Modern role playing games have many antecedents, from childhood games of Make Believe to parlor games like Wink Murder to war games like free Kriegsspiel and Diplomacy. But perhaps the most direct precursor to modern tabletop RPGs and LARPs were David A. Wesely’s Braunstein games.
The first game of Braunstein took place in 1968 or 1969 in the Twin Cities. Dungeons and Dragons co-creator Dave Arneson, then still a teenager, was in attendance. Wesely created Braunstein as an extension of the Napoleonic war games his group was playing at the time. Instead of taking on the roles of generals commanding armies, players assumed the roles of various people within the fictional Prussian town of Braunstein, including the mayor, banker, and university students. Arneson played a patriotic student and engaged in what might be the first RPG melee session.
“I’m off in my separate room with my charts and maps and stuff and the other guys are in the main room talking to each other and two of them walk in and say ‘hi we’re going to have a duel, how do we do it?’” Wesely said in an interview in 2016. “I said, well ok then, here you get 3d6 and you get 2d6.”
“The one with the 2d6 said ‘Wait I’m the captain of the fencing team, why do I only get 2d6?’ and I said ‘Well, this other guy is a colonel who’s been in the army for 20 years and he’s fought dozens of duels to the death and all you’ve ever done is stick people with blunt swords that dent their jackets,’” Wesely continued. The guy with only 2d6 was Arneson, who lost the duel badly and died.
Other versions of this story involved Arneson rolling only 1d6 versus the other person’s 2d6. Was this the first instance of Advantage in a TTRPG? Or was it more of a dice pool? Either way it’s pretty cool.
The first session was so chaotic that Wesely saw it as a failure. But the players wanted more. After two smaller, more orderly sessions, Wesely realized he needed to embrace the freewheeling spirit of the original. The fourth Braunstein game, which took place in a fictional dictatorship in Central America, went back to the more open-ended approach.
By the time Wesely left the Twin Cities in 1970, Arneson was running his own Braunsteins. By spring of 1971 Arneson was running his “Medieval Braunstein” campaign set in the world of Blackmoor. That lead to the creation of Dungeon and Dragons with Gary Gygax, and the rest, as they say, is history.
There has never been a published Braunstein rulebook (the Barons of Braunstein game has little if anything to do with Wesely’s rules or settings). But Wesely has continued to run Braunsteins both privately and at conventions since at least 2008. A wealth of resources exist online that those who want to learn more about this style of play or who want to run and play their own Brauntstein could use to emulate the experience.
How to run a Braunstein
Handouts
Ben Robbins published Wesely’s handouts for his Braunstein 1 and 4 games at GenCon 2008. There’s no procedural information, but enterprising referees could probably use these to run their own games. They’re certainly interesting artifacts in their own right.
Character handouts for Braunstein RPG 1 (Arneson played “Student A” in the original Braunstein session)
Character handouts for Braunstein RPG 4
Robbins’s images of the above handouts on Flickr There are additional pages, including the Braunstein 4 map, more characters, and the move order form pictured.
Braunstein RPG 4 information write-up by Wesely and published by Robbins
Actual Play Reports
Dave Arneson recounts his experience playing “Brown Stone” (a western Braunstein run by Duane Jenkins) in his Corner of the Table Top newsletter (This might have used a set of very early skirmish rules from the UK called Western Gunfights, see “Other early role playing games and precursors” section below)
Actual play report from GenCon 2008
Various photos and links from Ben Robbins
Lots of comments from Wesely on the game and how he runs it in the comments section of this post
Forum discussion with various people who have played with Wesely (Requires login)
My actual play report from playing Braunstein RPG 1 with Wesely at Arnecon 2023 (Includes some procedural information)
My actual play report from playing Braunstein RPG IV at Arnecon 2023 (Includes some procedural information)
RPG Pub forum discussion on how to run a Braunstein
Actual play report from someone who ran Braunstein I via Discord
David Wesely interviews
BrigadeCon 2016 video interview.
Acaeum forum discussion with Wesely answering various questions
Theory from the Closet interview from 2010
The Secrets of Blackmoor documentary features interviews with Wesely and some original players
Megagames
I haven’t played one, but “megagames” sound conceptually similar to Braunsteins: “A megagame blends aspects of board games, LARPs, wargaming and role-playing into a totally new thing; a megagame!” Megagaming was mentioned as a modern-day equivalent to Braunsteins in the above linked RPG Pub discussion on running Braunsteins.
Megagame Assembly has many resources, including a calendar of megagaming events, advice for running megagames, and some free ready-made megagames.
Cockroaches, Copper & Cows was mentioned as a particularly Braunstein-like metagame. You can read a little more about it here and download it from this page.
Books and documentaries
Jon Peterson’s book Playing at the World includes a small segment on Braunstein and its role in the early history of tabletop role playing (much of it sourced from the Acaeum forum posts linked above). Braunstein gets only a passing mention in Peterson’s other history books, Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift. However, these latter two works have more up-to-date research overall.
The Secrets of Blackmoor documentary is arguably more about Braunstein than it is about Blackmoor.
Chirine Ba Kal ’s Brauntstein RPG Essays
Jeff Berry (a.k.a. Chirine Ba Kal) gamed with many of the Midwest Originals, including M.A.R Barker, Arneson, Gygax, and Wesely. He wrote a series of essays on how he runs Braunsteins set in Barker’s world of Tekumel. Berry took his entire site offline after the Tekumel Foundation confirmed that Barker wrote a neo-nazi novel and more information about Barker’s antisemitic beliefs and his role as an editor for a holocaust denialist magazine became public. Berry’s essays are still available on Archive.org and I include them here for their historical value.
Essay On The Braunstein — Part The First
Essay On The Braunstein — Part The Second
More On The Braunstein — Questions From The Floor!
Essay On The Braunstein — A Short Digression
Essay On The Braunstein — Part The Fourth
On The Braunstein — A Pause For Questions…
The Braunstein — More Of Your Questions!
The Braunstein — A Question From Ed
A Braunstein Interlude — Maps And Campaigns
Strategos and Other Influences
The war game Strategos by Charles A. L. Totten (not to be confused with the strategy board game Stratego) was one of Wesely’s primary influences. Wesely created his own (also I believe unpublished) streamlined version of Strategos he dubbed “Strategoes N” that he used for his war games including Braunsteins in instances where they reach mass combat.
Strategos essay and rules summary by Robert Mosher
Dungeon Master Zero, the first of a series of essays by Rob MacDougall on D&D’s war gaming roots. This one is on Totten, Strategos, and Wesely.
R&D, the second in MacDougall’s series, looking at another influence on Wesely, The Compleat Strategyst: Being A Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy by John D. Williams, and more war gaming history.
Fantasy Vietnam, third in MacDougall’s series, connecting another Wesely influence, Conflict and Defense by Kenneth Boulding, to the politics of the late 1960s.
(Wesely’s response to Macdougall essays are in the comments here)
Other early role playing games and precursors
In Playing at the World, Jon Peterson cites Michael Korns’s Modern War in
Miniature (1966) as a crucial source for the idea of referees in games, and notes the conversational game play and the ability for players to play individual soldiers.
Also, on his blog and in his book Elusive Shift, Peterson covered a very early wild west skirmish system called Western Gunfight, published in the UK in 1970. Original Blackmoor player Greg Svenson had previously mentioned this as the possible ruleset used in Duane Jenkins’s Western Braunstein, Brown Stone.
More on Western Gunfight and UK skirmish rules here.
Additions or Corrections?
Got another link I should add? Or notice a broken link or other error? Let me know at klinfinley@gmail.com