Children of the Fatherland
Children of the Fatherland is the first of four installments of a multiplayer After Action Report spanning a run-through of Paradox Interactive's four strategy games: Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria 2 and Hearts of Iron. The story is posted at Here [dead link], on the Paradox discussion forums and containing much side discussion by interested kibitzers and slanging among the players.
The story begins in 1066, although rather than being the continuation of the same story as the Ynglinga Saga (à la Time Travel), CotF is a reboot of the storyline with ostensibly all the players who played in the original game partaking as different countries or positions assuming they are still playing and haven't been sidetracked by Real Life and, because it's a collaborative effort by over a dozen players, each one painting his own version of history with his own spin of events, you get some disconnect but it nevertheless helps serve the purpose that this is indeed us playing out history.
This time one of the biggest differences from Ynglinga Saga is the inclusion of 'Immortals' taking advantage of the fact that similar to Europa Universalis: Rome includes NPCs who make up the dynastic courts of every county, duchy and kingdom in the game who can be bred with each other and edited, so an Immortal character was given to every player who couldn't make it into the game as players who can then then give orders to their Immortal in the days between sessions to influence and participate in the game.
Of note is King of Men's stylistic prose as a Byzantian Prince and IRBlayne's Order of the Stick-style comic.
- Alternate History: A given, considering that just by beginning in the year 1066, chaos theory would dictate that any history proceeding from it would inherently be different going to 1964, although for gameplay purposes it is posited that certain inventions and discoveries, regardless of how luck based they were, remain uncovered at their rough historical date.
- Memetic Mutation: "Crashing is fun!"
- Unreliable Narrator: All posts should be taken as containing propaganda for the nation of their respective writers, intended to gain support from the readers and from the other players. Sometimes the authors will disagree quite strongly on the interpretation of particular events.
- In fact, it may be possible for two people writing about the same event to come up with two entirely different recollections on the event as a kind of The Rashomon.