Since BROvenloft a few years ago, the bros have been experimenting with running Braunsteins in several different forms, under several different rules sets. There was Rise of the Orc Lords, Jeffro’s Traveller Braunstein, a Twilight 2000 “Battle Braunstein”, The Shucked Oyster ACKS Braunstein, a Gangbusters Braunstein, and several others, too many to mention.
(For the uninitiated, Jeffro Johnson defines a Braunstein as “a form of tabletop roleplaying game where multiple independent actors operate in conflict under a fog of war.” “The key feature is that players can scheme and negotiate with each other when they are not conferring with a referee. This dynamic produces extremely volatile play dynamics that are in distinct contrast to conventional TTRPG play.” More about the history and practice of Braunsteins and the bros involvement can be found in this discussion.)
Older fans have complained that what the bros run aren’t “real Braunsteins”, that the only real Braunsteins are those run by the originator, David Wesely and everything else, specifically and exactly including anything run by the BroSR, is fake.
First, valid Braunsteins were run by other people, including Dave Arneson, all the way back when the game was very new. He and Wesely used to swap off running the game. Duane Jenkins ran cowboy Western Braunsteins (called Brownstone), and Arneson called the Blackmoor campaign “a medieval Braunstein.” Wesely is not the only one who can, or has, run valid Braunsteins.
Second, that’s not how games work. Chess was invented as a miniature wargame in India, HG Wells invented Little Wars, another miniatures wargame, the Prussian military produced Kreigsspeil, and people took its concepts and added new rules or modified existing rules to make entirely new games set in different eras. In WWII, naval miniature wargames were critical in discovering how German U-boat packs were hunting surface fleets.
Innovation and expansion are intrinsic to games as a hobby, which is why there’s over a dozen varieties of just poker, a single type of game among hundreds that can be played with the standard deck of cards (which were also used as a fortune telling device). Braunstein itself was derived from Diplomacy and Strategos, and inspired by ideas from various writings. Innovation is expected, and laudable.
Third, all the innovation in the space today, all the experimentation and exploration, is being done by the bros. From running a wargame using Braunstein principles (Rise of the Orc Lords), to experiments with using an “always on Braunstein” to form the backdrop for an ongoing RPG campaign, to analyzing and codifying the principles of what makes a Braunstein work, all the heat is coming from this space.
Example: Blogger Fluid the Druid posted the Heat Engine Model for Roleplaying Games, based off ideas first identified in Jeffro Johnson’s Traveller Braunstein AAR. In it Fluid propounds a model for understanding how freeform RPG’s and Braunsteins function. Then Johnson applied Fluid’s model more directly to Braunsteins on his blog. And my fellow host and I talked about these concepts on Geek Gab, adding in ideas about player initiative.
And round and round it goes, on blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and Discord. The exploration and analysis of Braunsteins is exploding like it never has before.
Wesely may already know the information the bros have (re-?) discovered. He may even have written it down. But he has written no “Braunstein Game Manual.” He has presented no set of rules or guidelines for other people to read, understand what one is, how it is intended to run, what rules that, if followed, will enable you to run it as intended, and what advice Wesely has for would-be Braunstein GM’s.
(There is an officially licensed Braunstein RPG, Barons of Braunstein, but it wasn’t made by Wesley, which just proves my point: other people can run Braunsteins and they are utterly valid. Moreover, Barons simply doesn’t push the state of the art forward the way the bros have.)
The bros are producing all of the above. Bit by bit, as they experiment with this new-to-them form of roleplaying, learning what works and doesn’t work and why, they are producing a body of work that will move Braunsteins from an oral tradition of bespoke one-off sessions run at conventions, to an actual proper game. And all in just a few years.
The bros are playing Braunsteins, codifying Braunsteins, and recruiting new players and GMs for Braunsteins, including people outside the bro-space. By that measure, by the only measure that counts—really playing a real game in the real world and getting people really excited about it—“sparkling Braunsteins” are as real as anything ever run anywhere.
For more Braunstein discussion, enjoy the Geek Gab episode where we discuss the Mythic Underworld as well as Braunsteins:
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