Braunstein is the Least Interesting Thing About Braunstein

Before I had permanently changed the conversation surrounding the Dungeons & Dragons game for the second time, Braunstein was little more than a curiosity. If it was invoked at all it was only because played a significant role in the development of a game that would ultimately overshadow it many times over. It was a curio. An oddity. Something that languished in some junk drawer down in the basement of the Museum of Rpg History. Nobody wanted to play one. It was merely a bit of obscurity you could pull out when you wanted to impress people with their knowledge of gaming esoterica.

With the advent of the Blackmoor Film documentary, a few things became a lot clearer than before. The conversation could now change substantially because it was more broadly appreciated that the Braunstein had several very unusual properties:

• The Braunstein was really, really fun even when it was a half-baked idea that was clearly broken as a formal game design.
• The Braunstein was dull when all of its game elements became nailed down, strict, and formalized.
• Players will demand to play more Braunsteins even when they are considered to be a failure by their referee.
• Braunsteins are volatile, but weirdly anti-fragile. It is possible to vary, alter, or extend the range of roles that are available for play and still get a successful game session out of them. They do not need to be painstakingly balanced in the same way that most game masters fret about in their coventional rpg campaigns.

There was something very exciting here just waiting for someone to discover. That someone was me. Thanks to the fact that I was surrounded by dozens of people who were steeped in playing AD&D “rules as written”, using 1:1 timekeeping, and experimenting with patron play it had become possible for an ambitious and enterprising person like myself to use the concept of the Braunstein to run AD&D at the stronghold level, combining the activities of several name-level characters and many low level PCs into a sprawling “always on” campaign that was unlike anything that that anyone had ever done with the game.

The results were sensational.

History repeated itself. Just as the players among the original Blackmoor clamored for more Braunsteins to be run, so too did ours. Anybody that was anybody wanted to play in one or else set up one of their own: The Fall of Ur, Brovenloft, Decembork, BROrientalAdventures, and now… well over a dozen session Braunsteins that demonstrate how to draw loose threads from ongoing D&D campaigns and then combining them into a relatively brief session Braunstein. The excitement surrounding these proofs of concept is so palpable there is no doubt that the use of ad hoc Braunsteins sessions within continuing campaigns will continue now for as long as people are playing D&D.

Today we can add a few more points to the things that the now classic Blackmoor documentary revealed just a few short years ago:

• Braunstein play is a phenomenally good fit with many of the older rpg rule sets.
• There are unusual passages within the older rules manuals that seem to indicate that their designers took for granted that people would understand how to leverage the dynamics of Braunstein gameplay in order to easily set up original campaign situations that play out in an engaging way.
• Braunstein play appears to be essential to anyone that wanted to explore D&D gameplay at the wargame tier of play which is generally referred to as “domain play”.
• Braunstein play can solve the most common problems that cause people to balk at running domain-level play– and it can do so without requiring new gaming supplements or design elements beyond what is extant within the original 1970’s era rulebooks.
• While it is almost impossible to find good wargaming opponents, it is trivial to find players that will jump at the chance to play in these sorts of games.
• Because no new game systems are required to play type of game, it is trivial for even inexperienced referees to begin experimenting with these types of games. There is no need to master separate standalone wargame rulesets that roleplayers tend to balk at playing with. (Although it must be noted that Chainmail appears to be the go-to solution when people do elect to jump to a separate set of wargaming rules when they set up their Braunsteins.)

So here we are.

Five years ago, Braunstein was seen as interesting only because it was an intermediary step in the transition from wargames to D&D. Today it is seen as interesting because it is the key to being able to pay off the promise that was implied by the many more inscrutable elements of the old OD&D and AD&D rulesets. You can finally experience the sort of games kids in the eighties suspected they should be able to run with their D&D sets even though they had no idea how to manage such things.

And the original Braunstein itself? It is now overshadowed by D&D for two entirely different reasons. And it’s sad, really. It is such an important game! Ultimately, the most important thing about Braunstein is that players love playing them so much even when they are half-baked and poorly conceived that anyone can easily throw one together and have a great time with their game group regardless of what is going on in their continuing D&D campaign.

If you are looking to run a D&D campaign that your friends will brag about being a part of for many years to come, then this is the best news you will have had in a long time.

Enjoy!