Turn Up the Dial on Better Rpg Play

My pal Bdubs has this great session report where he details the axioms of Real D&D. Here they are:

1. Play your game RAW (rules as written) NOT with Rule Zero “due as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
2. D&D is appendix n focused. Reading these books/stories will make it easier to run real D&D which is a pulp fantasy simulator.
3. 1:1 time is foundational to real D&D.
4. Scaling up for mass combat is foundational to real D&D. (Example: 20 troops etc = 1 unit on the board)
5. D&D is a Braunstein!

Now, what is really interesting about that post is that he likens these ideas to a sort of dial. He looks back on an old session where things were kind of stale, but then he works out how cranking things up all the way would have made all the difference.

This is of course a very new way to think about rpgs. We have evidence that this is also a very old way to think about rpgs that has alas been forgotten. People like Diversity & Dragons watched me talking about this with Bdubs when we went on Dundermoose’s show recently, and they really struggle to get what we are talking about. They really should have a chance to hear about this stuff from somebody that is much more concise– somebody that is affable and charming and who doesn’t make long and hilarious digressions about who you are liable to meet at the soup aisle.

Well, that somebody exists, and he just cut a positively stellar video. Definitely give this one a listen, because it’s great!

Night Danger, meanwhile, has announced that the second Session Braunstein in his continuing campaign is set for July. You will recall that he ran the positively stellar Fortress Orkmerica session Braunstein that was turning heads back in May. Everybody had a blast back then, but you know… the concept can’t be that important if game groups aren’t insisting that they do it again. Also, it’s one thing to suggest that running a session Braunstein every few months will do wonders for keeping your players engaged and your campaign fresh. It’s another thing to be able to point to a pile of session reports that document what happened when somebody did precisely that.

Very helpfully, Night Danger has even taken the time to define just precisely what he is doing when he sets these things up:

The Battle Braunstein is a special type of session that emerges when the activities of factions and major players in the gameworld converge sufficiently that they can no longer be resolved as background activity. Instead of “DM Fiat” simply hand-waiving the activities of these major players, the Battle Braunstein brings people to the table in a session format similar to our regular adventuring, but now instead of controlling a character in a moment-to-moment adventure, you control a powerful figure or even a whole faction and dictate the activities therein on a turn-by-turn basis.

Frankly, this is the most exciting thing in gaming right now. But I’ll tell you. When you have friends like mine, they are not content to just take the ball and run with it. They will not settle for merely demonstrating that my ideas about rpgs are objectively correct. No! That is not enough!

It’s true. I would have been content to rest in my laurels. I would have been happy to leave everything right there with people running top notch D&D campaigns where they switch to a Braunstein sessions off and on and as needed. I would even have been content to explore old games like second edition GURPS Basic Set and Classic Traveller to try to pin down what makes these games work and what kind of design choices make it possible to get good campaigns off the ground and keep them going.

But then Bdubs– without my permission– has to show up and crash my party. Even worse, he inspired one of the most notorious roleplayers in gaming to do the same. Even worserer, somebody else ahead of m is kicking around the exact same ideas with the same old rpg even. What does Bdubs mean when he is talking about Total NonStop Braunstein? Is it possible to even run a game that way at all? We don’t know! We do know that it was possible to improve on my old approach of the Always On Campaign. Continuing campaigns with occasional session Braunsteins turned out to be both more fun and more sustainable– and also something that more people are capable of taking a stab at.

Can we turn up the dial of gaming awesome one more time? Is it possible? What would it look like? WE DON’T KNOW YET. Either way, giving it a shot is the most compelling thing happening in rpgs today. Now would be a great time to get on board and help us push the state of the art forward yet again.