU4

I would say though there is the reverse, in terms of what is difficult for these games
CK2 - Wider spanning histories, because there is just so much going on that is very hard to keep track of.
Victoria II - narratives. The game provides nearly no help at all
HoI4 - Bizzarely perhaps I would say historybooks, because no one wants to read the nth WW2 historybook (well, I do, but I am aware others disagree).
Stellaris - Really any narrative. You have to do everything yourself. This is especially true if you write about non-humanoids. Most sci-fi is written from a human, or human-like humanoid perspective. There is very good reason for that. How to effectively convey what happens for a species that perceives the world entirely differently. Think of all the great sci-fi series (both written and visual) and the vast vast majority is from the "point of view" is from a human or human-like humanoid perspective.
EU4 - today I would say gameplay AARs, simply because so much has already been "done".
Imperator - Jury is out.

Of course, I tend to think humour is the hardest thing to write at all. Or more accurately, stuff other people would find humurous.

I think there can be a problem sometimes with "history-pedants". They used to annoy me a lot. Nowadays, well, I am older and (probably) a bit too lazy to get as worked up.

@loup99 You are far too kind

@coz1 I agree about pictures, in that it can break the fourth wall a bit. On the other hand, as @loup99 sometimes the fourth wall needs to broken (I can imagine @iain_a_wilson using such to great effect).

I might have a thing or two to say about comments, either the writing to the receiving :D

Anyway, I really enjoyed this episode. I look forward to future endeavours. Many thanks to @coz1 @loup99 @Mr. Capiatlist @iain_a_wilson - and to @Centurial for editing.
 
Slowly getting to this. Very interested to see what's discussed this time. From first 30 secs though:

I would say, as someone who reads many deeply historical aars, that realism is both a) wlecome when it comes up
B) fairly impossible most of the time because the games are not very accurate in that sense.

As a writer of a history book aar and a narrative historical aar, research is really for your own benefit. It will give you ideas beyond what the game gives you, and certain nuggets of knowledge are highly prized and commented upon by readers if you managed to find any.

That being said, I am aware I have something of a reputation for ruthless calling out of medieval theme park 'facts' on this forum so I would like to also say that realism is far lower a priority than a good story, and a story and world that makes sense (fiction having to do that more than reality). If for example you say the character leaps out of bed into his armour (leather armour eurgh...) then I may comment on the speed of such things but it really, really does not impact reader enjoyment that much. Of course, I'm sure there is a limit to this so do please research something about your aar, just to avoid offending someone.
 
I agree. I also might point out that I did a rather detailed backstory to my HoI3 AAR (seriously, it was 22 pages all told, that "occurred" before I even unpaused) almost akin to something like what @El Pip would have put together because of a bit of my TL's own "butterflies" that altered the paths that would eventually take place. Furthermore, given that I was running a "more peaceful" Germany game, laying the foundation for why and what would occur required a depth of research that I didn't expect others to do, and was beyond the casual level that is assumed when starting a game.
 
Ok, the other two points were on images and not reading enough, I think?

So obviously I have an advantage in reading with my brain being one of the few things working most of the time...and it's a pretty good brain so when working, it reads lots, fast. So lots of comments and AARs etc. What I would recommend is every so often, going into the forum tools and just looking for the top ten most read of all time on a particular game, and then either reading what comes up or looking at the commentstors inkwells for more stuff (cos generally speaking, people who comment a lot tend to have at least one aar squirrled away or have a really good list of other people's you should read).

As for, I think, Coz1's rant on movie men and Hugh Grant impersonators, I would say that it can be done well (@Bullfilter for example) but yeah, of course it's easy to just point at the picture and say it's that character but now I'm writing it and they're in Scotland and a cannibal (or something like that. Not saying anything about real scotland but in ckii a lot of scots become cannibals for some reason).

But that doesn't necessarily mean that zombie Hugh Grant has no entertainment value whatsoever. I would always look at the writing too. Does the author seem to know what they are doing? Are you hooked despite yourself? Then carry on and enjoy this guilty pleasure.

As for dealing with frank criticism...um...it sucks, it feels like being locked in a fridge with a ticking time bomb and you can't help glancing at the timer...and the feeling doesn't go away whether it's a dumb internet story you wrote for fun or a seriously important university essay.

Nice praise on the otherhand will warm you for anywhere between three seconds and half an hour. So between a cup of soup (if you are the kind of barbarian who eats soup out of cups) and a nice hotwater bottle.

I'm not entirely sure which is more useful...honestly the most useful tends to be the more ambivalent stuff. Corrections and Questions, basically. Questions esepcially are thing I love and pray for after every update. Readers and comments may be the lifeblood of an AAR but questions and answer sessions tend to be the big movers. They are the thing that gets and audience going and invest in the thread. Same for the writer, or so it seems from my experiences as both writer and reader.
 
Now that my schedule keeps me away from the boards for most of the year, whenever I come back I’m always interested to see what’s been developing in AARland while I’ve been away. Have to say, did not see a move to podcasting coming!

Haven’t listened to the whole thing through but the idea is great. And an excellent panel, too. If I get around to the rest of it in a timely enough manner I’ll pop back with any thoughts.
 
Just was able to listen to both episode 0 and episode 1 today and enjoyed them a great deal! Now I just wish there were more... :D

On historical accuracy, it's something that I keep in mind, maybe too much? I say that because CK2 itself plays loose with things, like heresy that pops up 200 years too early. Or even the sheer number of battles, given much of medieval warfare in Western Europe until later in the period was siege warfare rather than pitched battles (with some exceptions like Hastings and Dyrrhachium.

But I end up trying to be mindful of how I think a battle should take place and from what I've learned of warfare from surrounding time periods (such as it generally being a bad idea for cavalry to stay in long pitched combat with infantry). And my mistakes, when pointed out, I've tried to correct. @TheButterflyComposer pointing out leather armor under mail, is one that always stands out for me. And I've learned other nice cool things like bathing was common place (at least among the well to do) and people usually kept their teeth in decent shape, etc.

Yet liberties are still taken. My keeps/castles resemble palaces when it comes to the space afforded for private chambers. It's not accurate, but... hopefully it hasn't offended too many. :)
 
JabberJock14 said:
I've tried to correct. @TheButterflyComposer pointing out leather armor under mail, is one that always stands out for me. And I've learned other nice cool things like bathing was common place (at least among the well to do) and people usually kept their teeth in decent shape, etc.
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Hmm, I did have a few of these in mind when I commented myself. In general, people have a very odd view of the Middle Ages in that they think it's like now, just worse in every way. Same cultures and countries, same religion and so on. As it turns out, people are people and want to stay clean. And Middle Ages teeth were pretty great, considering there was pretty much nothing in the average diet to help cause tooth decay. You'd have to be able to drink lots of wine, mead or certain meat types every week or day for there to be a problem.

Reinactmrnt probably cocks up clothes the most. Remember everything they wear had to be safe and comfortable by modern standards, and generally look cool. All that leather armour and studded vests? Nonsense. And an overemphasis on bows and de-emphasise on daggers and knives, which literally everyone carried around depending on where you were in medieval Europe.

JabberJock14 said:
Yet liberties are still taken. My keeps/castles resemble palaces when it comes to the space afforded for private chambers. It's not accurate, but... hopefully it hasn't offended too many. :)
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You know, I never noticed that. I always assumed they were just in palaces, like otl because why on Earth wouldn't they be if they were running a kingdom full of rich cities? Are you saying that almost every scene set indoors was in a stone keep of some description? Because...yeah...that is quite weird. For one, no one would be able to just walk the corridors at night like that. Oh dear...you've opened a can of worms in my head now:D
 
TheButterflyComposer said:
You know, I never noticed that. I always assumed they were just in palaces, like otl because why on Earth wouldn't they be if they were running a kingdom full of rich cities? Are you saying that almost every scene set indoors was in a stone keep of some description? Because...yeah...that is quite weird. For one, no one would be able to just walk the corridors at night like that. Oh dear...you've opened a can of worms in my head now:D
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You make a good point, especially in the Geoffrey I era, as they were more of a city in Bordeaux rather than Angers, and one of the hallmarks of Geoffrey's reign is how peaceful and prosperous the area around Bordeaux was (Aside from that random Aquitaine rebellion that sprang up). The need for a keep as a fortress would be lessened as the royal residence almost never came under threat (and should it, Geoffrey had other keeps). And the extravagance of show would lend itself far more to a palace, or a magnificent Roman villa ripoff, given his character.

Ah the perils of working sans editors. ;) (Anyway, won't hijack the thread. We can discuss it in my story thread or on private message if you'd like)
 
An excellent initiative, lads! Thoroughly enjoyed both podcasts.
 
JabberJock14 said:
You make a good point, especially in the Geoffrey I era, as they were more of a city in Bordeaux rather than Angers, and one of the hallmarks of Geoffrey's reign is how peaceful and prosperous the area around Bordeaux was (Aside from that random Aquitaine rebellion that sprang up). The need for a keep as a fortress would be lessened as the royal residence almost never came under threat (and should it, Geoffrey had other keeps). And the extravagance of show would lend itself far more to a palace, or a magnificent Roman villa ripoff, given his character.
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Yeah I think both in universe and in your writing you transfer over to a much larger and more opulent court in Aquitaine, which certainly a palace of some description (even if it is also defiently behind several layers of city wall). This makes perfect sense as you said above.

JabberJock14 said:
Ah the perils of working sans editors. ;)
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Well yeah...but of course, since you actually didn't describe the building, your next AAR or next character can just sneakily say what a nice palace it is and how nice it was to grow up in a palace anf how really really really neat this PALACE is.

Mr. Capiatlist said:
There's no hijacking a thread intended to create interesting conversations. ;)
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Excellent. Cos I have a lecture on the revolution that was the mediaeval wheelbarrow...
 
You can get bogged down in the specifics (if one so wishes) but in the end, we write what we know. Depending on the time period, palaces and castles were not a thing c. the Conquering but that said...Westminster is referred to often as Westminster palace. A word usage likely rather than a reality. The point of the conversation was (part of it, at least) what takes you out of it? We can knock around our own stories and personal pet peeves, but what is the larger thought? ;)
 
coz1 said:
You can get bogged down in the specifics (if one so wishes) but in the end, we write what we know. Depending on the time period, palaces and castles were not a thing c. the Conquering but that said...Westminster is referred to often as Westminster palace. A word usage likely rather than a reality. The point of the conversation was (part of it, at least) what takes you out of it? We can knock around our own stories and personal pet peeves, but what is the larger thought? ;)
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Well, for you specifically it's always "To all reading this - @TheButterflyComposer speaks true above."
:D

I'm running into this a little with the Lancaster game, but not too much since I'm using the new tributary system instead of (somehow) conquering the entire British isles in an incredibly unreasonable demonstration of force and statesmanship that no one was capable of doing until the middle of the 12th century at the absolute earliest.
But for castles, I actually wrote of chapter on this in my first AAR as to their development and usage over time. What I would recommend is that any usage of them before 1000AD-ish is almost certainly an example of a basic motte and bailey wooden palsied tower or fortified hall, or, in Italy and France, you could get away with saying it was an old roman fort/fortified town. In the east, Africa and Iberia you don't have the problem of course, because there were lots of castles throughout the entire ckii period...and if you're doing a game on tribal Germania or Scandinavia then they didn't build much like a castle until very much later on.

But the only really important concept, from my view anyway, is that people like to fortify important places, and do it in different ways throughout history. You have to come up with whatever specifics yourself, but just saying that you hold a fortified location in x area makes sense by default. It's just how its protected. Is it by a new town with a garrison and wall? A fortified hall you live in yourself? A tower or series of towers? Later on, a castle or series of castles? It's up to the writer at that point. As you say, 'what is the larger thought'? What's your point in drawing attention here?

There's lots of choice though, don't be put off by anyone saying "CASTLES DON'T EXIST IN THIS PERIOD. YOU'RE WRONG ON THE INTERNET!!!" (btw, palaces were always a thing, pretty much, so really don't have to worry about that one unless you're doing something really weird like a horde tribal game, in which case presumably you did your research yourself).
 
TheButterflyComposer said:
But for castles, I actually wrote of chapter on this in my first AAR as to their development and usage over time. What I would recommend is that any usage of them before 1000AD-ish is almost certainly an example of a basic motte and bailey wooden palsied tower or fortified hall, or, in Italy and France, you could get away with saying it was an old roman fort/fortified town. In the east, Africa and Iberia you don't have the problem of course, because there were lots of castles throughout the entire ckii period...and if you're doing a game on tribal Germania or Scandinavia then they didn't build much like a castle until very much later on.
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I am going to push back against this a little

For two reasons. The first, and most obvious, being that what we are effectively writing is alternate history. Real history is a guide, an inspiration, but also partially actually irrelevant. To be sure, some advances in architecture and whatnot are a result of technology, but a lot are also just fashions. So, for example, there is no particular reason why in someone's world they couldn't portray a church in the middle of England has being over-run by mosaics like someplace in Ravenna or like that. Perhaps a past Lord took a trip to Italy, got enraptured, and made the time and effort to bring a bunch of mosaicists the England, starting a new architectural fad that, in that world, became known as "The English Illumination" or something like that. Just because in "real history" England went big for Gothic architecture in the High Middle Ages does not mean it has to in anyone's game. And so on.

Same is true for politics. Our (oftentimes fragmentary and incomplete - and probably flat-out wrong at times) understanding of mediaeval politics is not necessarily going to be a good time to the politics of an alternative historical England, for example, where the House of Wessex was never dethroned by the Danes.

This leads me onto the second point - our knowledge of even the recent past (by which I mean in my lifetime - 1979) is likely full of errors. Indeed, We know now that some stuff people took as gospel in the 1980s is ... well, rather more complicated, and in some cases complete nonsense. This, when information communication, retention, and dissemination is oodles ahead of what it was thirty years before that, or thirty years before that, or thirty years before that. The further back you go the poorer our knowledge goes. Rainfall records for England, for example, become rather unscientific around the time of World War 1, and it is not long before you are forced to rely diarists (and further back, chroniclers) telling you whether not it was a wet or dry summer. And that dries up largely in the 12th century. And yes, there are various fancy techniques that can impart some data here - the science of trees, soil cores, and ice cores - but with every loss of knowledge we have to make bigger and bigger guesses. They may be well informed guess, but they remain guesses.

And sometimes historians (and scientists) turn out to be simply wrong. Sometimes truths which were self-evident for decades are suddenly called into question or seen in a new light. The truth is, there is actually relatively little we can know of the past with any certainty. Too often historians and archaeaologists mistake absence of evidence for evidence of absence. And too often they are far too certain in their pronoucements.

And that is before we dive into how modern historians life experiences and whatnot colour their entire view of the past and what not.

So the short version is - history and historians are unreliable narrators, and of sometimes questionable worth in writing alternative historical fiction anyways.

And yes, I include myself as a historian as an unreliable narrator. Take everything I saw about the past with a bucketload of salt, because I know how the biases and prejudices that I am aware of colour my perception of the past.
 
Alternate history -- sure, but it's still in a historical setting; ideally, things need to make (reasonable) sense within the story's world.
And yes, mistakes due to lack of knowledge and prejudice are pretty much inevitable, but in my experience a little bit of extra effort into research is well worth it. Historians may be unreliable narrators, but if you know where (and how) to look one should be able to limit such unsoundnesses.
 
Captured Joe said:
Alternate history -- sure, but it's still in a historical setting; ideally, things need to make (reasonable) sense within the story's world.
And yes, mistakes due to lack of knowledge and prejudice are pretty much inevitable, but in my experience a little bit of extra effort into research is well worth it. Historians may be unreliable narrators, but if you know where (and how) to look one should be able to limit such unsoundnesses.
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Making sense within the story's world, absolutely.

I suppose my point is partly that the story's world is not our world. And I am not saying one should not research if one chooses, only that it should not be a straightjacket and those who are most historically knowledgeable (like myself) perhaps should have a healthy sense our intellectual fallability.
 
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