The current issue we are running into with Docketing is, as BDubs has mentioned previously, wargamers don’t really exist. There are plenty of people who talk about wargames, but do they actually play them? The masses of supposed wargamers were invited to work alongside the BROXT to give them meaning to their lives by having them resolve actual scenarios from actual games. They have not taken up the challenge, and so the dockets are instead usually played out by BROXT regulars. But even these regulars were dragging their feet, and the window for resolving the scenario passed and instead the wargame becomes open to “solo” wargaming resolutions.

This seemed like a great time to put the Tiny d10 Skirmish Combat Subsystem to the test. The Skirmish Combat Subsystem is a very simple way to resolve non-complex scenarios of forces under 100 in number. It condenses the battle down to a single d10 roll competition, factoring in modifiers for army size, troop quality, presence of mounted units, etc. The idea is that the system would be used primarily for skirmish level fights in a larger wargame campaign.

I decided to do the classic “The armies fight and the heroes fight each other” style of wargaming. I think it’s inferior and lame, but Tiny d10 seemed like it fit the style, and the scenario does, too. The Mahar Pterodactyl sisters can fly. Ferigno can fly. We’ll have two battles, one in the air and one on the ground.

The Mahar force has some advantages. The presence of Mind-Raptors qualifies as cavalry, and the Sagoth regiment is much more powerful than your typical soldier. Their overall numbers were evenly matched, however.

Both sides had a base Force Toughness of 5 for having almost 100 soldiers each.

I gave the Mahar +2 to their Force Toughness because of the presence of mounted troops and the Sagoths, which are 4HD monsters in UMBROS compared to the Vineling’s 1HD.

So the Mahar had a base FT of 7, Ferigno 5. These numbers get added to the respective sides’ d10 roll, where the winner of the roll wins the battle.

Ferigno rolled a 2. The Mahar rolled a 10. Overall, Ferigno 7, Mahar 17! What a victory for the Mahar!

Ferigno lost 17 troops, while the Mahar only lost 1! The remaining Vinelings were about to be cut down!

But let’s consider the main event: Queen Srrith vs. Ferigno. What would be the outcome of that matchup? As a proof of concept, I actually used the stats of the Gold Dragon and the Pterosaur directly from Tiny d10. These creatures don’t really match Ferigno and the Mahar, primarily in special abilities and spells. The only change I made was to give Srrith a +1 to her attack rolls.

If you understand the mechanics of Tiny d10, this is an impossible fight for the Mahar. With their +1 Power, even a roll of 10 is a miss! After two rounds of causing a ruckus for Ferigno… He incinerates Srrith in one blast of fire. The sisters scatter to the winds.

So while the Vinelings were easily repelled, nobody can do much anything to stop Ferigno here.

What did I think of the system? It would be trivially easy to run a PC vs PC wargame campaign using Tiny d10, which is in a certain sense the ideal that a game like OD&D shoots for. Unfortunately, a T12 Gold Dragon is not very interesting when it fights enemies that have to roll a 10 or use up their limited Power Points just to hit it. But solo PCs fighting, or PCs and their lieutenants could be interesting.

One thing to explore would be how to integrate Character fights with mass combat. As it stands, this is a viable way to run mass combat quickly. More research is to be done.

Now, I have not read “Ill Met in Lankhmar” yet, but Circle Curse apparently takes place chronologically after it. After suffering the pain of losing their loved, the adventurers swear off Lankhmar and hope to lay to rest their sorrows across the world. All they are able to accomplish however is aimless wandering, thievery, and obscurity for three whole years.

As they departed and at the end of their wandering, they were set upon by magical sagacious creatures who both question their decision to leave. Ultimately, the two realize that the oath they swore to never return to Lankhmar was only useful insofar as it served a purpose. And when that purpose was done, the oath is to be set aside.

This mindset seems to me the epitome of the “neutral” alignment on the lawful-chaotic axis of D&D. A chaotic good character may break an oath if it seems like the benefits outweigh the costs, “if enough good comes from it.” A lawful good character may never break an oath, which makes sense why the Paladin class is locked in to their alignments via the oaths they swear. But the neutral good character uses oaths to center themselves and to give their aims and actions focus. Oaths in UMBROS are something we should all be doing much more of. Pellucidar is a honor-based society, so it thematically fits very well, and it also creates natural convergences between characters. “You have to help me, you swore an oath.” “You broke your oath to me, prepare to die.”

Beyond the oaths, there is something to be said about aimless wandering for a time before figuring out that your destiny awaits. You may never be able to fully forget your past, but you need to go all in on creating something new. This is a D&D post.

Enjoy!

You are Darth Wizzer Lidre, the leader of the Dark Wizards. You are a Zamorakian worshipping cult that is as old as when men started to rule Gielinor. You once had a tense coexistence with the Saradominist wizards inside the Wizard’s Tower. However, one hundred years ago the tower caught on fire in a mystery never fully explained, but you know it wasn’t one of your wizards. You were blamed for this and cast out of society. Since then, the Saradomists have consolidated power and now control most of human civilization. The Dark Wizards of Zamorak have now moved underground, using the abandoned Draynor Manor as their current headquarters.

In recent times, the rebuilt Saradomist Wizard’s Tower has rediscovered the secret to crafting runes. This is obviously a huge deal, as you rely on buying/stealing runes to do your magic. It would obviously be a huge boon to know what this secret is. Otherwise, how else will you get runes? And what is a wizard without magic?

You have big plans cooking, meanwhile. You have been preparing to summon and bind the Greater Demon DELRITH into your service. This requires three powerful sacrifices performed simultaneously at the Druid’s Circle at 10.02. You have two such sacrifices already, King Vallance of Falador who the White Knights gave up with only a bit of deception, and Prince Ali, who was kidnapped. Vallance rots in the Manor basement, and Ali waits as prisoner in the Black Knights’ Castle.

The Black Knights are closely aligned with you. You consider yourselves the brains of the Zamorakian movement, they are the muscle. However, magic tops muscle when wielded properly. If you need Ali, you will need the Black Knights to cooperate with you.

Aims: Discover the secret to runemaking

Initial Plans: Summon Delrith at the Druid’s Circle altar south of Varrock

Locations: Draynor Manor (06.03)

Alignment: Zamorak

Troops: N/A

MP count: 35

Secrets: Your hideout at Draynor Manor is secret. King Vallance of Falador is being held in the Black Knight’s Castle for you. Prince Ali of Al Kharid is being kept in Draynor Manor. If 3 faction leader types (Ali counts) are able to be sacrificed at the Druid’s Circle at 09.03, you will summon DELRITH, a demon of great power.

8 Wizards (T5) (5 @ 1, 2 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

3 Rogues (1 @ 1, 1 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

DELRITH (T12, immune to magic, 8HP)

You are Sir Amik Varze, the leader of the White Knights of Falador. Ever since the King stopped appearing publicly, you have ruled Falador as regent. What happened to the king? You cooperated or maybe “declined to intervene” in a plot of some unknown wizards to place him in a pocket dimension. This was best for Falador, as the King was clearly not in his right mind. The King had called for a ceasefire with the hated Black Knights! Who knows what horrors the evil Black Knights would have unveiled on the unwitting residents of Asgarnia! Now there is nothing to stop you from wiping out the Black Knights once and for all.

Unseating the king may be considered a not-so-orderly act by some of the higher ups in the Saradominist movement, but they really just don’t understand your methods! And you can probably find those wizards again if you needed to get the King in person again. He’s probably okay. Right? The Saradomists owe you a huge favor anyway, as when Barbarians overran the island of Entrana, it was you who came to their rescue.

The entire north of Asgarnia has been allowed to descend into chaos. After the Black Knights, why should the warlike Goblins be allowed to stay? And the glory of the White Knights certainly should not be held to simply Asgarnia, should it?

Aims: Establish total control of Asgarnia, civilize the North

Initial Plans: Destroy the Black Knights

Runes stored in White Knights’ Castle

Locations: Falador (04.03)

Alignment: Saradomin

Troops: 3 Armies

MP Count: 10

Secrets: You knew of a plot to kidnap King Vallance, and you declined to intervene. All you know is that he is being held by a group of wizards.

3 Warriors (2 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

12 White Knights (T8)

1 Wizard (Lv 2) (T5)

2 Monk (Lv 2) (T5)

1 Rogue (Lv 1)

You are Captain Karl Raunch, leader of the Black Knights. The Black Knights are a martial order devoted to the worship of Zamorak and the proliferation of Chaos in the world. Since men have ruled Gielinor, the forces of chaos have been fighting the forces of order for control. Currently, order has the upper hand. Your primary enemy, Falador, recently offered you a ceasefire from King Vallance. However, the king has not been seen in months, and it is well known that the White Knights of Falador were outraged by the ceasefire and may strike again at any time.

You work alongside the Dark Knights, who come and go often to plan things. You don’t know their headquarters, and they really like to boss you around like they call the shots, even though your weakest soldier could cut through a wizard in an instant. You are holding Prince Ali of Al Kharid hostage by request of the wizards. They have not told you their plans with him.

You are located in the Black Knights’ Castle.

Aims: Create a Chaotic Kingdom in Falador

Initial Plans: Destroy the White Knights

Locations: 04.00

Alignment: Zamorak

Troops: 3 Armies

MP Count: N/A

Secrets: Holding Prince Ali as a prisoner for the Dark Wizards. They know this. You have two doses of Poison of Probable Death.

3 Warriors (2 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

12 Black Knights (T8)

2 Rogues (Lv 3)

You General Bentnose. Big strong goblin. Goblin follow Bandos, god of war. Goblin make war. Goblin fight with other goblin. But goblin not fight goblin no more. Who goblin fight now?

The Goblins have two locations: A village far in the north of Asgarnia, and an encampment outside of Lumbridge. Goblin legend states that under Lumbridge somewhere is buried a thriving underground Goblin civilization. If they can be accessed, think of the wars that could be fought!

The Goblins don’t so much have “natural allies” because they fight indiscriminately. It is a form of worship for them. As you play them, your diplomatic solutions should usually lead to “will this lead to more war for me to fight in?” If you can plausibly see that fighting will emerge, then pursue it.

The Goblins are a weak race. You will find that your soldiers may get cut down quite easily by others. However, you have a large army, and outnumbering opponents carries its own benefits!

Goblin numbers are so numerous that every turn you can replenish 3 units of Goblins. They will be in the Goblin Village at the start of each turn. This power ceases to work once you have 30 Goblins. (So if you lose 4 in a turn, you would have 26. The next turn, 3 more goblin units would appear in the Goblin village. So you would have 29. If you end that turn with 29, the next turn you would have 30.)

Goblins are easily offended and carry grudges for millennia.

Aims: Go to war. With anybody. Doesn’t matter who.

Initial Plans: Find the goblin civilization under Lumbridge.

Locations: 03.01 and 09.05

Alignment: Bandos (god of war)

Troops: 5 Armies (5 more if you unearth the other goblins)

MP Count: N/A

Secrets: Goblin legend states that a lost goblin civilization exists buried deep under Lumbridge. It is said their numbers are so numerous they would overrun Gielinor.

5 Leaders (4 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

30 Goblins (T4)

1 Rogue (Lv 1)

You are Gunthor the brave. The Barbarians are humans in their original state in Gielinor. There was once a time when magic was the power of gods, demons, and monsters, and using this magic they almost destroyed the world. Guthix rightfully put an end to these wars, but now humans have, through the use of runes, started using magic, it’s merely a matter of time until the world is destroyed again. This has to be stopped. The goal is not necessarily to kill all magic users. But they do need to be convinced to put aside magic, destroy their runes, and CERTAINLY destroy the method the Wizard’s Tower has discovered for creating more runes.

While the Wizard’s Tower and Dark Wizards are obvious targets, Varrock, Falador, and Lumbridge all have a court wizard or two. Don’t forget about them.

You appreciate strength of arms more than anything. You CAN NOT respect anyone who is not willing to rise up to a physical challenge. The Barbarians are not sophisticated and are generally irreligious. They are martial, but not bloodthirsty. They are closer to the idea of the “noble savage.”

IMPORTANT: Monks operate through powers directly from Saradomin. They do not use runes, thus are not considered abominations.

The Barbarians originated from the Fremmenik Province far to the North. Your kin are still there, observing your actions. If they think that you are actually engaging in the Crusade once again, they may join you!

Aim: Stop the use of magic in Gielinor

Initial Plans: Destroy the Wizard’s Tower

Locations: 06.01

Alignment: Guthix (Balance)

Troops: 4 Armies (2 more if reinforced)

MP Count: Ha! Just kidding!

Secrets: You have sent messengers to the homeland to the northwest that you are restarting the Great Crusade. Perhaps early success can lead to motivating reinforcements to join you???

4 Warriors (3@3, 1 @ 4)

20 Barbarians (T6)

1 Rogue (Lv 1)

You are King Roald III of Misthalin. From Varrock you lead the largest and strongest kingdom of Gielinor, but your reputation does not match it. You are considered to be a good man, but a weak man. You roll over when the Saradominists tell you to, you let Al Kharid gain in prestige and strength. Reports are that somewhere in your lands the Dark Wizards still operate. The Duke of Lumbridge operates as its own power center in the South. And long in the past Varrock was established as the shining city for all mankind, and yet there is another kingdom next door that rivals your own.

You have a lot of things to mop up here. Fortunately you also have plenty of resources to use.

Aims: Protect the stability of the kingdom, unite the two kingdoms.

Initial Plans: Bring Al Kharid into the Kingdom of Misthalin as a vassal state

Locations: 09.01

Alignment: Saradomin

Troops: 4 Armies

MP Count: 15

Secrets: Silverlight - +3 sword against all monsters. Any martial type can wield it.

4 Warriors (2 @ 2, 1 @ 3, 1 @ 4)

22 Varrock Guards (T6)

2 Wizard (Lv 3) (T5)

3 Monk (Lv 3) (T5)

2 Rogue (Lv 2)

Look, I’ve spent a lot of time putting this stuff all together and now my baby is crying. I’m just gonna cut to the chase here. You are Sedridor, the Head Wizard of the Saradomist Wizard’s Tower. The tower was burned to the ground 100 years ago when you shared it with the Zamorakian wizards. After the tower burned down, they were evicted and shunned from society. They became the Dark Wizards. Of course, who really lit the fire? It’s said in hushed rumors that it was a Saradomist Wizard looking for a pretense to remove the influence of the Dark Wizards on the institution.

But the tower was rebuilt, and a huge boon was discovered. In the ash and rubble in the basement the incantation was found to teleport one to the Rune Essence Mines. This is where new runes come from. Because of this, you gain 10MP every turn. Nobody else knows this secret, but everyone knows you know it. This is the incantation. Senventior Disthine Molenko! Hopefully it stays a secret, or you only give it to trusted people, because this is a very large advantage!

The Dark Wizards surely want access to it. They remain your biggest hurdle to outright magical dominance in Gielinor. And those who dominate this mysterious power will surely dominate the world… Let ambition drive you.

Aims: Guard the secret of runecrafting.

Initial Plans: Find the Dark Wizards and destroy them.

Runes stored at Wizard’s Tower

Locations: 06.06

Alignment: Saradomin

Troops:

MP Count: 50 (+10 every turn)

Secrets:

You know a specific teleportation spell that transports you to the Rune Mines. This is off the map far away. It is inaccessible otherwise. The secret is stored in the Wizard’s Tower.

Gains MP every turn, can give MP points out. No money in the game.

10 Wizards (T5) (6 @ 2, 3 @ 3, 1 @ 4)

1 Rogue (Lv 1)

You are Sigmund, advisor to Duke Horatio of Lumbridge. The Duke has gone on a vacation excursion and has left you in charge. That means it’s time to get to work.

You, Sigmund, are a member of the secret cult Humans Against Monsters. Their goal should be obvious. The monsters that are readily apparent at the beginning of the game will be the Goblins. Go get ‘em!

On a more specific note, the Duchy of Lumbridge is a vassal of the Kingdom of Asgarnia. King Roald has done very little in his reign to rein in monsters. It’s basically raining Goblins outside! The Duke has never been an ambitious fellow. So you should NOT let this opportunity go to waste. Maybe taking power away from the King, perhaps the Duke being named king or… Maybe… you being named king through a series of crises involving monsters could

Whatever you have to do to eliminate the monsters is fair game. Don’t try to rationalize their existence. Don’t empathize with them. “Wow, that seems cruel.” No, It’s effective. “That doesn’t seem very nice.” Correct, you shouldn’t be nice to monsters. In fact, if someone gives monsters quarter, that’s probably a signal that they deserve death.

Always remember, people assume you are actually a sensible advisor, not a bloodthirsty murderer of monsters. Try not to let your bloodlust be too public.

Aims: Kill All Monsters, ensure that monsters never have a chance to proliferate in Gielinor again.

Initial Plans: Launch an attack against the goblin camp

Runes stored in Lumbridge Castle.

Locations: 08.05

Alignment: Saradomin

Troops: 3 Armies

MP Count: 10

Secrets:

3 Warriors (2 @ 2, 1 @ 3)

15 Lumbridge Guards (T6)

2 Wizard (Lv 1) (T5)

3 Monk (Lv 1) (T5)

2 Rogue (Lv 2)

You are Emir Suleiman of Al Kharid. You are an independent city state on the outskirts of the vast, vast Kharidian desert. The wealth of the desert flows through you, and you are Misthalin’s gateway to its many mysteries. You do not follow Guthix, Saradomin, or Zamorak. Instead, you follow the pantheon of the desert gods, numerous and treacherous as the sands of the dunes. The desert is your way of life. You have heard rumors of a nearby artifact of great power, just outside the desert in Lumbridge, buried underground. This artifact was used in the creation of the desert itself, and it is theorized that if wielded today, it could create MORE desert. This is a holy mission for you and all of Al Kharid.

Unfortunately, there is a huge distraction. Your son, the young man Crown Prince Ali, is missing. A capable warrior, it is unknown just how his disappearance happened. There was little evidence of a struggle, and nobody saw him leave. Nor were there any sightings of strangers in the area. Finding Ali is a matter of existential importance to Al Kharid, for without him, the dynasty dies, and with it, the jewel at the crest of the crown of the desert.

The Arena is an ancient magical building. It allows any two people to engage in combat, seemingly to the death, but upon victory both combatants are restored to their pre-fight strength. The Emir controls this power and can secretly revoke it at will IF HE IS AT THE ARENA. Would be cool to see this used.

Finally, the warriors of Al Kharid are known for their fierce scimitars and deadly techniques. On all attack rolls against humans and goblins, add +2 on your to hit roll.

Aims: Expand your territory and expand the desert(???)

Initial Plans: Find Prince Ali.

Locations: 10.05

Alignment: Desert gods

Troops: 3 Armies

MP Count:

Secrets: Arena - You can at any time pull the magical “protections” offered by the arena, assuming you are there. So someone can think they are having a friendly fight to prove a point and it leads to a fight to the death.

3 Warriors (3 @ 2)

12 Desert Fighters (T6, +2 to hit against humanoids)

3 Rogues (Lv 2)

You are Elvarg, the Green Dragon. You landed on Crandor decades ago, torched it, and took a nap. Now, it’s time to wake up. There isn’t much to say about who you are. You are bent on destruction. You are not aligned to anything. You can travel by flight bypassing any army. (You do have to “land” when you reach a hex, however, so people can engage with you if you are sitting on a hex.)

You burned Crandor on a whim because you thought it would be funny. And it wasn’t funny enough! You realize now that your mistake was not playing on the emotions of the pitiful humans. It’s funnier when they are begging for mercy, you give it, then take it away immediately. It’s hilarious when you backstab an ally. You will be ROFLing if you lead an army against a common foe, let them cut each other down, then burn them all to a crisp! You are pure destruction. Don’t overthink it, but you are not mindless. People don’t know anything about you other than you burned down the Crandor long ago and you are back now.

Aims: Burninate the countryside

Initial Plans: Burninate the peasants

Locations:

Alignment: Unaligned

Troops: 1 Green Dragon (Do not display token until you surface)

MP Count: N/A

Secrets: Every turn you have a +1/10 chance to escape. Turn 1: 1/10. Turn 2: 2/10…

Elvarg (T11, 8HP!)

Dragon Breath (Roll hits on half the opposing army. Opponent rolls a T4 save for each hit. Failed save takes damage.)

Bite Attack (2 HP of damage)

Faction List

Dark Knights - Zamorak wizards, hideout unknown. Mysterious. Burned down the wizards tower 100 years ago.

White Knights - Regents of Asgarnia in Falador. Longstanding war against the Black Knights. Saradominist.

Black Knights - Zamorakian knights of Chaos.

Goblins - Warlike tribe, worship the god of war. Begin in two locations.

Barbarians - Anti-magic men who launched a crusade to stop the usage of magic. After a dormant period they have started to move again. Aligned with Guthix.

King Roald of Varrock - The king of Asgarnia, capital of Varrock. Most powerful polity. Saradominist.

Sigmund, regent of Lumbridge - Vassal of Varrock, Sigmund is advisor while Duke is away.

Emir Suleiman - Emir of the desert city-state of Al Kharid. Follows the Desert gods and is one

with the desert and its ways.

Elvarg - Green Dragon. Destroyed Crandor and now is waking up after a long nap.

Points to know

• Players can freely trade runes (MP)

• Wizards and monks can travel anywhere they can access through an Order. They can also be attacked to Armies.

• Wizards can “Create a Spell” using an order. Will use lots of MP, you describe the magical effect. Please use sparingly.

• Wizards can use “Teleport” to teleport either themselves or a unit for 2MP.

• Monks can cast 2 Divine spells a turn.

• Rogues can travel anywhere on the map they can access in a turn

• Rogues cannot go on two missions in a row.

• Rogues do not fight in battles

• Armies can travel 8 hexes through plains/farm/desert hexes or any hex with a road. All other terrains count for 3 hexes (forest, hills, mountain, swamp)

• Moving across the river without using a bridge ends your movement at the hex you cross into.

• Boats are only available at Port Sarim

General advice

• If you aren’t talking, you are losing. The game is won or lost on player interaction, not creative orders.

• Orders should not be lame. Nothing like “I order my rogue to make no mistakes and to succeed in his mission.” Instead try “I send my Rogue to 04.01 to assassinate the High Priest of Saradomin.”

• Turns continue on even if someone is fighting! Resolve stuff quickly or else!

COMBAT PROCEDURE

Can choose to disengage before combat by rolling 5 or higher. Then, can move 2 more hexes. (Only once a turn).

Each side fights simultaneously.

PHASE 1

Each wizard can cast a spell (Track MP cost).

Roll d10 for each attacker.

If the two sides are uneven in number, up to twice the smaller number can attack (5 men vs 11 men, 10 can attack)

Add bonuses (magic weapons, Lv 2 +1, Lv 3 +2, Lv 4 +3)

Trying to roll Toughness of opponent or higher (a roll of 5-10 hits a T5 enemy)

Total up number of hits, that is how much damage you do. Usually a hit is worth 1HP.

Players assign the damage THEY RECEIVE to THEIR OWN UNITS.

All units have 1 Hit point except leaders, who have HP equal to their level.

Remove from play any slain units.

PHASE 2

Monks cast their spells (Track prayer points)

Monks can restore slain units at the end of the round.

Can disengage at the end of a round by rolling 5 or higher. Then, can move 2 more hexes.

BASIC COMBAT EXAMPLE

SIDE 1

Lv 1 Wizard

5 T7 soldiers

Lv 3 leader

Lv 1Monk

SIDE 2

10 T4 soldiers

Lv 2 leader

Side 1’s wizard casts Fireball I for 5 damage (directed at one creature). The 5 soldiers score 3 hits. The leader scores a hit. Total of 4 hits of 1 HP each and 1 hit of 5 HP. Side 2 scores 3 hits with their 10 soldiers and the leader scores one hit. Total of 4 hits of 1 HP each. Side 1 chooses to give 2 hits to the Lv 3 leader who now has 1 of 3 HP and two soldiers are slain. Side 2 chooses to have 4 soldiers get slain. Side 1’s monk now casts Divine Medicine and heals one of the slain soldiers. Side 1 now has 4 soldiers, 1 wizard, 1 leader with 1HP, and 1 monk. Side 2 now has 6 soldiers and 1 leader.

Side 2 decides to disengage. A 4 is rolled, which is less than 5, so they do not escape. Combat will continue.

(Skip to the next section if you are more interested in the event itself.)

After a little over a year in which my second child was born, I was finally able to run a Session Braunstein live and in person. When I ran my first Session Braunstein, my friend said something that has always stuck with me. As a group that really only had experience in conventional D&D “gaming,” our time on BROZER: Island of War and Winter, despite being a convoluted mess, was “better than any D&D one-shot.” That made sense to me. I had played in a few such games in the years preceding. That same friend even ran one custom made for me leading up to my wedding. I found that I couldn’t possibly care about my character who was only made for one scenario, and I couldn’t possibly care about the story of the one-shot as it was intended to be done. While the one-off session Braunstein doesn’t fix the character issue, its inversion of the conventional RPG formula allows the game to be interesting for the participants because they have total control of the game. Their decisions actually matter in a way beyond “if you don’t play the module correctly the DM has to change things to get you back on track.”

Finding Braunstein excited me, and I had the idea that it may be more feasible in some respects for people like me to, instead of meeting regularly for a D&D game, play in periodic one-off session Braunsteins. Over the course of the past year I’ve put thought into what a “Braunstein clubhouse” would look like. But after ScapeStein, played on Friday, 7/24/26, I can’t help but wonder truly what the best way to move forward is.

The one-off single session Braunstein is, unfortunately, a dead end. This should make sense. Braunstein as a standalone session concept died out almost immediately when Dave Arneson ran the Blackmoor, the first fantasy campaign. Instead, it spawned what one might call “character-focused fantasy wargaming,” or a fantasy roleplaying game. Think about Appendix N stories. They are about characters. Someone at some point in time called the AD&D ruleset an engine that produces pulp fantasy stories (Credit Griff Morgan).

(The much maligned) (quite unfairly I may add) Griff Morgan has been hard at work trying to clarify why the BrOSR does not do “Braunstein.” And while we have had several Bros actually play and win Wesely Braunstein games, who then went on to confirm that the innumerable session Braunsteins we have run are in fact of the same spirit as Wesely’s game, Griff Morgan continues to tell us that we don’t know what we are talking about.

Of course, “the people” mentioned here is the BrOSR, whom Griff has decided to never utter the name of in fear. And after a conversation with a Twitter use who is explicitly not a Bro but overlaps with us on many many points, Griff gets to why he says we do not play Braunsteins.

Or rather, he won’t actually say it because he has to put it in a book first. Hopefully nobody takes excerpts from that book and reproduces him without properly citing it. Nobody has had more stolen from him in the OSR than Groff Morgan.

It makes me feel sad for the guy.

When the BrOSR watched Secrets of Blackmoor (Credit Griff Morgan), they very quickly became very excited about how a few ideas could be incorporated into a D&D game: “Multiple independent actors operating in conflict to achieve varying goals inside a fog of war.” For the BrOSR, that was the gameplay dynamic that got inserted into every conversation and understanding about D&D. D&D is a Braunstein. After Griff Morgan realized that this actually groundbreaking part of RPG play was entirely captured by his internet mortal enemy (#ThankYouJeffro), he decided that what actually makes something Braunstein are all the ideas that make the game interesting but effectively a dead end.

For Griff Morgan, a Braunstein is a game that:

• Involves a lecture to provide important context

• Takes place in one session

• Has a referee who doesn’t do very much

• Players get to do whatever they want

• Nobody actually has any idea what happened by the end of it

• The same scenario is ran again with new players but tweaked

And there are some other things too that will surely be known to us when we purchase his book. Unfortunately for Griff, all of these points, while the make for fun moments DURING GAMEPLAY, cease to matter when the game is over. Wesely has been running games at conventions for years now. I actually know a guy near me who played in one a couple years ago in a convention! He was astounded that someone would try to adapt that style into their own game. I can’t imagine what he would do if we told him he can take the Braunstein style and adapt it to a campaign.

The only Braunstein book worth buying is, of course, Winning Secrets, which discusses the exact opposite of what Griff is saying. Griff would say, “Dave Arneson did something different with Blackmoor. It wasn’t Braunstein.” And he is right. But, as with the rest of the OSR, Griff intentionally stands in the way of improving the game by obfuscating what lessons from Braunstein Arneson actually took and applied to a campaign.

I lay all of this out to say that I have never been more convinced that the only viable path forward for the hobby is BrOSR-style Braunstein campaigns. All other gaming is an inferior concession made in order to make up for some deficiency, whether that be time, player quality, or player quantity. And even this is not true, as the BROXT UMRBOS campaign, of which I am a part, suffers from these same three issues (with myself being a key offender) but is still the best gaming I have ever experienced.

While it’s true that my players enjoyed themselves, thanked me for inviting them, and asked me to invite them to the next one, even if it’s true that this would likely NOT be true if I had invited them to play D&D instead of a Braunstein, Friday was still far from RPG greatness.

Let’s dive into the night. I think there were still many good insights to come out of the game, and again, everyone had a great time.

The Idea

I think the idea for an Old School RuneScape themed Braunstein came from just listening to the soundtrack in the car a bunch. I played a lot of RuneScape back in middle school, and it’s fun to log in from time to time still for a few days, but those days are long, long past me. But as the musical tracks would play, it transported me to my childhood and the memories of quests and lore came flooding back. As soon as I identified Braunstein potential (the map is so jam-packed it’s easy to think of convergences), I began to look deeper into the lore of the game. And boy, was there more Braunstein potential than I could have guessed. Some of the better material was even left aside because I wanted to limit our session to just the Free To Play portion of the game. But most of the more memorable quests actually involve the player operating with, for, or against factions. Intrigue, rivalries, betrayals abound. I knew I had something good on my hands. Did you know the Barbarians of Barbarian Village were formerly transitory, seeking to eradicate the use of magic? I had no idea as a kid. I knew the Dark Wizards primarily as the vehicle of my demise the first time a player came up to me, said “Follow,” and took me straight to the middle of the Druid’s Circle as I got pelted with Wind Strikes. But did you know they once shared the Wizard’s Tower with the “good” wizards, until it burnt to the ground? Did you know that Asgarnia’s King hasn’t been seen in ages and the White Knights control the Kingdom from Falador? What the heck happened to him? All of this got used to make good potential convergences.

The System

For my session Braunsteins I have wanted to explore more of using Tiny d10 for its simplicity and ease of teaching new players. Turning most everything into a X/10 chance made the game flow very smoothly, especially for adjudicating. A player would describe an order, I would decide what seemed like a fair probability out of 10, and I would roll my d10. If it was a success, good. If it was a failure, depending on how bad of a failure could lead to a worse outcome (although now that I think about it I think the lowest failure roll of the night was actually a 4, so nobody had something catastrophic happen).

Tiny d10 combat typically operates through individual initiative with four classes, Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue. I modified the game for ease of play, as 6 of my 10 players were new to Braunstein and at least 2 were absolutely new to the genre of TTRPGs. Instead of initiative, either player could elect to try to run at the beginning of a round, or combat would proceed. First, Wizards would cast spells. Then, warriors and any regular troops (ranged units/positional considerations were completely ignored in the game) would make attacks. Finally, clerics could cast spells at the end. All melee troops would roll hits, unless there was a massive outnumbering situation, in which case the larger side could roll up to twice as many hits as the smaller side rolled. A hit did 1 damage, and troops had 1HP. Leader types had HP equal to their “level” I gave them. Leaders were supposed to have a to hit bonus of their level, but that was not explained and buried in the “Combat Procedures” sheet. Players could assign damage they received to whoever they wanted (they could use leaders as a sponge if they wanted to keep the number of hits each turn up). I was shocked to learn that very few questions were asked about Combat, very little clarification needed to be done, and nobody asked me to preside over their combat to make sure they were doing it right. They just found a rhythm and helped each other when someone else engaged in combat.

There was a hex map that players could move their armies throughout. Rogues (which only did subterfuge missions, never combat) had unlimited range for missions per turn, but had a 1 turn cool-off between sessions. I think this was very important to keep people’s minds free from tracking one more thing. Also, the world map is very small anyway. It kind of makes sense that you can go from Lumbridge to the Black Knight’s Fortress in a 15 minute turn if you toggle running. Troops meanwhile had a limited movement range per turn, but it was still substantial, roughly half the map. Troops had to be represented by “armies,” which must have a leader attached to it. These armies were openly visible, but the troop counts within each were tracked by the players themselves.

Having the established hexmap on the table was a huge improvement over Piratestein, and it didn’t take all that long to make. The hexes didn’t tessellate at all, but it did the job of letting people know exactly how far they were from each other.

Another thing that I picked up from Piratestein last year was the passing of turns in real time no matter what players were doing in the moment. Players had a certain amount of movement each turn, and if they were in the middle of a combat but had not used their movement for that turn, they may lose the chance to use it if they didn’t disengage. This allowed me to keep turns pretty short, at about 15 minutes each. This is only possible if I am NOT keeping track of anyone’s movement. The only time I would need to know where somebody was was if another player had an order that necessitated that knowledge. That did happen during ScapeStein once. But otherwise I could let the game go at a quick pace, drawing things out if I needed more time or letting turns go by faster if it seemed like everyone was just waiting for more movement to go through with their plans.

Players were told to arrive by 6:30. All players had arrived by 6:45, and I think we had begun turn 2 by 7:15. Pretty remarkable turnaround compared to the 90 minute lecture Wesely gives! The game was supposed to run from 6:30 to 10:00, but notably I checked the game state at around 9:45 and noticed that the game was at a perfect ending point for every faction.

The Setup

There were two things I wanted to introduce and experiment in this game. The first was the focus going from “Goals” to more of “Aims,” and the other was giving players “Initial Plans” to give them a push in a direction. Almost all the Initial Plans involved some other faction, so convergence was almost guaranteed. BROXT Booker Bdubs1776 predicted that this would likely still lead to box-checking behavior and recommended that instead factions should be told to focus on playing their role over achieving any kind of concrete goals. I think this game proved Bdubs was spot on. However, when your ideas are half-baked and rushed, Aims and Initial Plans helps the players know how they are supposed to be acting. More on that later.

The Story

First, for the readers, here is the list of factions given to the players.

Faction List

Dark Wizards (Note that this was accidentally titled “Dark Knights” for the game) - Zamorak wizards, hideout unknown. Mysterious. Burned down the wizards tower 100 years ago.

White Knights - Regents of Asgarnia in Falador. Longstanding war against the Black Knights. Saradominist.

Black Knights - Zamorakian knights of Chaos.

Goblins - Warlike tribe, worship the god of war. Begin in two locations.

Barbarians - Anti-magic men who launched a crusade to stop the usage of magic. After a dormant period they have started to move again. Aligned with Guthix.

King Roald of Varrock - The king of Asgarnia, capital of Varrock. Most powerful polity. Saradominist.

Sigmund, regent of Lumbridge - Vassal of Varrock, Sigmund is advisor while Duke is away.

Emir Suleiman - Emir of the desert city-state of Al Kharid. Follows the Desert gods and is one with the desert and its ways.

Elvarg - Green Dragon. Destroyed Crandor and now is waking up after a long nap.

(The Wizard’s Tower was omitted from this list as I was scrambling to get everything typed and printed before the game began.)

And here is the hex map.

The game began with some strong coalition building between the Saradominist factions, as one might expect. The White and Black Knights came to blows quickly, but a distraction was made when the Barbarians marched straight to the Wizard’s Tower and wiped out almost all of them immediately. Only Varrock’s timely arrival (and some poor Braunstein play by the player) kept the Wizards from going extinct. Perusing the Tiny d10 Magical Spells list, the Wizard player ended up making a bunch of animated Stone statues, which apparently became an important factor later in the game. The Dark Wizards were able to kidnap the Goblin General Bentnose and use him alongside other sacrifices to summon the demon DELRITH. The player was disappointed that DELRITH was not more functional as a fighting force. The player has a point, although the demon was almost unkillable. Somehow the White and Black Knight negotiated a brief truce to put down the Goblin threat brewing up north. But the White Knights disengaged immediately at the start of combat, and the Goblins killed every last Black Knight. This was by far the best moment of the game, and it came from the player least likely to come across as “the kind of guy who would be in to TTRPGs.” I didn’t know about this happening until the wrap up discussion at the end, too! Al Kharid went searching for Ali, but by the time they figured out that the Dark Wizards were the ones who had him prisoner, he had already been sacrificed. They instead went searching for an artifact that terraforms the earth into desert. The Goblins were searching in the same area around Lumbridge for their lost civilization. A low roll from Al Kharid meant that instead of their artifact, they unleashed a second Goblin horde buried underground. This solidified the Goblins’ endgame. The Goblins had a mechanic where their numbers would replenish every turn, and nobody decided to do anything about it! By the end of the game, the Goblins had twice their initial starting force and an alliance with Elvarg the dragon. Elvarg had to wait to enter the campaign map for three turns as I imagined it would be a hedge against the Dragon just eliminating a faction immediately, but the player I gave her to was brand new and I think was hesitant to go in so quickly while unsure of how to play. Instead, Elvarg was largely a nonfactor, although she was fought off by a few factions toward the end of the game. Lumbridge succeeded in absolutely nothing, as the Goblins are stronger than ever, a dragon is loose, and their land was turned into desert as Al Kharid eventually would find their artifact. Varrock fought to maintain the status quo and did well in protecting the city from harm. An example of Elvarg’s player’s inexperience is this: While a major fight was happening, Elvarg just watched… While perched in the city of Varrock. The city could easily have burnt to the ground. Elvarg did, however, destroy the Wizard’s Tower by the end of the game.

The final game state had Elvarg and the Goblins regrouping in the Goblin Village, poised to crush anyone they wanted. There was one singular wizard left from the Wizard’s Tower, although he maintained the secret of Runecrafting as directed. The Barbarians did not fully succeed in eliminating magic and suffered pretty bad losses. The White Knights returned to Falador triumphant over their mortal enemies. The Black Knights were utterly destroyed. The Dark Wizards teleported their demon and themselves to the island of Entrana to bide their time (which is objectively hilarious if you know the lore of the game). Varrock returned home to a stable kingdom. Lumbridge returned home to a wasteland, dead soldiers, and probable death. Al Kharid, while Prince Ali was slain, was able to expand the desert.

Player Grades

I will now grade the players based on their ROLEPLAYING grades. This is an idea from Advanced Dungeons and Dragons to give feedback to players so they learn to actually follow their class and alignment restrictions. It is a key component to being an elite player. This list is DIFFERENT from “whose faction is best off by the end.”

Dark Wizards - B. In my opinion he did not engage with the runecrafting elements of the game enough. He did boss around the Black Knights, neutralizing any leverage they had over him, but by the end of the game he was basically out of runes and didn’t have much way to deal with that fact. Perhaps, had the Wizard’s Tower not been destroyed, he could have raided it with his magic-immune demon, ransacked it, and uncovered the secret for himself!

White Knights - A. The White Knights would certainly use underhanded tactics to destroy their hated enemies. The player played this perfectly.

Black Knights - D. The Black Knights should try to assert some sort of independence from the Dark Wizards. Instead, he let them fall into a trap set up by the White Knights. Truly awful!

Goblins - C. Not enough senseless war.

Barbarians - D. Docking HUGE points because the player kept one wizard alive. He rolled enough hits to kill them all, but he lied and said it was enough to kill all but one. Why bother playing the game if you won’t commit?

King Roald of Varrock - A. Played the lawman of the game, protecting Saradominist factions.

Sigmund, regent of Lumbridge - B. Sure, the goblins are alive, but not for lack of effort!

Emir Suleiman - B. The doting father pulled out all the stops to find Ali. You could see the frustration on his face when he realized how close he was to finding Ali, but just a little too late.

Elvarg - C. The player tried, but he was given a legitimately tough faction for a complete beginner. In retrospect, my vision was something like Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street. She can decimate an army if caught out of position, so have fun threatening people! I don’t think that came across at all in my writeup. So it’s mostly my bad.

Wizards Tower - B. The Wizards are intended to be power brokers as they control the flow of runes/MP in the game. The player did a good job with this.

Conclusion

Overall, the session was a great time, but some pretty glaring flaws were revealed.

First, while it’s cool to know that you can have a complete 10 person Braunstein in only 2 and a half hours (compare to my running of BROZER which took 4 but really needed 6 at least to finish), When the pacing of the game is too fast, you actually run the risk of people being TOO focused on “game mechanics.” I think the sweet spot was my Treb-stein, which took place over 4 in game days. Days/turns would take 45 minutes, orders were fluid during the day, but that gave plenty of time for people to talk. The rapid pace I think turns it more into board game territory, which is of course not ideal.

The flip side to running it this way is that it is very easy to referee this type of game where players handle their own movement and combat. The game runs itself. It means you won’t have a headache, but it’s also not as much fun when you have to sit there while in the other room all your players are actually playing the game.

Aims instead of goals, alongside Initial Plans, just doesn’t do enough to not have newer players see it as checkboxes. If I had more time to prep, I likely could have put together a more cohesive scenario with motivations stressed rather than “goals with more steps.”

Despite the fun, it still felt like something about roleplaying seemed "off.” While my players are often new to Braunstein or TTRPGs, even when players were following the suggested paths, they didn’t SEEM like they were truly their faction. I don’t hear their conversations, so all I can do is wonder. This is where the theater kid background could help players. In the play-by-post game, you see people make SEEN posts like they are pulp fantasy authors. I need to start seeing that kind of energy during my Braunsteins.

I think my Braunsteins are heading in the wrong direction. I have an idea that I will be exploring more over the next few weeks.

Afterword

My next Brauntsein event is planned for November. September and October I am planning on averaging 55 hour weeks between my two jobs, so instead of putting something together last minute I am hoping to be able to do some work leading up and run it when time is more available.

I am also ready to start “the clubhouse.” One of my players had an amazing idea for a location, using local city private event spaces to fill our space needs. I now have around 20 people who have played in a Braunstein game with me. I have a large list of people who I still want to invite, and I want to allow my players to invite others too. I am hoping that the November session will be the first official meeting of the new Clubhouse, a Christ-centered fraternal group focused on community through gaming.

I cannot express enough how positive the energy is surrounding this group and this game. With 4 games played over 18 months or so, I can only see this becoming MORE popular. Which is why I think I need to figure out the “right” way to go about doing this. Not because they won’t be happy playing these games. And while we normally say that players deserve less, if these men are supposed to be like my brothers, my brothers deserve the best that I can give them.

Maybe the single-session one-off Braunstein isn’t really dead. Maybe it just hasn’t been perfected.

This is the third installment of my Tiny d10 Solo Play series. Using the Fantasy Core rules as written alongside the Worldwide Adventure Generator, the goal is to create a coherent solo game following a single party. The project will expand, and Tiny d10’s author has been on quite the creative kick lately, meaning there will be plenty of systems to test.

It has been a few months since I last posted. I apologize for the hiatus. You can read the last installment here. Previously, an earthquake uncovered a lost crypt under the community of Bustletown. Orwell the Cleric mustered some young adventurers and investigated, finding a suspicious man traveling through the dungeon. As they explored, the unleashed a vampire from his tomb. The next week, the adventurers cleared a nearby shrine that had been vacated and had become a hide out for bandits.

The Story

The party of Orwell the Cleric, Dimron the Dwarven Warrior, Dandelion the Wizard, and Rollo the Rogue continued their sweep of the areas surrounding Bustletown. Heading out into the forests directly to the northeast of their home, they conducted a thorough search. however, try as they might, they uncovered nothing of note. A persistent fog seemed to have crept through the northern forests, suspiciously soon after the vampire ran off. Hoping to find a vantage point, they scaled a tall hill, the highest point in the area. This revealed the surrounding geography, and in the distance peeking out in a clearing amidst the trees a tall stone structure was spotted. Conceding that there was no civilized or uncivilized activity nearby, the party decided to return home. Investigating the stone would have to wait until tomorrow. On the return journey, however, Dandelion recognized a faint pattern. The fresh natural paths in this area seemed to be all heading one direction, the very direction they were destined to go…

On the following day, the party began to retrace their steps towards the jutting stone. They were not unaccompanied however. Despite the sun rising higher, curiously a swarm of bats overtook them but soared past them overhead. It seemed that everyone was heading in the same direction. As they approached their ultimate destination, the mist gave way to an unnaturally gray sky. No sign of rain, no sign of clouds. The sky had just lost all of its color.

As they explored the gray-green woods they spotted two men: thin, severe, speaking in hushed words. It appears the party had already been spotted already. Distrust was in the air as the two groups approached each other. “Begone from here,” one of the men said. “The Master broods and shall not be disturbed.” Despite Rollo’s best attempts at persuasion (Orwell, the man of God and Dandelion, the foppish youth hardly seemed fitting to negotiate), the men divulged very little about the identity of their Master, and upon their exit nobody in the party could piece together what they were talking about. Rollo however decided to tail the duo. From a distance, the unwitting guides led Rollo to a large stone cairn abuzz with activity. Hoping to maintain his cover, Rollo returned to the party, reported his findings, and the party began home. Overhead, bats continued to flock past them.

Under The Hood

No combat in this session, but there was instead an incredible amount of serendipity in the dice rolls today.

Here is the rollup for Hex 1,-1.

I was worried when starting this project that there would be TOO MUCH stuff in the game. However, when you consider that even by searching 4 hours you only have a 1-in-2 chance at making a discovery, and then there is only a 4-in-10 chance that this leads to a site or dungeon, the odds will be that most of your hexes can be cleared fairly quickly.

This hex was pretty sparse. The first moment of dice synergy was in Weather. Recall that the weather for Session 2 was Misty. So over the course of two weeks, we have two adjacent forest hexes with misty weather. Considering my primary interest in solo RPGs is in meaning-making, either this forest is always misty, or the entire forest is covered in a newly formed mist. I went with the latter. I used the Feature component to allow me to map out the surrounding hexes, hoping that would maybe generate some content. My Sign/Omen was Suspicious Guide Mark. I rolled a 2, meaning that there was something pointing towards the hex to the northeast (Roll d10, 1 is north and then go clockwise, reroll on 7-10). When I rolled for each adjacent hex, the serendipity truly struck me.

For hex 2,-2, I rolled a 10 on the Terrain Generator.

Notable terrain! I just marked it on my map as such. I wasn’t sure what it would be yet. Here were the results of the rolls for 2,-2.

With absolutely no modifications to any rolls, we see that in the place with notable geography where an omen was pointing towards there is a Feature of a Stone Formation, unnatural weather, fresh tracks, and a monster lair. And as the party traveled through 1,-1 to reach 2,-2 they encountered migrating animals, which I assigned as bats. Our Vampire from Session 1 now has a home and a resolution. He fled to this Cairn, began calling vampires toward him, and even drew in the local bats. With virtually no effort I now have a really cool story surrounding something that happened two sessions ago. One encounter roll gave “Monster or unnatural entity,” which I decided were two Vampire Converts. The game knew what it wanted. I really can’t explain it other than that.

A few other points on mechanics.

I wanted to know if the Party or the Vampire Converts had surprised either group. I decided to run a check that pitted the observers’ best Intellect score (Perception check) against the observed’s worst Reflex (Sneak) score since nobody was being deliberately sneaky at the time. In this case, both groups’ Intellect checks beat the other’s Reflex check, so I ruled it as “neither are surprised” or maybe rather “equally surprised.” If a group was trying to be sneaky, I might use their group’s BEST Reflex score as the modifier to indicate that the sneaky guy is likely directing the group’s efforts.

I used a Reaction roll for the Vampire Converts, but I gave a -1 penalty to account for the fact that in no circumstance would these Converts be immediately friendly and helpful.

A roll of 9-1 yielded 8, making them hesitant. It’s important that you use reaction rolls or else your instinct might just be to have all encounters be hostile.

I allowed Rollo to make a Persuasion check to try to get information out of them. This succeeded. However, Dandelion failed an Intellect check to piece the puzzle together. This is why Rollo then went on a solo sneak mission. By passing his check, he was able to stay hidden and find the location of the Cairn and gather some information on it. I basically saw this as “I have lots of ways to use the game mechanics to get this information to the party. Every time I fail and try a new one, I introduce another layer of risk.” Imagine if Rollo had been caught out of position! That could have been fatal.

We should always remember that just because I know what the hex has when I roll it, the party does not. I have to roleplay the party as not knowing the identity of the Vampire Converts. It definitely is easy to just default your brain towards “smash in evil guy’s head,” but I must resist those impulses. I had that issue last session.

One thing I did NOT do is roll to see if the party had gotten lost. Oh well!

No combat, no treasure, no XP this session. Although you could argue Rollo deserves an XP for his solo mission. I will forgo this for this session.

Next session we will investigate the Vampire’s Cairn. I imagine that will be combat heavy, and I am not really planning on pulling any punches. If the party starts to struggle, they will have to run! I’m looking for the opportunity to run it.

Remember that man who absconded with the platemail armor in the first session? I already have an idea for it…

Here are my notes I took during the session.

This project is an attempt to explore Tiny d10 and the new Worldwide Adventure Generator as a Solo RPG. You can read about the first session here. This will be a very conventional approach to RPGs, and then, time permitting, we will open the solo experience up to turn the game into a solo Braunstein. Through these sessions we will discover the correct way to play Tiny d10, and then we will make sure that we let the creator know what we find.

The Story

The party of Orwell the Cleric, Dimron the Dwarven Warrior, Dandelion the Wizard, and Rollo the Rogue last week uncovered the Bustletown Crypt and accidentally unleashed a vampire. When the man they met inside vanished as the vampire fled the scene, the local Church authorities sent Orwell, a young and capable battle priest, to go on a search for the evil they were unable to eradicate. With the others tagging along for the potential for wealth, they moved into the northern woods to conduct a thorough search of the adjacent hex. What they uncovered was not undead, but rather a notorious gang of bandits with a reputation for murder and burglary in Bustletown holed up in an old shrine deep in the forest.

After observing the shrine’s location, the party regrouped back in Bustletown. The Church encouraged them to “liberate” this shrine, former Church property that fell into disrepair during the waning years of the distant past. On the following day, after the trek back to the shrine, they noticed two bandits on watch. Rollo was able to get into a favorable position and attempted to scale the walls of the shrine. His attempt was unsuccessful, but he did not spoil their advantage. Rollo and Dimron let their arrows fly, and after sustaining injury, the bandits were able to retreat inside the shrine and bar the door. Dimron forced down the door to the shrine using his Warrior strength, and it became clear that a pitched battle would take place inside the shrine. Dandelion and Rollo worked together to identify and disarm a deadfall trap the bandits set to drop debris on them. Rollo was able to pick the lock on the door that the bandits were behind, but the door was jammed. Dimron lowered his shoulder and burst through the door, pushing back the two bandits who were jamming it.

What followed next was a hail of daggers thrown at the diminutive strongman. A total of 7 bandits peppered Dimron with their throwing knives, most hitting armor, a few striking Orwell close behind, but a few stuck superficially in Dimron. But they didn’t call him “The Rock of Zahak” for nothing! Dimron weathered the blows and, with the help of Orwell’s healing ability and a well positioned Fireball from Dandelion, the bandits were defeated. They fought to the last man, knowing that they faced either a swift death in the glory of battle or a death at the end of a headman’s axe should they relent. The very last bandit, surrounded, managed to land a good blow to Dimron, a final, futile grasp at retribution. As the party evaluated their victory, they realized something. They had just taken down the bandits that had terrorized Bustletown’s travelers. They barely had a scratch, and they had ample means to restore their strength. Who could stand against them?

Orwell uncovered many old icons of the Church that had been tucked away in storage, no doubt intended to be sold by the bandits one day. He returned them to the Bustletown Church, who returned the party a paltry 200gp finders’ fee, a fraction of what the images could be sold at the largest urban art markets — or to the enemies of the Church.

Under The Hood

First, let’s discuss the hex generation. Bustletown was located on Plains, so I used the handy Terrain Generator (Appendix III) of the Worldwide Adventure Generator. I chose the hex north of Bustletown and rolled a 6 on the Plains table, so the space was a forest.

I then used the Worldwide Adventure Generator’s Play Loop system to generate the contents of the hex.

And here were the results I rolled up.

When you are solo playing, you have to ask yourself when you have a bunch of materials: which am I going to use? Over the course of playing out this session, some bits were added and dropped as I settled on a particular scenario. The bandits actually had several options that I rolled up and chose which one I wanted based on how I was feeling. Here was my thought process as I rolled it.

Were the bandits buying time? Were they revered explorers banished from society who were then dwelling in the shrine? Were they led by a paranoid bandit chief who was trying to expand his territory with hidden influence on something? I settled primarily on the last and rolled decided to roll up their number using d5+5 as the method for rolling “several” monsters. Rolling d10 runs the risk of rolling low, which didn’t make sense for a bandit troupe; you can see I initially rolled 2. That WOULD work great for Revered Banished Explorers. But it’s my game, and there aren’t rules on how to generate these things, so I will follow these principles.

7 Bandits, one is a chief. I used the Bandit statblock seen here.

I made the regular Bandits T5, 4HP, 3PP while the chief was T7, 8HP, 6PP. I gave all but two the Hail of Daggers ability because I wanted to see how lethal 5 bandits rolling 25 attacks in one round could be! It’s funny, but Dimron the Warrior took 5 straight hits from the Chief. This drained most of his HP and PP using Withstand, but he stayed alive because Orwell the Cleric took a few hits too. I used the Wizard’s Splash ability to target two Bandits at once. This is entirely theater of the mind, so using it to target two instead of one in a scrum I think is acceptable.

I forgot to mention the Reaction roll. Tiny d10 differs from AD&D in that that the reaction rolls favor hostility over an even spread. AD&D even has bonuses for Charisma, so it’s actually weighed towards peaceful resolution. There is no stated rule for adding Aspect to reaction rolls, so I will not add them, but that is something to explore at a later date.

I rolled a 2, so the Bandits were certainly hostile. However, we did not wait to see if they would be hostile. We shot first and never got around to asking questions. Narratively, this is fine as they are notorious criminals but I probably should have made demands first, give them a chance to come away peacefully. That’s actually, thinking about it, the Good thing to do, and my party is, of course, Good.

I checked Morale after the round the first Bandit fell and after half had fallen. I also checked it a few more times. RAW, you check it after the first falls and then after half are defeated.

It seems to me that you would expect another check later on, like after every round once half are defeated. I can see an argument for checking at 1/4 remaining (Half of half) and then 1/8 (half of half of half) remaining assuming that enough combatants are present. I’ll ask the Big Boss about this and see what he thinks. I would lean towards checking at 1/2, 1/4, 1/8th, etc. There are also no modifiers for Morale. It is always a 20% chance to break. In any event, the Bandits never broke morale to the end.

Combat took 7 rounds to take out 7 easy enemies. I did not expect this to be a difficult encounter, and it wasn’t, even giving them 25 attacks in the first round. Recalling the fight with the Black Ice Serpent from The Broken Light, one thing that makes the fight more dangerous is all the Aspect checks needed to be taken or else you lose a turn. Those abilities really do make it more interesting, although more complicated.

Tiny d10 combat is at its worst when you are repeatedly hitting things on the head with 1 damage or 2 damage weapons. If you aren’t using your PP to cause great damage, you will just trade blows upon blows for round after round. For this reason, I’m thinking that lots of weaker monsters are not the ideal encounter. We will experiment.

When Orwell returned the icons to the Church for a paltry sum, this would be a great time for PvP behaviors in Total Nonstop Braunstein. But in conventional play, everyone just says “Okay…” so they can go to the next plot point. It was boring! Rollo should require that Orwell buy him out of his share of the treasure!

There are some good emerging stories already. We have the missing Vampire. The mysterious man with the cursed armor. The shrine to be restored. The Church and the enemies of the Church. And we also have a much larger mystery regarding the shrine’s decay. What is the state of the world we are in? That question we will answer piece by piece.

For Experience, I gave 1XP for each Bandit, 2XP from the money they looted from them, and 20XP from their reward for the icons. 28XP total spread between 4 PCs means each gets 7XP! That brings the running total to 8. It takes 50 to get to level 2, so we have a ways to go before we advance.

One thing I regret not getting was “Power Strike” as one of Dimron’s initial abilities. I wanted to use the Warrior as a tank, and he acted that way, but now he’s stuck doing 2 damage per hit. The model should instead probably be, “Warrior unleashes fury while the cleric refuels his Power Points and HP.” Lessons learned? I still have the Advanced Class abilities to go through as they level up. We’ll see!

We will continue to roll through the hexes surrounding Bustletown in later sessions.

Now that I have done the most important part of this article, we can move on.

In 1979, the third most important person in Role-Playing Gaming history, Gary Gygax, wrote an article in Issue 26 of Dragon Magazine entitled “D&D, AD&D, and Gaming.” After reading it, I think it illuminates the crux of the issues of the arguments between the BrOSR and the OSR, and it is easy to see much of Jeffro Johnson’s (the second most important person in RPGs) thinking throughout it.

Adventure Gaming

Gary begins by giving a brief history, framing the hobby as the fusion of adventure stories, role-playing, and wargames.

Most important in our discussion is that Gary considered wargamers as a type of role-players. At the campaign level, players took on the role of commanders who were capable of moving troops and making decisions. It’s a pretty basic form of role-playing, but in the example of World War II wargaming, there was certainly some in-character behavior. We also know that Diplomacy, the board game/basic wargame, can be played as a sort of role-playing game, and it’s much better for it. Why play Diplomacy if you wouldn’t launch a crusade against the Turks to retake the Holy Land? Gary and his crew were avid wargamers, and thus role-players, and by the early 70s, the group shifted its focus to smaller-scale miniature battles and campaigns.

We then see the beginning of Medieval Fantasy Wargaming Campaigns emerging from the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail.

In the context of wargaming, let’s evaluate this portion. A referee would hand out competing factions to players. They would engage in campaign play and session play playing those roles. “Multiple independent actors operating in a fog-of-war…”

We often call “Braunstein” (Credit: Griff Morgan) the first “Role-Playing Game,” but we need to dig a bit deeper to see what the real innovations were. What we often call “Braunstein play” at the faction level is largely just the logical conclusion of good wargame play. This is the “D&D is a wargame” argument distilled down to its purest point. So what exactly did Braunstein do?

Dave Arneson billed “Blackmoor” as a “medieval Braunstein.” According to Gary, players were given roles in the barony.

And now we see the development of D&D as a particular style of play. Individual characters who would enter dungeons, fight monsters, progress in experience. Working together, Gygax and Arneson developed the ruleset that would become “Dungeons and Dragons.” This was, as Gary says, the first “adventure game.”

So we have the genesis of a new hobby, a new type of game. But now it is necessary to figure out WHAT THAT GAME IS, what it’s purpose is, and how that purpose has carried into the present.

“D&D” vs. AD&D

Off the bat, something to understand about Original Dungeons and Dragons (from here called OD&D) is that most people began experiencing through the Basic set. OD&D was released in 1974, but it was repackaged as the Basic Set in 1977. Simultaneously, Gary was finishing up his work on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (from here called AD&D), which would release from 1977 to 1979. Both games would be sold by TSR concurrently. Here is what Gary has to say about it.

So OD&D along with the Basic Set written by Holmes is “D&D”, and AD&D is “AD&D.” And these are not the same thing.

Aside: The “Cutting Out Dave Arneson” Argument

At this point in the story, most people just come in and say that Gary wrote AD&D to sell more products without needing to give any royalties to Dave Arneson, and to provide a ruleset for tournaments. Both of these things may be true, but it hardly seems appropriate to assume that these are THE ONLY reasons AD&D was made, especially in light of what Gary goes on to say. Even if you think Gary truly was just a money-hungry liar, we will seriously entertain Gary’s arguments as they appear.

End Aside

Gary takes things a step further.

There are [fewer] similarities between D&D and AD&D than D&D and games that are not D&D! This seems like an incredible statement! We will explore the meat of this argument.

“D&D” (including OD&D and Holmes Basic) was a game that fostered creativity, driven by creative people, people who MADE THEIR OWN RULES, and therefore MADE THEIR OWN GAMES. Put another way, “D&D” is a SYSTEM TO MAKE A GAME.

AD&D, on the other hand, IS ITS OWN GAME SYSTEM.

What was the original intention of the game? Gary explained that they assumed the game would appeal to historical wargamers who would have already played wargame campaigns. If you read OD&D on its own, it starts to make sense why it is called “Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns.” When people were making their wargame campaigns, with characters moving from campaign to campaign, they wanted a set of rules to guide the overall game. You can imagine that this was the way the large wargaming clubs might have used the game. However…

People who picked up the game after the fact were looking for a different experience. It seems that everyone who got their hands on their game used it to do what you might expect if you just know about the modern game. They used it to tell stories.

“D&D” is a “non-game.” It’s not really an insult. Gary is arguing that the collaborative storytelling that seems to necessitate people changing rules are not playing a “game” in the conventional sense. They are engaging in a hobby, but it is not what the game was intended to look like. TSR seemed to jump into the market they discovered, however, which explains the huge amount of modules they made. They were happy to take advantage of this customer base.

But Gary seems to be trying to engage a DIFFERENT customer base with AD&D.

What is the purpose of AD&D? AD&D is supposed to be the “official” “game” version of Dungeons and Dragons. That means that AD&D is supposed to have an established ruleset that is not supposed to be changed. The rules are supposed to be knowable. It has “form and structure.” If you violate these “integral portions,” then you are playing SOMETHING ELSE. However, AD&D is supposed to still allow for creativity and imagination.

So, what are those integral portions? And how are people supposed to be creative?

It’s important to note that the COMPLETE GAME of AD&D consists of not only the “three core books,” but also Deities and Demigods (what I assume was supposed to be called Gods, Demi-Gods, & Heroes), and Monster Manual 2 and possibly the Fiend Folio. This means that the game is complete without consulting Unearthed Arcana. For that reason, we will ignore it.

When using these books, and following its rules, AD&D has a “mandate” that it MUST be run a certain way, “or else it is something else (emphasis added).”

The role of a Dungeon Master in AD&D is to obviously adjudicate the rules and direct the milieu. It is also to ADD content to the game, not to change the core rules.

Magic items, (sensible) spells, monsters, and settings are all things that a DM should feel free to add in, as long as they “adhere to the form of AD&D.” It stands to reason that, in order to add anything, you MUST UNDERSTAND WHAT THE FORM OF AD&D IS.

People often balk at this concept. “The whole point of a game like D&D is to just do whatever you want in a limitless world.” You hear this from Rule Zero people. OSR creators and people like Rob Kuntz will tell you that YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A GAME DESIGNER, as if that was part of the intention of the game, and if you don’t add your own designs to the game you are missing out on the experience.

But we see that the job of a DM can still involve creativity when giving the game meaning. In my short time as a Dungeon Master giving the actions of the characters meaning in the context of the milieu was the INTERESTING part of the game for me. That was what I had control over. Being able to determine how the world would respond to the PCs was the truly fun part!

Playing a complete game system (and following its rules correctly) is good because it does not allow for debate. Gary does mention in the AD&D DMG that DMs should not put up with players trying to cite rules to them, but that wasn’t so much an admission that DMs should change the rules, but rather that DMs have the final role of interpreting the rules.

Another thing that is appreciated now more than it was in the 80s is the second point above. Players know what to expect between tables if they play Rules as Written. We know historically people played and STILL play D&D “with their group of friends.” They don’t tend to make new friends, invite outsiders to their tables, or break out of their comfort zones. Why do you need to worry about how another table plays? You will NEVER play with them. Instead, consider today’s online atmosphere. In the BrOSR, there are at least 5 AD&D games I can name at this moment that any Bro can jump into immediately and know EXACTLY how the game will play. Because of this, these games are already incredibly open to new players who are willing to learn the rules (or already know the rules). One of the most pervasive problems WITH the BrOSR currently is that the movement has become so diffuse that there are simply TOO MANY GAMES to play in. Different groups are cannibalizing the precious limited time we all have to play games. It’s heartening to see the BroXT UMBROS game reaching as many as it is. This is only possible because of the emphasis on a single, compelling playstyle reaching so many people.

So now what?

People often say, “Hey, you want to play RAW? Go right ahead, buddy. But it’s no better a way to play than anything else!” These people are wrong.

The fruits of the “D&D” anything-goes non-game was D&D 3E, which most argue was a delineating moment in the hobby. At this point, the game was no longer what it was. Despite the attempts of people to add “old-school elements” into 5E, they did absolutely nothing to fix the underlying issue of the game, which was the culture.

The OSR made an attempt to fix the D&D culture, but all they did was roll the clock back to the days when their older brother taught them how to play using B/X, which is, as we know, non-game “D&D.” They decided to, instead of making D&D into a game, make 10,000 different games out of D&D, each one a clone of the last game with a slightly modified table or two, a new feature, and a new setting. The scene is full of people who make games more often than they play them and people who buy games faster than they could ever possibly play them. It’s impossible to say that we ever learn anything in this process, and instead the animating force is that one day, there will be enough systems that EVERYONE will find the game that is JUST RIGHT for THEIR TABLE.

But Gary argues that the strength of AD&D will come in its eventual refinement. Not by changing it, but by testing it over and over. And it is my opinion that Gary did not think that AD&D was the “Final RPG,” but rather the next step in understanding RPGs. Unfortunately, we did not do this. Mostly because nobody read the books. If they did, they didn’t follow the rules. They say that Gary never followed the rules either, but we can excuse him for it. At least he knew what all the rules were. He understood the game. He’s allowed to try to make it better.

What about the rest of us?

The animating spirit of the BrOSR is to understand AD&D to the point where we too understand RPGs the way they were originally envisioned. This is done by playing RAW, in the style it was conceived.

It is NOT to be achieved by changing and throwing out rules to suit the whims of a particular group of people.

That is the core of the non-game. It is impossible to improve on the game as a form when everyone does things differently to please the sensibilities of varying groups.

If you argue that the game SHOULD be different for every group, just know that Gary Gygax in 1979, upon releasing the DMG, had reasons to disagree with you for the good of the entire hobby.

Room for both?

The D&D non-game is, as Gary foresaw, with us today. Unfortunately, it is the ONLY thing that is being offered to almost anyone today. The non-game had its appeal, but the BrOSR is full of people who realized they were playing a non-game and decided they wanted to play… a real game.

Why didn’t AD&D gain the support Gary anticipated? Maybe it’s because he just was hyping it up to get sales up. Maybe it’s because it is hard to read if you don’t know what you are looking for. Maybe it’s because everyone kept buying B/X. What we do know is that the “D&D” non-game is the hobby that developed out of the 80s, and it is almost impossible to find “D&D” the game.

If you want to know what the purpose of the BrOSR is, it’s to play D&D. And actually play it as a distinct game, the way it was written, the way it was intended to be played. Because, as Gary said, when we understand RPGs, we can get better at them. And who doesn’t want to play a game to win it? What’s even the point?

Maybe there will be a time when we are ready to move past AD&D. Maybe one day we will know the Winning Secrets. I don’t think we are quite there yet. I know I’m not. But I think we are on the path, and I think nobody who is moving away from us is going to get there. We will live yet to see better games. I’m sure of it.

The Story

In the bustling town of Bustletown, a tremor shook the land. When the dust settled, as the people started to place their belongings back on their shelves, an evil of a bygone era was unsealed.

Bustletown is an unassuming town of around 3000 people. The town is centered around the local church, which houses a relic of St. Aaron, the man who brought the One True Faith to this land long ago. As the men and women walk to worship they pass under the cherry blooms that adorn the streets. It seemed like this town was a simple beauty, a jewel in the crown of God’s creation. Unbeknownst to all but a secret few, the town hid a dark secret, the consequence of the sins of men and the demons they followed long ago.

For a fell air swept through the town after the earthquake. Men tracked it to a cave that opened when a mass of boulders came dislodged in a nearby hillside.

It didn’t take a cleric for people to tell that nothing good would be found in such a derelict place. They did, however, call in the Church who warned all to avoid these foul confiness. There was, however, a young prelate, Orwell, a trained Battle Priest, a true Cleric, who had experienced an impending sense of dread upon the opening of this cave. Unwilling to wait any longer for his betters at the Church to intervene, he decided to take matters into his own hands. Entering The Hungry Lion, the local inn, he called out that he was intending to raid the newfound cave to seal the evil that was inside. It was a challenge for all who stand for good against evil to spring to action. And it was an invitation for those who value earthly treasure to try their hand at making some gold.

Soon a ragtag crew had formed. Led by Orwell, the Cleric, young, bold, capable, there was also Dimron, a Dwarven adventuring Warrior resting on a seemingly endless sojourn, Dandelion, the apprentice of the town Wizard with a much-too-proud disposition but the smarts to back it up, and Rollo, a young, listless local knucklehead who was well on his way to being a local scoundrel.

The four set out the following morning, Orwell leading the way alongside Dimron. The stench of evil filled the air around them as they crawled into the mouth of the cave. Despite the smell, the sounds were limited to their own steps (and Dandelion’s complaints). After a brief walk, the cave opened into an underground hallway. They took a turn down a path that seemed to have broken from the rubble, and this path twisted and turned and grew smaller and smaller, until it led a light. Rollo snuck ahead to find that the light was coming from a small opening at the top of an enormous room. From this vantage, Rollo witnessed a man, dirty, disheveled, slowly approaching a piece of chainmail armor. Rollo thought he could feel this man’s heartbeat making shockwaves through the air as his footsteps drew nearer. And then, in a moment, the man took the armor, paused a second, exhaled, and turned slowly to leave the room. Dandelion quipped, “What do you see?” This was met by a dirty look from Orwell, and a smack on the hat from Dimron.

Rollo reported his findings, and they used rope to let Rollo down into the room. There was no treasure left, but Rollo described the room as a sort of Shrine. Unfortunately, the man left through a door that was locked. Rollo could not make out how the man left the room while he was unable to pick the lock himself. The party doubled back the way they came and took another route. Upon opening a door, they were surprised to see this very same man triggering and dodging a trap. The skill with which he did this betrayed his haggard appearance. Rollo suspected that this man knew of the trap’s location beforehand. The man turns around and spits, “Begone from here! You should not be here!” Orwell is able to persuade the man to rethink violence, but the stranger refused to let them pass. He simply said that there was something he must do up ahead, alone. The party, unwilling to come to blows with this man, decided to let him go ahead, at least for now.

They once again returned the way they came and began down the opposite direction. This took them on a dark descent. Dimron the dwarf estimated that they had winded their way down 40 feet into the earth before they came across an iron door with ominous markings on it. Rollo spent some time analyzing the lock before he picked it with skill. He, however, discovered just in time that the door was trapped. Upon opening it, spikes would burst forth from the floor, which would almost certainly impale them. Dandelion was able to disarm the trap, and the party opened the door at last.

Inside was a small room — a crypt. Standing before them was a tall, gaunt, pale figure. It opened two small, jet black eyes. Then the vampire hissed, baring its inch-long, needle-point fangs. Perhaps the ancient horror was expecting unarmed, defenseless peasants to build his strength. Instead, he was jumped by trained fighters and very quickly cut his losses. Transforming into a bat, he began flying out of the cave. Dandelion was unable to land a hit on him as he flew away. While the threat was gone, they searched the room and saw that the vampire had left behind a steel sword that seemed to be stained red with blood; the blood seemed to be a part of the steel itself.

At another dead end, they once again backtracked and decided to push deeper into the dungeon behind the solitary delver. He had left the room they found him in, so they pushed onward down an incline. They at last come upon a chamber: this time, a ritual site with an altar, with some fresh blood still warm on the cold stone. The room, however, was empty. In fact, the entire dungeon seemed quiet. Then, a crumbling sound was heard in the distance. They searched the room, found some gold coins of an ancient denomination, and continued on a passage at the back of the chamber. This continued its descent downward and winding until an abrupt dead end. Curious, it seemed. Where had the man gone? Had he slipped out while they were fighting the vampire? It seemed clear now that the vampire must have slipped out of the dungeon. Whatever the case may be, the dungeon now appeared to be empty. The party emerged, questioning whether they had accomplished anything at all.

The Mechanics

This was my first Tiny d10 dungeon! Using the Worldwide Adventure Generator I rolled a 5 room dungeon with a shrine and a ritual room. Because I had already decided the place was evil, I took the armor roll in Room A to be a cursed set of armor. The encounter that accompanied the room was “Rival Explorer,” which is where I got the idea for the stranger. The NPC generator made him a “doomed exile seeking redemption” who was “protecting a secret.” “Rival Explorer” was rolled again in Room B, which is why they discovered him again. Reaction rolls put him hostile to the party, but Orwell used his persuade skill to talk the man away form any violence. However, his reaction roll kept him secretive. The small room rolled up in Room C coincided with a Boss encounter. A small room with a boss in a sealed dungeon screamed “Vampire” to me, which is why I chose that monster to use. Here is a quick rundown of the rooms rolled.

The identity of the man was in flux as the crawl progressed. He was initially supposed to be a good guy destroying the armor, but that shifted as it seemed better for him to be working for the side of evil. The man took the armor, performed some kind of ritual with it, and escaped through the SECRET exit that the party was unable to find, all without being interfered with. Not sure where he is going now. But surely these consequences will be felt throughout the region.

I think it would be dangerous for me to put magic weapons and armor any time I roll for that in the dungeon engine. I put in the Lifedrinker sword and we will play around with it. -2 penalty to hit, but any damage done is absorbed as HP restored.

The Worldwide Adventure Generator has now given me a clear direction for the “first campaign” of the conventional-style solo game. There is a vampire cult of some sort, and since the party was incapable of defeating the vampire or stopping this man, the cult will begin to rise in power. We will explore this using solo-play principles.

I forgot to include the powers of the vampire when I played out the battle! Their ability to turn people makes fighting them much scarier. Oops!

I also did not use the morale rules to check for the Vampire, I just had him leave when it seemed like he had no shot at winning. I will start using morale when I remember to!

I elected to not roll any wandering monster checks because the dungeon was small, and sealed. It didn’t seem appropriate.

Considering no monsters were killed and only 20gp were recovered, splitting that 4 ways and adding in some XP for beating Toughness checks, I am awarding each PC with 1XP. Wow! What a haul!

New Mechanics?

At the end of my solo-play reports, I will state anything that is procedural that I am generating.

Procedure for rolling up Coins as treasure (result of 6 on the Loot table, Table F)

1. Roll d10.

   1. 1-5, roll for copper pieces

   2. 6-8, roll for silver pieces

   3. 9-10, roll for gold pieces

2. Roll again for d10 x 10 coins.

Simple.

Brief Synopsis (spoilers for a 55 year old book)

Sam Clemens, alias Mark Twain, was resurrected alongside everyone who has ever died on a world where everyone woke up alongside an enormous river alongside some towels and a metal pail (“grails”) for every person that fills up three times a day with food, drink, liquor, and tobacco (and dreamgum) when placed on giant mushroom shaped rocks (“grailstones”). When you die in Riverworld, you simply resurrect again the next day in another location with a new grail. Everyone is as they were (or would have been) at the age of 25. There is no sickness, and all are sterile. Sam developed a blood-brotherhood with Joe Miller, his name for an unstoppable Neanderthal man who saved his life many times over. Joe told him how when he first got to Riverworld his group traveled up the river to the source, where answers may seemingly lie. Sam, a true Mississippi River pilot at heart, committed his afterlife to building a steamship and sailing it to the mouth of this river.

Over the course of the book, he takes up with 10th century Vikings, German fighter pilots, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Odysseus, and most impactful of all, John, King of England, much besmirched by history. By supranatural aid Sam was directed to a large deposit of iron from a meteorite, which would allow his polity to rapidly advance in power (there was very little iron anywhere in Riverworld). This draws attention towards them, as neighbors try to extract wealth from them, steal their technology, or just murder them. Sam first betrays his original Viking crew in a preemptive strike, then he fights off potential betrayals from King John, his co-Consul.

Throughout the story, advancements are made by tactical alliances and tactical betrayals. Sam is haunted by these things, trying to justify his decisions in the new world while carrying still his Earthly sensibilities. Towards the end, absolute chaos erupts as King John seems to betray Sam and allow a neighbor to invade, but John double crossed him by encouraging a powerful neighbor (Tokugawa Ieyasu) to invade after the fighting was over… Just to explode the dam holding back the river, wiping out the army of the largest power in the region. John sacrificed much, but by the end, Sam’s riverboat could finally be completed in peace.

And, of course, when they are all finally on board, John reveals he rigged the boat to have override controls, takes it over, and throws Sam and his people off the boat riding into the sunset. Sam knew he would betray him some day, but he was not prepared for the day it occurred.

What I thought about the book

(Skip this section if you don’t care)

I really liked the book! I did not read the first installment, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, but that did not impact my enjoyment. I love the bringing together of figures in history together. I love how you can feel the social issues of the day bleed through (fun in any science-fiction work) such as the Civil Rights movement and pop philosophy (there is an especially funny scene where the Neanderthal Joe Miller calls out the bleak consequences of Sam Clemens’ deterministic philosophy and how it leads to his continued suffering). As a literary work, it was superb.

Braunstein Lessons

I believe it was Griff Morgan who described “Braunstein” as “multiple independent actors operating under a fog-of-war.” Braunstein, if you haven’t heard by now (which includes 0 readers of my blog), is often hailed as the “first role-playing game” where people who thought they were playing a war game actually were taking part in an experiment where each person played a particular role in a complicated scenario. By the end of the game, everyone began openly negotiating, plotting, and then, famously, dueling, when the game was supposed to be mostly just the players talking to the referee individually.

You can learn more about Braunstein and how it was the inspiration for what many consider the first Dungeons and Dragons campaign from the film Secrets of Blackmoor, written and directed by Griffith Morgan. I highly recommend that you purchase and watch his movie.

While the overarching story of Riverboat is about a Mysterious Stranger pulling strings to gather together 12 men on a quest to go up the river as part of some squabble between the gods of this world which may be in itself its own Braunstein, the vast majority of the action of the book involves plotting and violence between factions or states. What lessons can we learn in our own Total Nonstop Braunstein RPGs?

First, let us consider motivations and how to follow them. In the latter half of the book, the main adversary for Parolando, Sam and John’s state, is a Black African Ethnostate that literally is trying to trade their own non-blacks for other states’ blacks. Soul City, thus named because they are all “soul brothers,” and its leader are especially violent towards white majority areas as a sort of ethnic revenge for the treatment of Africans in the slave trade. This is, of course, despite the fact that the vast majority of white people throughout history committed no atrocities against anyone, but people carry these grudges wherever they go. Through all of Riverworld, it’s made the point that people don’t easily change. (The opposite argument is made by the Church of the Second Chance, as promoted by its highest ranking follower in the book, Hermann Göring.) These people live by the swords they used in their earthly life, and they die again and again in the Riverworld without changing. I think the powerful Braunstein lesson here is that “perfect play” should not supersede “role play” in a Braunstein game. Any risky play should weight these motivations TOWARDS riskier play. Soul City never compromised. They could sniff out anyone who was not a true believer. This allowed them to be tricked into their doom. The key is NOT to sit around and not let yourself be tricked, it is to trick OTHERS first. This teaches us that decisive action is the key to Braunstein play. Even if your role determines that you will not trick others, it does not stop you from decisively striking against your enemies through noble means.

Another thing we may be able to learn from Fabulous Riverboat is resource management! It may not seem like the coolest thing to care about in an RPG, but this is a real example of an Appendix N story that hinges primarily on access to natural resources. Conflicts over resources are one of the most relatable parts of the human condition. In the story, Parolando had exclusive access to iron ore. However, their plans to build what is essentially a giant battery relies on access to bauxite for aluminum and a few other metals. These metals are in abundance in areas AROUND Parolando. King John’s solution is to kill everyone in his way. Sam however ensures that they follow a diplomatic path. It’s unclear which pathway would be more effective. If they had gone to war, they would be too weak to fight off another opportunistic power who would certainly take advantage of a weakened neighbor. However, their trade partners were able to gouge them for these materials. Soon enough, Parolando was trading its advanced tech away to get the raw materials to make advanced tech, compromising their advantage. This ultimately led to the sacking of Parolando (before John’s machinations destroyed all enemies and by a stroke of luck the major work could continue). Referees should consider giving bonuses to certain factions or limiting access to certain items based on access to resources or tech. This provides natural reasons for conflict, even amongst factions with the same alignment. UMBROS speaks of this.

Conflict is the bread and butter of a Braunstein game. If you cooperate too hard, you open yourself up to a backstab that is simply too lucrative to pass up. If you are too aggressive, you overextend and become a target. If you try to sit out and avoid conflict altogether, like the pacifist philosopher Hermann Göring, you wind up crucified upside down. The key to Braunstein play is to evaluate your options and make smart moves at the right time. In the fog-of-war, it’s important to know as much as possible. This means you need to TALK as much as possible. Because everything someone says may be a lie, but they may reveal tiny kernels of truth at the same time.

To begin, let’s talk about Tiny d10. Tiny d10 is a free Rules Light RPG system created by Aaron Carlson, originally intended as a way to introduce his young children to his hobby of TTRPGs, but upon being shared to the world its limitless potential has been recognized by a myriad of people. The system works on a base-ten system, and the only die needed is, obviously, a d10. The core mechanic is built on checks performed by rolling the d10 and adding any modifiers, it cuts down on the usual 6 or so stats and gives us 4, and it largely leaves granularity out of the rules. This was supposed to be for pre-schoolers, after all.

The Tiny d10 engine itself is very basic.

• Roll d10 and try to match or beat a target’s Toughness

• 4 Attributes are used to modify rolls depending on circumstance

  • Aspect (Conscience/Charisma)

  • Intellect

  • Power (Strength)

  • Reflex (Dexterity)

• Hit Points

• Power Points (Physical stamina/abilities)

• Magic Points (or maybe Tech Points depending on setting)

Because of the simplicity, Tiny d10 should be a fit for ANY type of game, whether it be fantasy, horror, sci-fi, etc. Tiny d10 is currently packaged in the Fantasy Core ruleset.

This includes:

• 4 races (Human, elves, dwarves, halflings)

• 4 classes (Warrior, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue)

• 10 pages of rules (for players AND DMs combined)

• A monster manual with 100 entries

• A starter module, “The Broken Light,” which combines sword and sorcery play with a horror setting

Fantasy Core seems to take its primary influence from old-school style play, particularly “Original” Dungeons and Dragons in the built in morale rules, reaction rules, wandering monsters, dungeon and hex crawling, and a strong emphasis on strict timekeeping. However, it contains many elements of newer RPGs, including ample opportunities to heal and a list of skills PCs can acquire with some good practical coverage.

Fantasy Core excels in providing a framework for heroic play. When rules are light, players can either get into the habit of just “pressing A,” or they can be truly creative. When you build your character correctly, you discover that even at low levels with basic abilities you can leverage what you have into performing well at pivotal moments. For an example, a PC could start the game with a +3 bonus to all attack rolls (40% baseline to hit). With the lowest possible roll of 4, that means that they have a guaranteed hit against any monsters with a Toughness rating of 4. Good Tiny d10 referees should lean in to this and give players opportunities to flex these muscles a bit. It also gives opportunities to throw powerful monsters at lower level parties. With some sharp tactical play, they may just pull off a victory.

PC alignment is absent in Fantasy Core. While it is never written that you need to play a heroic, good character, it is clear that this is how the game is set up. The monsters, however, do have alignments between good, neutral, and evil. Nothing is stopping you from playing an evil character (especially in the context of a Total Nonstop Braunstein campaign), but it is good when games encourage you to play as heroic figures and not “quirk chungus chaotic neutral tiefling warlock/cleric multiclass XDDDD” style games.

Notably, Fantasy Core also includes a list of recommended reading, mentioning Algernon Blackwood, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and RE Howard. While I am not familiar with Blackwood (he is not a listed Appendix N author!), combined the three give you a triad of horror, adventure, and sword and sorcery inspirations that, by itself, could hardly better represent the best literature condensed down to a few authors. If you want to play better games, you NEED to be reading the source fiction. Otherwise, your games are just copies of other games (which are just copies of other games…), and your game will suffer from stagnation.

Worldwide Adventure Generator

Carlson has recently released the Worldwide Adventure Generator, a supplement which, while intended to be used to create adventure stories in the real world, is set up to facilitate fantasy play as well, with an added emphasis on generating intrigue. Here is the “Play Loop” it provides.

While the first step assumes you are following along with a real-world hex atlas, the supplement also includes an appendix to generate terrain on the fly. It contains a dungeon creation system, as well as an NPC generator complete with story elements that make turning a random roll into gameable material simple. Altogether, it is reminiscent of Advanced Dungeons and Dragon’s completeness, folding in Appendices A and B and the rules for NPCs into one succinct package.

Also look up to Step 7, “Turn the faction clock(s) as necessary.” This is a key component to making great games. You need to let your players make their own decisions, but you also need to create consequences for their actions (or inactions). When players decide to leave town when they know the cultists are kidnapping innocent people, when they return to town three weeks later there should be some more missing NPCs AS WELL as different factions actively working AGAINST the cult. Someone has to take care of the cult after all!

This also opens up the game to Braunstein-style play!

If you back the Winning Secrets Kickstarter, you can actually get a complimentary physical copy of BROZER for yourself! Braunstein play (multiple independent actors competing in a fog-of-war) is the missing component of most TTRPG tables today. If you find your table is stale or you are burnt out as a DM, the surest way to get new energy is by implementing tasteful PvP.

The Worldwide Adventure Generator also has solid tools for solo play, including the Fate and Fortune table:

And the Hidden Motives table:

It’s incredible how just one of these rolls can change the trajectory of a game immediately. It’s what I love about low-prep games: You aren’t responsible for making stories whole-cloth; rather your job is to make sense of the pieces put before you and solve the puzzle by painting in between the pieces.

The Solo Game

I have begun playing Tiny d10 as a solo game using Fantasy Core and the Worldwide Adventure Generator. Initially, the game will follow a single party of 4 adventurers as they travel the world. This will allow us to test both the core ruleset and its potential as an endless solo-gaming experience. This will be a very conventional approach to RPG play.

After that is finished, I will begin anew playing a Braunstein-style solo game within Tiny d10 inspired by Jon Mollison’s solo Boot Hill Braunstein. We’ll start with a few locations, factions, and PCs. Based on 1:1 time demands we will create new PCs until we have a full roster of independent actors. This will really allow us to stretch the capacity of Tiny d10 and we may even be able to contribute to the project some day with the resources we make. The biggest thing I am hoping to create is encounter tables and more broadly speaking ways to quickly populate encounter tables based on the monster catalogue. Having an “old reliable” set of tables like we see in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Appendix C for dungeon encounters can be a great tool to keep the game going smoothly.

You can follow along with the solo play adventure here, both technical results, narrative stories, and examinations of the mechanics under the hood. Check out Tiny d10 and follow him on Twitter/X. The entire project is free. See if you can find what so many other people have found electrifying about this slender but powerful game.

(I am also playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons currently. #UMBROS plays adventurer sessions run by Dunder Moose most Tuesdays. You can send me a DM if you are interesting in trying your hand at playing with the Bros in Umbros. We welcome you.)

“Total Nonstop Braunstein is lame.”

“The #BroXT can’t play a game that good! They aren’t ready!”

TOO BAD.

BROZER

Late in 2024, the #BroSR released their love letter to the hobby, the culmination of the work this incredible decentralized group of #Elite gamers had spent over the last four years. Jeffro’s engagement with the Rules As Written of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons revealed how 1:1 time takes the spotlight off of the party and Patron play released the world from the grip of the DM Storynazi. But the true synthesis to create “#RealDND” was when the Braunstein mindset was brought in. Jeffro’s legendary Always-On month of Patron Braunstein showed the hobby that players CAN NOT BE MORE ENGAGED than when they are operating in Braunstein conditions. It also demonstrated that there is nothing you can do to burn out a DM faster than telling them they are responsible for organizing games on a daily basis for a month amidst their own family and work obligations. And after the experience of patrons flattening PC play in several Bro games, the focus on the Braunstein came into center stage. 2024’s Summer of Stein catapulted Braunstein into popular RPG discussion, where you even have people on OSR Reddit pages attributing the Bros warmly with credit for bringing the idea into the limelight. #ThankYouJeffro!

The best minds in RPGs were asked to contribute to an ambitious project: a “module” that provides the world the blueprint for how to run their own Braunstein-style game. BROZER: Island of War and Winter. In the unlikely deadline of only a month, in October of 2024 the project was completed. 14 factions, inspired by #AppendixN literature, in conflict operating under a fog of war. Essays that describe the proper mindset on how to approach the game. And the best advice you can give: Just Run The Game.

Just Run The Game

It’s hard to say if the world was ready for BROZER. The reality is that our corner of the hobby was the prime audience to receive this gift. But unfortunately, too many people who read it said “I don’t get it.” “How do I run it?” “What am I supposed to do?” Many people refused to take the jump unless they could have every question answered. And after all those questions were answered, they had a dozen more questions, a dozen reasons why they simply could not run a Braunstein like BROZER. At a time like this, you would hope to rely on the strength of your community, to send the cavalry in support of a crowning achievement, credited not to individual people but to the BrOSR AS A WHOLE. Would you believe that it was at this crucial juncture that the strength of the Bros failed? BROZER contributors began to question the core tenets of Bro play such as AD&D RAW, 1:1 time, and Braunstein campaigns, at a time when they should have been rejoicing in a victory lap!

Those who felt strongest about BROZER sought a way to move forward in an environment where it became less clear about who your allies really were. Maybe it was time to recruit new blood. Maybe the Vanguard was turning into the Old Guard, and their days were beginning to be numbered. A Twitterwide search was made for those who were actually, genuinely interested in running BROZER and exploring BrOSR plays and how Braunstein plays into it.v

Enter the #BroXT

The #BroXT was assembled by Bookers Bdubs, Dunder Moose, and Dirty Rob, consisting of primarily unknowns. Smaller accounts, younger guys who had never played with the Bros before but were actively seeking out the #WinningSecrets. Challenges became the norm: Create a Braunstein Faction in a tweet. Run or play in BROZER and write an AAR. Read an #AppendixN story and discuss how it can improve your D&D game. Run a battle from a Bro’s ongoing campaign and send them the results. Develop your own Braunstein Faction using BROZER methods. Take your DM to task by playing your best and writing your own AARs on your PC’s experience. The #BroXT was formed at the very start of 2025, and its members have cut their teeth on countless hours of games, both as DMs and players, across systems, and engaging with Braunstein in ways that made Booker Dunder Moose come to the conclusion that we are in our second Summer of Stein. It’s undisputed that nobody on the planet has done more for the art of Braunstein than the #BroXT. J, Obsessor, bluehosscat, and if I may dare to include myself in that group, have been responsible for multiple Braunstein games each, many as standalone sessions, many as the part of an ongoing campaign. Guys have been experimenting with other systems, like Merinus with ShadowDark, Scutifer Mike with Mothership, and don’t you dare ignore Hoot Owl’s bona fides as Midnight Chainmail Champion.

But did we get lost in the sauce? In the recent #BROmerican tournament, BookerDubs called us out for missing the message. Yes, our games were great. We were playing better and more relevant games despite having less experience than anyone. But we were wasting our talents playing OSR retroclones and thespian-fever-dream one shot Braunsteins that resemble board games more than D&D. Where was the ongoing campaign play Braunsteins? And where was AD&D, the thing that started the entire BrOSR movement years ago?

I spent some time considering all of this and I reread BROZER straight through for the first time since December. I had referenced it often in various projects, but something became strikingly obvious when I dug back into it.

Total Nonstop Braunstein

When you look at some of the faction descriptions in BROZER, when you read the essays, you realize that BROZER’s true potential is NOT in a one-shot. You realize that it was NEVER INTENDED to be a one-shot. It explicitly states that it should be dropped into your campaign world or should be the starting point for a campaign. Sure, it’s fun as a one-shot, but has anyone truly given BROZER what it deserves? What happens when you develop a game where you try to take every lesson the Bros have learned and incorporate it into one big campaign?

#BROXER

• 1:1 timekeeping

• Patron Play

• Multiple DMs

• Open Tables

• Zero Prep

• Proper pacing

• AD&D RAW

• Convergence over Solitaire

• DMs protecting the milieu

• Public posts that allow anyone to follow the game

This is #BROXER. I opened up invitations to an online game of BROZER where patron orders would be taken weekly, but sessions can be run by players. Anyone is welcome to play via drop in. Anyone trusted is allowed to DM whenever people want to play, and by using zero-prep principles we can keep people playing whenever they would like. Factions must rely on other factions or PCs to further their plans.

#BroXT members were guaranteed a spot, some big names were welcomed to act as headliners and to show the way. A few unknowns have been taken in to test their mettle. The game can continue to grow as factions rise and fall, and players can always create PCs and try to grow them to their own factions one day.

The game kicks off Monday, August 18th, when the action will start to play out and session play can begin.

What are we doing that hasn’t been done before?

Nothing.

Bros have run games like this. Bros are running games like this now. So what is special about this game? This game is ours. This is the #BroXT’s opportunity to show the legacy Bros that the movement is alive and well. We are going to put together a campaign across every level, accommodating every style of play: play by post, session play, wargame. This will be TOTAL INVOLVEMENT of the #BroXT-as-clubhouse. Every #BroXT member is an owner of the campaign. And we get to do all of this paying respect to those who brought this wonderful style of games that we tried and decided we could never put down.

#ThankYouBrOSR

#ThankYouJeffro

P.S. Follow #BROXER and #BROXERSessions to keep up with what’s happening. In the week before play has even begun, the madness is already afoot. Get in on a BROXER Session. No #BroXT membership card required. No AD&D experience expected. This is your invitation to improve your games. Just. Play. The. Game. Let’s do this together.

My last entry in the #BROmerican tournament focused on how I was able to bully the other players in #DiplomacyByX into having a better experience by focusing on role playing. This entry will be discussing my actual performance in the game, now that the game has officially concluded.

A tactical recap of my game: I expanded through Spain, got stuck in Italy, was backstabbed by England, lost a bunch of material, made peace with England, allied with England, moved into Italy and Germany, was backstabbed by England, lost a bunch of material, and this triggered the win condition to give England the victory.

This is the map of the very last turn.

Due to my poor play, I essentially handed England the victory. This is not to discredit @WorldofFirmatus's ability, as he was hands down the best Diplomacy player in the game. This is more to highlight my own failures. At only a single point in the game did I contemplate going back on my word. Early on, Germany left Munich vulnerable. I discussed with England, but he said it would be dishonorable to violate our NAP with Germany before it expired. I relented. Of course, England would later tear up the NAP and attack me the next year.

I simply could not bring myself to play dishonorably the whole game. I roleplayed as King Charles and then King Jacques (in real life these were Bourbon royalty who technically operated out of Spain, with Charles fighting the Carlist Wars to claim the Spanish throne) and as Catholic rulers promised to defending the faith, I was determined to be a beacon of light. Even the assassination of England’s King George was a joke I sent to the referee (AlchemicRaker) that he decided to take seriously. Had I known he would actually attempt it, I wouldn’t have said anything! I am #Magnanimous, after all. I could have come up with Roleplay reasons around my moral qualms, which is what England ended up doing to secure victory. But I simply did not do this.

Am I just too nice for Braunstein?

Reflections from Livingstone

I played in the Living Urf Game Club’s Boot Hill Total Nonstop Braunstein experiment Livingstone, and I decided that I was going to play an evil character. Unfortunately, I was incapable of doing anything evil with him and wound up plotting and scheming until the game ended. My personal play was an abject failure. I accomplished no goal, which was primarily to establish a crime syndicate and establish control over the town. The biggest issue with my strategy is that I was playing off genre. I was playing a Gangbusters game while everyone else was having duels. I thought I was playing smart as I was a bad gunslinger, but now I realize that while others were having fun, I was working way harder to accomplish absolutely nothing.

I had visions of what Harold S. Rump would be. A drifter who walks into town, becomes a hatchet man for a local leader, gangs up with a few other unscrupulous men, then throws all honor out the window as he exerts his will on the town until he controls it. Being dishonorable was going to be my MO, and it started with wielding a shotgun in place of a good pistol. If I was in a gunfight, it would be on my terms, meaning it would be me blasting someone away when they were tied up in the upstairs room of Wong’s Laundry or something like that.

So it’s not that I don’t have the instincts to play an evil character. I had plenty of devious ideas. I just couldn’t execute them. Perhaps Livingstone was the improper format (my personal belief is that the game was a failure overall).

Reflections on my Roots

My first experience playing D&D I believe I have written about before. 5E, stop time, getalong gang. It was so unremarkable that I really don’t remember much happening particularly at any one moment unless it was particularly boring, annoying, or an inside joke. Eventually my PC died and I told my friends to not bother resurrecting me. It even seemed out of character for them to even try, based on who my PC was in life.

I had an idea for a new character, an evil Half-orc who was looking to gain power to lead his own horde of orcs. The adventure we embarked on next seemed to have a castle waiting for us if we finished it. I had decided that I would lay claim to the castle myself, recruit a horde of orcs, and then move in to the castle, attacking the PCs if they resisted. I knew it would mean he couldn’t adventure with them anymore. But I knew that if I pulled it off, it would be by far the most interesting thing we did in a year+ of playing D&D. Our table died due to “schedule conflicts” before the plan even had a chance to get off the ground.

When I started to get exposure to #BrOSR ideas, I realized that what they were offering was the exact paradigm I was looking for. It turns out I DID have instincts for Braunstein play. When I referee my own Braunsteins, I already have ideas to give my players if they are struggling to get started. What I have lacked, unfortunately, is the opportunities to play in these games myself. I have forever-DM syndrome, it seems, as in my life games don’t seem to materialize unless I bring them about. My schedule also struggles to incorporate time for regular online play.

This has brought me to take my experiences in #DiplomacyByX and use them in a new game…

Introducing #BroXTzer

I will be running a new campaign online based on the BrOSR magnum opus BROZER: Island of War and Winter. I am going to try to use the lessons I have learned from my own experiences but also try to learn from other Bro campaigns.

It will begin with patron play. All original players will be given a faction to control. They will have to try to accomplish their goals by interacting with their fellow players, as is standard. However, players will NOT be allowed to simply move soldiers across the map to gain advantages or “lair-smash.” Any dungeon delve must happen IN SESSION. Any fight between armies must happen IN SESSION.

While Livingstone taught us that refereeless play is very compelling, it also showed its limits. Meaningful interactions should occur between players, and NPCs should remain background characters. This will be the case. If players want to run sessions, it should be for the faction leaders and not fetch quests for random NPCs. However, without a referee to guide just HOW that will happen, the game can stall out as nobody knows just what to do.

Players can have multiple PCs, even Patrons. Patrons will start with control of their officers as hirelings, however they can let other players take control of them if they’d like. They cannot, however, create low level PCs that simply exist to prop up their Patron player.

1:1 time will be used to determine session dates, however, ORDERS WILL BE ADJUDICATED ON A WEEKLY BASIS. This is something I am pulling from Diplomacy. “Real time” has burned out many, many DMs. If I am going to referee this, there needs to be a system where I can carve out time and work on it ONCE in the week. This may lead to some strange time issues, but that is the role of the referee, to determine the outcome fairly. I currently imagine all the moves will be happening “simultaneously” as they do in Diplomacy.

We will have multiple DMs. Anyone can DM a session. Anyone can play in any session. People can play as often as they can get DMs. They will need to send AARs to me, but that is the only requirement, besides what we will call #Griffrogaxyian Time. Griff Morgan always mocks the Bros by saying “If you go a week out you have to call it quits for the day!” While this is not Bro time, I think this campaign will actually require that in order to make it work.

Mass combats between armies can be handed to any players who would like to run it. This is an attempt to let the #BroXT function in a more clubhouse manner.

This is my intention for this campaign. Can we learn from our mistakes? Can we put together the ultimate Bro campaign? Currently the interest is all from #BroXT undercards, but maybe this is our chance to cut our teeth. Maybe we will fail ourselves. You’ll find out in the AAR.

I have written this blog primarily from the point of view of a Braunstein referee. However, the #BROmerican Tournament is supposed to test a player’s ability at writing AAR’s and to help them grow from their playing experiences. Unfortunately, the last time I played D&D as a player was when Chanticleer was still around (!!!), my ongoing family campaign is on indefinite suspension, and my work and family schedule prohibits me from jumping into most open games run by Bros. I was able to use #Piratestein for my qualifier entry, and unfortunately the well of games is running dry!

Fortunately, there IS a game I have been playing for a few months now: #DiplomacyByX, put on by Alchemic Raker as referee. I was lucky to be one of the first to show interest in the project when Alchemic Raker floated the idea of running the board game on X and secured my position. I was familiar with the game’s premise and had dabbled in online play, but while it seemed like a cool idea when I was much younger to have to negotiate with other players (it’s obvious to see the inspiration for Braunstein), it never help my interest and I always flaked. I knew that I had to play this game differently if I wanted it to be worth my time playing. I was going to treat #DiplomacyByX as the Braunstein it needs to be.

Diplomacy’s main mechanic that causes the game to work is that there are no tactics or strategies: Armies that fail to have a numerical advantage in a fight will be bounced back. Invasions that meet equal forces in defense will deadlock and stall out, meaning you are stuck. You cannot win Diplomacy by playing alone. You NEED to have the support of other players in order to get the other hand. The idea is that you balance their support while also making sure you are always in a position to outgain them, possibly by backstabbing them and turning on former allies when they don’t expect it (it’s obvious to see the inspiration for Braunstein).

In full disclosure, #DiplomacyByX is not yet concluded, but the board is mostly settled. It could finish tomorrow, or it could last another 3 weeks (God forbid). But on the whole, the vast majority of the action has concluded, and the game has revealed the power of role playing. Diplomacy is a board game, not a role playing game, however you assume the roles of a country. Diplomacy is at its core not a very good game. It is boring, incredibly easy to lose interest in, and overly simplistic. It may be cool to play in person with your friends, but you are always limited by what you can do in the game. 100% of the game’s activity is “move meeple across map.” So how do you fix Diplomacy? You fix it by turning it into the role playing game it was always meant to be.

Taking the Throne

When the game began, I was given the French nation to command in the year 1901. I knew that my first action, taken from my experience with Braunstein, was to create a faction leader. I took this opportunity to turn back the clock on the French Revolution once and for all, and I started to study the deep esoteric history of the French Third Republic. I decided to end Republicanism under a Bourbon restoration, elevating this man to the French throne. A post was made to X with the tag #DiplomacyByX, as encouraged by Alchemic Raker.

The Importance of the Hashtag

Many people have spoken about the excitement around the legendary #BrOSR crossover event #BROvenloft. Countless people were exposed to Bro ideas by seeing people post about these games on Twitter. It was about generating excitement and energy, as the energy fueled interest and activity. This created a POSITIVE FEEDBACK LOOP as the game benefits from harnessing the UNLIMITED FREE ENERGY OF THE INTERNET. #DiplomacyByX was the way to follow the events of our game. I used it myself to see what my adversaries were up to. One of the coolest moments of the game for me was knowing that OTHER PEOPLE were looking up our hashtags to follow our game.

Thus, Charles de Bourbon became the King of France. Immediately I sent a missive out to my fellow monarchs, encouraging them to throw off the yokes of democracy. England suggested a tripartite alliance between France, England, and Germany, however I demanded that the alliance could only take place if everyone shed their constitutional monarchies in exchange for absolutism.

I succeeded, and an alliance was forged until 1904. England, France, and Germany decided to divide up the neutral territories around themselves, and I was free to move into Spain, Belgium, and be poised to go into Italy, the only nation to not end their constitutional monarchy.

Goals

Important to every good Braunstein are faction goals. I decided that my goals in #DiplomacyByX would be to end Republicanism in Europe, reestablish the Papal States by capturing Rome, and unite all lands once held by the House of Bourbon. During the course of the game I picked up another goal: Mend the schism between the Latin and Eastern churches. Late term goals consisted primarily of retaking Constantinople and a crusade for Jerusalem. In Diplomacy, you ACTUALLY win by capturing 18 supply centers, which is roughly more than half the map. While I wanted to win the game, I gave myself this personal set of goals in order to stay engaged.

Things went according to plan up until I stalled out in Italy. I did not have the manpower from coordinating with another faction, as England had not yet arrived in the Mediterranean Sea, and Austria instead of being the other half of my pincer attack, decided to invade Germany.

Germany had at the same time attacked Russia. This led to the dissolution of our alliance, as England came to Russia’s aid due to familial ties between the English and Russian royal families.

Real World Impact

Around this point in the game, something odd began to happen. The conversations and actions we were having and doing in the game started to bleed into real life. #DiplomacyByX started to predict the future, including the death of Pope Francis.

I tried to push through a Christmas Armistice and get every nation to do a HOLD order for every unit. Only Italy and myself participated, to my national disgrace and eventual ruin

While my armies were engaging in a peace mission, England’s fleets moved into one of my supply centers. I was at this point incredibly overleveraged and out of position to respond to England. While I COULD have negotiated a peaceful return of the supply center in about two years, instead I decided to be absolutely stark raving angry about it.

I became to furious that I decided to put an additional order into my submission for Alchemic Raker: I am going to try to assassinate the King of England. He took it 100% seriously. This is the post that followed.

Off the Rails Roleplaying

I was not expecting this when I sent the order! I successfully killed King George of England, but my involvement in the plot was revealed. Alchemic Raker apologized if this would have negative consequences on my game. In Diplomacy, it wouldn’t, because this should have no effect on the game. However, in #DiplomacyByX, this is the entire game. Relations between France and England collapsed immediately and open hostilities began between us.

At this time, the game was coalescing around three powers: England, Russia, and Austria. We had three central parties, however, who could make a play when working together: France, Italy, and Germany. I had made peace with Italy after they were the only country to engage in the Christmas Armistice. This three way alliance was the perfect time to reveal the next stage in the roleplay: The New Holy Roman Empire.

The idea was a meme coalition where we can agree on who will make decisions for all countries each year. I began as the first New Holy Roman Emperor, and we were going to make a play to recapture Spain from England by using Italy’s navy. Unfortunately, it was here that I learned that the King of Italy’s army was absolutely incompetent and could not provide any support due to MULTIPLE TURNS OF BUNGLED ORDERS. England was unaffected, and the New Holy Roman Empire would be dissolved as fast as it had formed. I started to see the writing on the wall. While I had largely accomplished my personal goals, it was obvious that I was not going to win #DiplomacyByX. So why am I even playing the game? What else can be done?

After a bit more chatter between myself and England, this happened.

England (stylized as King Haakon of Norway) accepted my duel. We decided to use Boot Hill 2e to resolve it, and we would do so on the timeline. We took turns making posts corresponding to each turn of Boot Hill combat. Charles of France quickly took some hits, making me question my decision to duel in the first place. However, a couple of lucky rolls my way led to a much closer and dramatic fight. Unfortunately, Emperor Charles was shot dead by King Haakon in the streets of Paris, as our armies stood off unable to move in. I had shot out Haakon’s eye, but he recovered. I had a huge lingering question. Now what?

Subsystems in Games

AD&D is a game full of minigames. Over the course of play, action will be broken up as you are taken through a series of rolls to determine things like gem size and value, dungeon contents, terrain mapping, etc. Even something like psionics is a subsystem that makes the game more interesting, even if not everyone ends up getting to use it. King George’s assassination and Charles’ death in the duel both occurred in a space outside of the Diplomacy board. They had no measurable effect on the game. No army was forced to move or was destroyed because of these moments. Simultaneously, these moments changed how I PLAYED the game and how my opponents did, as well. When you are designing a game, keep in mind that minigames and subsystems can be fun little distractions when times get slower.

The next set of circumstances was brought before me. While we celebrated the “election” of Pope St. Pius X in game, that was entirely just a date that came and went. What happens when we further destroy the timeline?

So much for the New Holy Roman Empire. This was in direct opposition to my goals of providing a safe haven for the Papacy. It was clear what had to be done. Italy must fall. I had patched relations with England already, and we formed our own coalition. Haakon after his duel actually converted England (and Norway) to Catholicism, so we began to work together to defeat Italy. Austria’s election of an anti-pope solidified the direction for the next roleplay.

I decided to launch what would be known as the Braunstein Conclave, or more colloquially as #Popestein.

This was to be a game-within-a-game. Again, the outcome would have no mechanical effect on the game. Every leader would be invited to send their “Cardinals” to the Conclave. We gave each player one vote for every territory (not supply center) they had most recently controlled. Russia and England had by far the most electors, but a 2/3rds majority would be needed.

Players could arrive as representing the Catholic Cardinals of their lands, or in the case of Russia they could represent an ecumenical mission. After several rounds of inconclusive voting with candidates rising and falling, on the final day a simple majority would be enough to win. It was at this time that I was able to negotiate that my own Cardinal candidate would win the election and become Pope Pius XI.

The main result of the Braunstein Conclave was a cooperation between Russia, England, and France to mend the schism. I had a long private negotiation where it was worked out what terms would be needed to become one united church again.

(I have no idea what happened here, I was simply told this happened. I believe it was an Austrian plot to end the Conclave so he could keep his anti-pope.)

After the resolution of the Braunstein Conclave, I had one final score to settle.

The Italian must pay for his crime.

With England’s help and Austria’s opportunism, I was able to march my army into Rome and then Naples, restoring the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to Bourbon rule once again, and providing true freedom for the Pope.

I had one final card up my sleeve.

I held off on concluding the Ecumenical Council of Paris because I wanted to use it as the means by which we end the game. In Diplomacy, you can agree to a draw with other nations to end the game early. Now that there are no more Protestant nations (Germany also converted), the Ottoman Empire has fallen, and the schism has been mended, we have accomplished religious tranquility in Europe. Now would be the time to bring peace to Europe’s fighting men. England and Russia were comparable large power on either side of Europe. Germany was down to one supply center. France was back to where it began. Austria was quickly losing ground to Russia.

The fact of the matter was that two sides would inevitably become deadlocked: England vs Russia. While the game is still going on, NOBODY WILL REACH 18 SUPPLY CENTERS. By far the most satisfying end to the game will be through a collective draw, knowing that there is unity with the results of the Council of Paris being made public.

Takeaways

Here are some rapid fire takeaways

1. Diplomacy by itself is NOT a fun game to play

2. In a play-by-post game you need to thread the needle in giving people time to stew over ideas and negotiate, but you can NOT let the game get stale. 1 week per turn is the MAXIMUM I would recommend.

3. Subsystems and games-within-the-game have a place in any role playing game. They keep things fresh and let people play their best.

4. Meme energy is real. Posting online about your games with your friends is only going to make people interested in your games and make you more engaged. We need to do that more often.

5. Role playing is key. Diplomacy BECAME A FUN GAME when I opened the door for role play to be the primary vehicle for the game. I am proud to say that I led the way in #DiplomacyByX by encouraging others to role play as hard as I was. Understand your character and their role. Come up with a list of goals. Align your actions to your goals. Play incredible games.

The first section was given to each player and it dealt with mechanics of the game. Following that is the faction specific paperwork. Faction sheets are secret to the player playing them only.

Handouts

Mechanics Sheet

Romance Plots

The following is the sex and current status of each faction leader. As you look for a companion, consider what other factions may be looking for and pay attention to what you may to offer.

Pirates of Braunagua – Male, single

Wench

Royal Navy – Male, widower

Daughter

Banana Men – Male, married

Daughter

Flying Dutchman – Fish creature/Male, single

Growl-Tiger – Cat/Male, Cat/taken

Braundong Confederation – Female, widow

Niece

Dua Lipa – Female(?), scorned

Norland Reavers – Male, single

Slave Woman

Pirates of Penzance – Male, single

Old Maid

East Braunstein Company – Male, single

Cousin

KNOWN LOCALES

0,-2 – Kingsville

-3,2 – Gary’s Plantation

-1,5 – Port Royal

-6,0 – Brauna-Brauna

-1,-6 – Wesley Island

5,-8 – Dead Man’s Cove

6,0 – Arneland

4,-3 – Dave Island

6,-7 – Le Tourneau

INVENTORY (Treasure/Location)

Naval Combat Steps

1. Fire guns. Roll d6’s. Subtract number from enemy hull.

2. Move away or towards the enemy.

3. Grapple

a. One roll per 10 men boarding

b. Defenders cannot lose men

4. Repeat!

Melee Combat Rules

1. Gunpowder gets a turn at the beginning (all with guns fire)

2. Hand to Hand phase

3. Retreat phase

4. Repeat

RISK RULES

Attacks roll up to 3 die, defenders up to 2. Compare best rolls, remove soldiers if you lost a roll. Defenders win all ties.

+1 bonus = Re-roll any die!

Faction Writeups

1. Pirates of Braunagua

a. Leader – Zach Marrow

b. Goals

i. Faction: Pillage, Plunder, Rifle, Loot, Kidnap, Ravage, Extort, Pilfer, Filch, Sack, Maraud, Embezzle, Hijack

ii. Personal: Avoid Davy Jones at all costs

“Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate’s life for me! We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot! Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!”

You are Zach Marrow, captain of the mighty ship The Pistole. You are a capable pirate, charismatic leader, and cunning. You got to where you are by deceiving and tricking others, and many would have your head for it! Specifically, you technically owe Davy Jones your soul, and it seems he is here to collect. Your crew lives the pirate life. When they aren’t carousing, they are looking for ways to gain treasure at the expense of others. They have few qualms hurting the innocent, if they can get away with it.

For your goals, do NOT let Davy Jones get ahold of you! This is your utmost priority! Meanwhile, you should be increasing your legend. Pillage, Plunder, Rifle, Loot, Kidnap, Ravage, Extort, Pilfer, Filch, Sack, Maraud, Embezzle, Hijack. You should try to do every one of these, either to other players or to NPC groups, as is appropriate. (Nobody would care if you hijacked an NPC ship. But another player’s ship? That will be remembered.)

Inspiration for this faction comes primarily from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, both the original attraction at Disneyland but also the film series that this entire game takes inspiration from. Your crew are the shameless pirates of the attraction. You are more like Jack Sparrow. Make sure your actions balance both sides.

c. Crew

i. 15 men

d. Ship

i. The Pistole

1. 20 guns/100 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 10000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Dead Man’s Cove (5,-8)

2. Royal Navy

a. Leader – Peter Brown

b. Goals

i. Faction: Kill all pirates. Burn all rum.

ii. Personal: Hang them high in Port Braunstein

“When Britain first at Heav’n’s command, Arose from out the azure main; This was the charter of the land, And the guardian angels sang this strain; Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never shall be slaves!”

You are Peter Brown, capable admiral of the Royal Navy. You have been commissioned by the King of Braunstein to protect the colonies of the New World from the threat of piracy. The King in his infinite wisdom could not have picked a more suitable soldier: You were orphaned at a young age after pirates killed your parents. This is a personal vendetta for you. The only good pirate is a dead pirate. Your aversion to the pirate lifestyle also makes you detest their drunkenness. You have made it your goal to see every pirate hung and every bottle of rum in the Braunaguan Sea burned.

While you detest every pirate, some are worse than others. The worst pirates are the ones that should know better. If a pirate group comes from your cultural group, THEY should know better.

Hating pirates does not mean that you will kill them all on sight. You should be willing to pit them against each other, manipulate them, trick them, trap them. The ends justify the means when it comes to dealing with pirates, as they barely qualify as “people.” You judge your performance on how many pirate bodies you can stack at the end of the day.

However, you should NOT mistreat the subjects of the king, nor should you stoop to their ways. Targeting innocents is absolutely forbidden unless the most extreme circumstances require it.

c. Crew

i. 30 men

d. Ship

i. The Overtaker

1. 24 guns/100 hull/2 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 10000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Port Royal (-1, 5)

3. Banana Men

a. Leader – Talahal

b. Goals

i. Faction: Get as many people to eat a banana as you can

ii. Personal: Get your hands on some firearms and get training to use them

“Do you want a banana? Peel it down and go mm-mm-mm-mm! Do you want a banana? This banana for you!”

You are the chief of a “savage” tribe of natives. You lack the technology of the colonial and pirate powers. Your tribe is incapable of using firearms and has no large vessels for sailing. You do however have canoes which can move your men across the map.

“Tonight we dance around the flame, then we get to play Spirit Game. Spirit name we shout out loud, shake the thunder from the spirit cloud. All the songbirds in the tree chant a tune to let the spirits free. Then we see them in the night: spirits jumping by firelight.”

Your tribe follows an animistic religious tradition centered around ancestor worship, the tropical island environment, and of course, the bananas that grow on your island.

“It’s 9 o clock and it’s getting dark, and the sun is falling from the sky. I’ve never left so early and you may wonder why… Tomorrow morning on the plane, no banana make you go insane. Floating back to busy town, No banana make you want to frown. Do you want a banana? Peel it down and go mm-mm-mm-mm! Do you want a banana? This banana for you!”

Bananas are the center of your game. The bananas are special. They confer +1 combat bonuses to anyone who eats them. But this bonus only lasts through the current and next turn. After that, it turns into a -1 penalty. The Banana Men are assumed to always operate at a +1 combat bonus UNLESS THEY DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO BANANAS.

Your primary objective is to spread your Banana religion on the region. If they get a taste of your special bananas, they will have no choice but to revere it as you do. Your secondary objective is to modernize. How can you withstand the colonial powers with spears? You envision a golden future where a technologically advanced world is united under the power of the Banana.

Inspiration for this faction came from Tally Hall’s song “Banana Man.”

c. Crew – 35 men

d. Canoes (2 speed)

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 3000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Brauna-Brauna (-6,0)

4. Flying Dutchman

a. Davy Jones

b. Goals

i. Faction: Capture souls and deliver them to Davy Jones’ Locker

ii. Personal: “Recruit” Zach Marrow to your crew.

“Some say he steers a spectral ship That’s ghostly, gray, and grand. He’s doomed to sail the seven seas and ne’er set foot on land. And if you chance to see him You’ll soon be dead from fright; so sailors tell their children on a dark and stormy night.”

You are the cursed captain of the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship that is, by legend, charged with transporting the souls of those who die at sea to the watery afterlife. Not quite man, not quite dead, you are a monstrosity feared by all who set sail into the open ocean.

“Forty fathoms deep he walks, with rusty keys his locker locks. Just like he’s half asleep he stalks. Forty fathoms deep he owns each sailor’s soggy bones, the legend they call Davy Jones at forty fathoms deep.”

It’s not cut and dry who wins or loses a Braunstein. But it can be said that if you take a player’s soul to Davy Jones Locker, they will not be winning the Braunstein.

You and your crew are invulnerable in combat if you are on water; your ship however is not. The crew, Davy included, cannot step on land however, prior to TURN 8. You must then return to water within 2 TURNS. If you start Turn 11 on land, a terrible fate worse than death will befall you. This is your curse.

You are heartless, literally. Your heart is in a chest buried in the ground on one of the islands. You have a map to the chest. Legend has it that your heart allows you to control the sea. You do NOT want your heart to get into the hands of someone else. The heart of Davy Jones allows the wielder to command the Kraken. Prior to the heart’s unearthing, the Kraken will act randomly, but it will not harm you (unless commanded by someone else wielding your heart). Your heart is your real vulnerability: if it is destroyed, you will perish alongside it.

You have a personal vendetta against Zach Marrow. He made a deal with you: he was granted captaincy of his ship in exchange for 1000 years of service aboard the Dutchman. It’s time to collect. Do NOT kill Zach Marrow. Instead, press him into service for 1000 years. Any other traveler of the sea can be killed.

What do you do when you have killed sailors and captains? Take their remains to Davy Jones Locker, which is a specific location on the map. This is your day job, after all.

c. Crew

i. 20 men

d. Ship

i. The Flying Dutchman

1. 18 guns/150 hull/2 speed (double when heading to locker)

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 1000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Locker is located at -6,6

5. Braundong Pirate Confederation

a. Leader – Zong Shi Sao

b. Goals

i. Faction: Increase the size of the fleet (gain long term control of another ship)

ii. Personal: Arrange your retirement to ensure your (and your crew’s) safety

Zong Shi was one of the fiercest pirate leaders in Asia. He died. You are the gu widow of Zong Shi, Zong Shi Sao. You inherited his fleet and his pirates swore fealty to you immediately. You continued on with his work, and have created your own legend. You have traveled the world and are now wanted in every ZIP code on the planet. This is an issue, as piracy is a young person’s game. You are ready to retire, but you aren’t ready to give up the lifestyle, so you can’t just disappear into obscurity. You will need to set things up to ensure that you will be able to live your final days in peace, alongside your crew. Will you do this diplomatically? Or through destruction? You get to choose!

Your faction’s special ability is sampans: while you normally need to be adjacent to attack another ship, you can sneak attack from two spaces away, skipping straight to the grappling phase of the battle. Your ship is unattended at that moment, and your crew takes small boats in the cover of darkness to launch an attack.

c. Crew

i. 25 men

d. Ship

i. The Junk King

1. 12 guns/100 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 20000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Arneland (6,0)

6. Growl-Tiger and the Jellicle Cats

a. Leader – Growl-Tiger

b. Goals

i. Faction: Find a way back home, while performing as many terrible deeds as possible

ii. Personal: Kill Zong Shi Sao

“Growl-tiger was a bravo cat who travelled on a barge. In fact he was the roughest cat that ever roamed at large. From Gravesend up to Oxford he pursued his evil aims, Rejoicing in his title of the Terror of the Thames!”

You are Growl-Tiger, one of the Jellicle Cats from TS Eliot’s poem book Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, or at least Growl-Tiger from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical adaptation Cats. The premise is this: You are an anthropomorphic cat who was on his way to the “Jellicle Ball” where Old Deuteronomy (just before dawn, through a silence you feel you could cut with a knife) announces the cat which can now be reborn and come back to a different Jellicle Life. You aren’t sure how you ended up in Braunagua, but this is a wonderful opportunity to demonstrate your prowess and ferocity! Surely you will be chosen to go to the Heaviside Layer if you can best these pirates from a foreign land!

Your crew are all cats like you. They fight hand to hand only: they are incapable of using handheld firearms. However, they fight at +1 at hand to hand. You also ignore the grappling phase of naval combat! Your crew are able to leap from your ship to an adjacent ship in a single turn, and are capable of leaping back! You ARE capable of using regular cannon fire.

You have a personal goal. You are missing your left ear: it was gnawed off in a fight with a Siamese cat. Zong Shi Sao, being South-East Asian herself, therefore deserves to die along with her crew.

YOU HAVE ANOTHER SPECIAL ABILITY! You know that cats have 9 lives. Unfortunately, your lifestyle has caused you to use up 7 of them. Being on your 8^th life, this means that, should you die, you will respawn the next turn, alongside your crew, on a random island. If you die, come see the referee before the end of the turn to set that up. You only get to do this once. For this reason, feel free to take a risk!

c. Crew

i. 20 cats, fight at +1

d. Ship

i. The Terror of the Thames

1. 12 guns/80 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 1000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Nowhere! You just got here!

7. Dua Lipa, La Profeta

a. Leader – Dua Lipa, La Profeta (Hartunia)

b. Goals

i. Personal: Have a candlelit dinner with a male captain. Use 50000 doubloons worth of your powers.

Dua Lipa is an old sea-witch or crone who has been around for as long as anyone can tell. Nobody is truly sure about what sort of thing you are, but you take the figure of a ragged old woman. You are well known in whispers in the area for your… abilities. You are a prophetess: you have the ability to tell the future.

SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR YOUR GAME? Every turn, you can “predict the future.” Come and see the referee and say what you want to happen. The referee will adjudicate that. HOWEVER, you must have FUNDING in order to do this. The idea is that players will give you money, and you can turn that in for the ability to use your power. You can take money from players as part of a deal and NOT make that prediction. Your conversation with the referee will be secret.

You are a hopeless romantic. Your primary objective is to have a candlelit dinner with a male captain. You should consider who you are “most attached to” throughout the game. The other players may not know this, but you should ask yourself, “Who is Dua Lipa most affectionate towards?” as the game goes on. You should treat those players better than someone who has scorned you.

Look closely at your goals. You need to accomplish both if you want anything interesting to happen.

c. Treasure Hoard

i. 0 doubloons

d. Headquarters

i. You start out at -1,-2

8. Norland Reavers

a. Leader – Angus Macready

b. Goals

i. Faction: Raise Cthaylor through human sacrifice

ii. Personal: Kill the Kraken and have it taxidermized

The Norland Reavers are a crew of pirates, who lean more towards “Barbary Coast” than “Jack Sparrow of the Caribbean.” Their numbers are comprised of bloodthirsty hooligans longing for plunder and to see Cthaylor rise from the depths once more. The Reavers will take slaves, riches, and human sacrifices to their dark oceanic goddess Cthaylor from their prey on the high seas. Aesthetically think of highlanders in kilts, with ornate facial hair, but also imagine a sort of “Lovecraftian” devotion to a horrible deity of the ocean that cries out for blood. They should oscillate between humorous, cartoonish villainy and brutal, esoteric evil. If unsure how often to change between the two, simply roll a d6 each turn, with silly evil happening on a 1-3 and horrific evil happening on a 4-6.

Cthaylor’s rise is your primary goal. On your ship you have an altar devoted to giving her sacrifice. Keep the referee informed of any sacrifice you do! You can sacrifice anyone you have the opportunity to, but remember that more consideration is given to any sacrifices of PC factions (if you raid a town or an NPC ship, you won’t get much credit for those sacrifices. Focus on the players.) Angus Macready’s personal goal is to kill the Kraken and stuff it. By doing so, he will be remembered for eons to come!

Remember that your faction is NOT based on Pirates of the Caribbean. You are evil. Act that way.

c. Crew

i. 25 men

d. Ship

i. The Tortured Poet

1. 18 guns/80 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 10000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Dave Island (4,-3)

9. Pirates of Penzance

a. Leader – Pirate King

b. Goals

i. Faction: Oscillate between helping players and hurting players, following your moral code.

ii. Personal: Marry a respectable woman

“Oh, better far to live and die under the brave black flag I fly then play a sanctimonious part with a pirate head and a pirate heart… When I sally forth to seek my prey, I help myself in a royal way. I sink a few more ships, it’s true, then a well-bred monarch ought to do. But many a king on a first-class throne, if he wants to call his crown his own, must manage somehow to get through more dirtier work than ever I do!”

You are the Pirate King from the operetta The Pirates of Penzance. Your crew is a peculiar bunch. Fearsome, but with a fatal flaw: you are simply too moralistic for your profession. You will plunder, but you won’t plunder ANYONE. Some people definitely deserve to be plundered more than others! Some can afford to be plundered more than others! Your crew are all sailors who were orphaned as children. For this reason, you work to protect the weak, and will ALWAYS spare someone who is known to be an orphan.

You reject “respectable” ways of living, but your entire crew is very respectful, well-groomed, and entirely too sympathetic. Have fun with your game. Help out those who need help. Knock someone down a peg if they deserve it.

Your primary goal is a personal one: You need to find a respectable wife, preferably one who is not over the age of 40. Ask around the different faction leaders! You will be judged on the value of whatever bride you can win.

c. Crew

i. 15 men

d. Ship

i. The Flabbergaster

1. 18 guns/100 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 10000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Gary’s Plantation (-3,2)

10. East Braunstein Company

a. Leader – Marmaduke Whittington

b. Goals

i. Faction: Acquire reliable access to new trade goods

ii. Personal: Usurp the Royal Navy as the dominant force in the region

“There are men whose hearts are as black as coal… and they sailed their ship ‘cross the ocean blue, a blood-thirsty captain and a cut-throat crew. It’s as dark a tale as was ever told, of the lust for treasure and the love of gold.”

Many motives drove men to cross the sea, but money is the motive of your faction. Marmaduke Whittington is a smarmy, disrespectful, short, but vicious commodore working under the charge of the East Braunstein Company, a trading joint stock venture. You are tasked with obtaining as much money as possible, including acquiring trade goods. But you have personal aspirations as well: You want to be the dominant force in the region. The Royal Navy, with its strict following of laws, will not do what is needed to truly seize control. The pirates, of all stripes, are too focused on destruction to understand what a paradise Braunagua could be when commerce rules the seas.

Remember that your loyalty lies with money more than anything, but direct hostile action taken against the Royal Navy will likely lead to your decommissioning and hanging if the powers of Braunstein can catch you. If you’re a wanted man by the end of the game, you better be in a good position if you want to be considered a winner!

You start out with a lot of money relative to other players.

c. Crew

i. 20 men

d. Ship

i. The Wesleyan

1. 18 guns/100 hull/3 speed

e. Treasure Hoard

i. 40000 doubloons

f. Headquarters

i. Wesley Island (-1,-6)

THE COALITION!!! - A Piratestein After Action Report and reflection on Lawful Braunstein Cooperative Play

“Britain’s ships have always rul’d the ocean. Britain’s sons will serve her one and all. Britain's sons will show her true devotion, and we’ll never let the old flag fall! We’ll never let the old flag fall, for we love it, the best of all! We don’t want to fight, to show our might, but when we start we’ll fight fight fight!”

The people of Port Royal cheered as the battered remnants of the Coalition fleet limped into the harbor. On the deck of the newly minted HMS Flabbergaster, Admiral Peter Brown of his majesty’s Royal Navy stood erect, with his hands folded behind his back. It was a stance engrained since boyhood, beaten into every midshipmen. After all, only pirates put their hands in their pockets! While to all the world Peter was the conquering hero, those remaining handful of his crew and friends could see the price stamped in a near imperceptible slant in his posture: the weight of the men lost in tireless pursuit across the seas, Whittington’s betrayal, the unkept promise to the Banana Men.

His ship. Noble Captain Durant carted off by the Dutchman and the proud Overtaker at the bottom of the sea.

And his crew. Sacrificed to hold off the French while Dua Lipa finished her work.

He had accomplished what he had set out to achieve: a sea free of pirates. And yet, the price.

Brown turned to face Lieutenant Castle and Zong Shi Sao, and with a glance towards a slight disturbance out in the bay allowed himself a wistful smile. A perfect marriage of triumph and sadness.

“To absent friends,” he said.

I. Pregame Strategy and Vision

A prologue from Brozer

When I came to the Piratestein table, I was emphatic about playing the Royal Navy for two reasons, one personal and one strategic. Personally, I grew up on Horatio Hornblower, Master and Commander and the heroic exploits of the age of wooden ships and iron men. Second, I wanted to test out a strategy that I had originally developed for winning Brozer as Drakon. When I received the preliminary information for Brozer back in December, I immediately started thinking in terms of military power as a wargamer. I made a few assumptions which subsequent examination of the character sheets showed to be correct, namely that Drakon had the most powerful military of all the factions, and second that there was at least one faction out there whose interests did not directly contradict his.

From these two assumptions, I formed a vision of a game of “coalition play,” based on a few truths about a faction like Drakon:

1. I have the most powerful military. Even if it is not enough to beat two factions at the same time, by allying with any other faction I will still have a more powerful military than any other two groups by a significant margin. Therefore I am in a position to provide promises of protection to other players.

2. If I have the most powerful military, then necessarily everyone else has a weaker military than me! This might seem like a fairly asinine observation, but the fact of the matter is, this means that in 1:1 negotiations I can always negotiate from a posture of strength. In the psychological game played at the table, this makes a big difference.

Keeping these in mind, my plan was to ally immediately with a weaker (but reliable) faction like the Conclave of 6 and then grow my alliance through extortion, threats, gifts and promises. A position of strength would allow me to sift out the motivations and loyalties of other players. With three players, I assumed, I would have a force sufficient to wipe out one player without suffering crippling losses. With my alliance assembled, I would sweep in on the least popular player, annihilate him and take his base and resources for my alliance. With that cumulative power, I would then be able to keep order in my ranks and dictate terms to the other chaotic and disparate groups at the table.

Such was my plan, which was sadly undermined when I was assigned to play Chaz again. After a minimal amount of pouting and moping about the death of my grand plan, I accepted my new assignment with good grace and actually went a decent length in achieving my coalition building game with Chaz: forge an alliance, secure something valuable to dictate terms to other players, bully some other faction into line. While steps one and two were successfully accomplished, the vision didn’t transfer completely over. I had lost the confidence that I had the most powerful force and my ally proved to be somewhat lukewarm once we had the Mcguffinstone that he was interested in possessing. Overall, I played a fairly timid game of Brozer, spending most of my time trying to gather intelligence on rival troop movements and ascertain their intentions. This meant that when the really important moves that determined the late game were made, I was reacting rather than acting. With Feringo I had the initiative at the beginning of the game, but lost it through excessive caution and defensive thinking.

Fortunately for me, Piratestein had an open map! In hindsight, this changed my player psychology significantly. Rather than anxiously ruminating about where the enemy might show up next, I was instead able to take in the board as a whole, set priorities, assess who posed an immediate threat to my assets and allies, ignore those who were not immediately relevant and instead focus on the evolution of my plan.

II. Before the Start of Play: Getting my character sheet and my initial plan.

Prologue: the RN and Drakon

The moment I secured the Royal Navy character sheet, I knew that this was the game to attempt my coalition building strategy. A quick glance confirmed that the parallels I had predicted between the RN and Brozer’s Drakon were sufficient: the faction objective was simple and straightforward (kill all pirates, burn all rum), and my personal objective flowed organically from it (hang them high in Port Braunstein). Based on my understanding of how Braunstein balance of power works, I could be pretty certain that I had the most powerful ship of the non-supernatural (read: Flying Dutchman) factions. Hence, I could back up promises of protection (and threats) with hot powder and cold steel. Recall what I said about negotiating from a position of strength.

Aside: I will admit that the rum burning did not feature in my playthrough, largely, I think, because I saw it as a mere caveat of my main goal and lacked adequate time to sift through my character sheet. This might have had more of an influence on my thinking if I had had more time to sit with my character sheet, but my guess is that if I had proven unsuccessful in pirate hunting it might have become a late game “consolation prize.”

With that, here are some notes on how I considered my position relative to the other players:

I had a loyal ally in the East Braunstein Company (so I thought). The setup seemed here to be analogous to Brozer as well, with the EBC forming an Exquisite Inquisition to my Drakon. The positioning decision to put us on opposite sides of the map seemed to be a balancing act which further reinforced my instinct that RN and EBC were natural allies. Even though this did not turn out to be the case, both in the way Whittington played his character and in the way his faction was set up, he acted loyal enough that my starting assumption served me well (more on this later).

Additionally, I noted that there was one other “non-pirate” faction on the map in the form of the Banana Men. Based on my genre savviness I assumed that they were going to be something like the Conclave of 6: a technologically backward faction (no guns or warships) but with useful manpower and the need of a protector. I made a mental note to reach out to them when the game began, with the hopes of bringing them into my alliance.

I had done some thinking about the Royal Navy before the start of the Braunstein, which I suppose gave me an advantage that complimented my existing experience with the Braunstein format. I didn’t want to play my faction as a bunch of one dimensional bullies (unfortunately the late game arguably led us to devolve into this), which meant I would have to engage and negotiate with pirates, at least to some extent. Fortunately, my character sheet provided me with a handy rule of thumb for sorting them: “While you detest every pirate, some are worse than others. The worst pirates are the ones that should know better. If a pirate group comes from your cultural group, THEY should know better.” With this information I had a practical direction for who I ought to prioritize destroying and who I ought to think about as potential assets. This guided my thinking throughout the game.

With this in mind, I had, through my knowledge of age of sail history, thought of one tangible boon I could produce as the Royal Navy: a Letter of Marque and Royal Pardon. By giving the right to salvage captured ships on the condition of staying away from his majesty’s subjects and property, I could turn a pirate into a privateer and produce an ally even out of my natural foes. I decided that so long as I was still hunting some pirates and protecting innocents, I was still playing my role as naval protector. In hindsight, and looking over all of the character sheets, I see now that more important for my success than my powerful ship or starting “ally,” was my status as THE LAW. With it, I was able to grant the gift of legitimacy to those willing to work with me, and ended up disincentivizing any overt treason from the EBC, at least until Whittington ceased to be a relevant factor for deciding the game.

At game’s start, then, I thought about the various factions as follows:

Deserving of Protection (aka natural allies):

East Braunstein Company (EBC) - ally. I assumed our interests aligned almost completely.

Banana Men (BM) - asset. An early game priority would be getting them on board in both senses.

Potential Assets:

Braundong Confederation (BC or ZS) - non-culture group pirates, who I would therefore try to ally.

Culture-Group Pirates (and therefore natural foes):

Pirates of Branagua (ZM) - enemy. I would work directly and indirectly to destroy this faction, but was open to some sort of temporary terms.

Pirates of Penzance - enemy, but less thought about our direct relationship.

Non-Culture Group hostile Pirates:

Norland Reavers (NR) - enemy. From my Brozer experience I knew that their ends were diabolical and I did not foresee the possibility of anything other than a temporary truce.

Growl-Tiger (GT) - enemy, but I also didn’t really think a lot about what a relationship with this group would look like.

Supernatural Unknowns:

Flying Dutchman - this was the faction I was honestly most concerned about going into the game. I was genre savvy enough (having watched the first three PoC movies) to know what Davy Jones was capable of and assumed that he had the only player ship able to best my own. His player was also the champion of the first two Rumpsteins (Norland Reavers in our Brozer and Zenodotus in Trebstein). I decided to stay far away from Davy Jones and to try and ascertain his intentions as soon as possible.

Dua Lipa (DL) - with the exception of Growl-Tiger, ironically the player I thought the least about. Right out the gate I was thinking about the game primarily in terms of naval power. Let the others concentrate on their treasure hunts, witch powers and romance subplots; I was concerned about the tangibles. While Dua Lipa did not originally factor into my thinking at all, I was open to using her if I thought I could gain an advantage.

III. Gameplay Phase I: Building THE COALITION (turn 1)

Of Companies and Bananas:

Gameplay began with the trademark of the Braunstein formula: meetings. The first section of gameplay was taken up with a factional “getting to know you” phase, in which the players met, wheeled and dealed and set up the conditions for the beginning of play. While what happened later was arguably more dramatic, this was the most important phase for accomplishing my objectives later. As discussed above, I immediately began to follow the coalition building strategy.

My first meeting was, naturally enough, with Whittington of the EBC. I approached him almost the moment I was free to do so and presented him with my interpretation of our relationship: my goal was to exterminate piracy in the colonies and I was also tasked with protecting the king’s subjects. Hence, our interests were perfectly aligned and we were allied. Once I saw that he accepted (on the surface) this interpretation of events, I laid out to him my plan to assemble a Coalition with sufficient combat power to sink any pirate ship we came across without substantial loss.

I followed a policy of maximal information sharing with Whittington. In hindsight, I made an erroneous assumption here that could have backfired had things gone differently. Before receiving the character sheets at the end of the night, I had assumed that his betrayal in the late game was more from his player’s desire for an interesting finale than due to anything organic to his character sheet. Upon reading it, however, I discovered that Whittington’s personal motivation was to usurp Royal Navy dominance over the region. He was to do so indirectly, and was given a stern warning that he had to be immensely powerful at the end of the game to be considered a “winner” if he defied the law (me) directly. The appearance of the French ship in the late game provided an intriguing last ditch opportunity: side with the French, defeat the Coalition fleet, gain hegemony under a new colonial power. Indeed, in hindsight he had sufficient private meetings and goings-on that I suspect he was looking for more subtle ways to usurp me the whole game. Thinking about this player’s skill in the game and the schemes he had underfoot, I suspect that if the balance of power between us had shifted excessively in his favor I might have been wiped off the map. Fortunately for me it did not.

Nevertheless, in that initial conversation I was able to easily secure Whittington’s support for my Coalition. I readily agreed to support him in his bid to acquire bananas and he consented to my desire to acquire Banana Man mercenaries for the Coalition.

With that, we immediately sought out Chief Talahal of the Banana Men. While negotiations were somewhat tense at first (he took exception to the reduction of bananas to a commodity for sale), we quickly ascertained that we could help each other: we offered to provide him our collective protection in exchange for a trade agreement and men to help us in battle. Our counter offer of gunpowder weapons and training in exchange was readily accepted. After all, it seemed fairly simple to provide weapons to the natives who would already be fighting on our ships, and we readily brought him into our growing Coalition. Looking back on this early stage of the game, I thought that this tripartite pact would be one of the defining moments, but it was not. When the time came to concentrate troops, Talahal was unwilling to commit more than a token force (3-10) to service aboard our ships, which nullified the direct benefits I got out of the alliance. Additionally, given that they served exclusively on the EBC ship, they had relatively little influence on the course of events: while they fought for the EBC ship at the decisive Battle of Kingsville straight in the midgame, their presence was not a determining factor in the Coalition victory (I think).

Nevertheless, as my attention focused elsewhere, I was still aware of quite a bit of trade and influence peddling going on between the EBC and the Banana Men. One of the Banana Men’s main goals was to spread their religion, which was based on the ritual consumption of bananas and which (I think) the EBC were able to help them promulgate. In the end, the EBC was the only faction BM was successful in getting addicted to bananas.

Anyways, the three of us agreed to meet off the coast of Brauna-Brauna in order to concentrate our forces before moving into the region’s center. Whittington needed to go there to get bananas for trade, I needed to pick up native auxiliaries and assemble our combined fleet. As stated ad nauseum, interests aligned at this point. With his ship Whittington reached Brauna-Brauna by the end of the first turn and they got to loading.

The Eastern Tide

As this was happening, I set about enacting the second part of my plan… and promptly ran into what turned out to be the biggest break of the game. As I was sorting through my mental list of factions, there was one that I had not dropped into either bucket: the Braundong Confederacy. They were not culture-group pirates and they were apparently not terrorist pirates either. Furthermore, I know Zong Shi Sao’s player rather well. He is generally a turtle in freeform games like this, unwilling to commit to substantial risk until he is more or less guaranteed a victory. In our Brozer game he played Drakon and his relative inaction resulted in an alliance against him which would have cost him the game had my group taken Frogtown more seriously.

With this in mind, I had already marked him out as a potential candidate for a Royal Pardon and Letter of Marque. To my pleasant surprise (I can’t remember who approached whom) she asked me for a relationship before I even presented my case. My terms for the Letter of Marque were quite generous in hindsight: full pardon and right to all loot and salvage taken in royal service. In exchange, I asked her to refrain from attacks on the king’s property and subjects and extracted a vague promise from her to “oppose the King’s piratical foes.” I was fortunate enough to come across a pirate committed to getting out and willing to negotiate to do so. I was directed towards her by my character sheet’s information and fortunately had the imagination and mental flexibility to see how our interests aligned.

This was the most important deal I made the entire game. Zong Shi Sao played exactly according to the temperament described above, at first cautious and unwilling to (as well as being in the wrong region to) commit to our Coalition Fleet. Nevertheless, at the end, in two of the three battles I fought, it was the ships of the Braundong Confederacy that definitively turned the tide in the Coalition’s favor. While throughout the first part of the game Zong Shi acted fairly independently, I realize in hindsight the power of the Letter of Marque. She had to at least remain neutral towards my fleet to accomplish her win condition, and if I lost dominance she would likely fall alongside me. While I have no doubt she would have abandoned the group if the balance of power had shifted against me, it was in her best interests that the Coalition won if she was in a position to determine that. As we will see, we also likely bailed her out.

IV. Gameplay Phase II: The Struggle for Dominance (turns 1-6)

My impression of the global situation in the first five turns

In the first four turns of the game, it seems to me that there were two major “subplots” driving events forward. On the one hand there was my assembly of the Coalition fleet, which would become the ultimate driving force of the game. However, especially in turns 2-3, it wasn’t clear then to most players, I think, that I would have the determining influence! The other plot was a web of piratical intrigue that gradually unfolded between Kingsville, Dave Island and Arneland. As far as I can tell, it seems like an alliance began to build around the objective of luring Zong Shi into an ambush to achieve Growl-Tiger’s objective of killing her. The cover for this trap was an alliance dedicated to using Zong Shi as bait to lure another player (I forget which one) into a trap… for the Reavers and Growl Tiger. So much at once! At the same time the EBC tasked Marrow with locating a treasure… which in fact was a trap laid on behalf of the Flying Dutchman who had a debt to collect by pressing Marrow into servitude. The results of all this intrigue? Nothing. The pirate ships merely circled one another, looking for an obvious advantage. It is my impression that the other players were hesitant to commit so early to overt force.

I was not paying a huge amount of attention to this web of intrigue: my main goal was to assemble the Coalition fleet and begin pirate hunting and unless a sizeable power bloc emerged from the maelstrom it wasn’t really my problem. I wagered that the fractious nature of the pirates would prevent them from assembling a fleet of comparable size. I was almost wrong…

Gathering the fleet

At the end of turn 1 I set out from Port Royal towards the open ocean off Gary’s Plantation. I didn’t really have a set destination at this moment: my allies in the EBC were assembling off Brauna-Brauna to trade and embark what I thought was going to be a sizable native force, and I had a treasure clue which I fully intended to ignore. After ascertaining that Whittington had a faster ship and was willing to come meet me near the center of the map, I decided that a detour to Brauna-Brauna was unnecessary. At this point I was somewhat cautious, but so was everyone else: no one was interested in picking an early fight. There were no major engagements in the first few turns, but instead players jockeyed for position and influence.

I continued my policy of total intelligence sharing with Whittington and sought to find out the motivations of players I had missed in the opening of the game. First, I sought out the Dutchman to ascertain his objectives and upon finding out that he was merely interested in taking Zach Marrow I felt secure enough to ignore him but still tried to keep some space between my ship and his just in case. It must have been about this time that Whittington proved to be quite resourceful: he informed me of the trap he had set for Zach Marrow, offering to split a treasure with him if ZM found it but in fact luring him into the clutches of the Dutchman. In one swoop he proved his commitment to my pirate-hunting objective and corroborated the Dutchman’s story about his interests.

On turn 2 I sailed towards the center of the map, thinking I might go for my treasure coordinates at 6,-7 if nothing else happened. Mainly though, I wanted to rendezvous with my EBC element as soon as possible. At that moment, it looked like there was a battle brewing in the central sea, with multiple pirate ships circling and rumblings of an alliance forming. At this point I was approached by the Reavers about their plan to unite with Growl-Tiger and the Braunaugua and form an alliance to send Zong Shi to the bottom. Zong Shi hadn’t really done anything for me at this point, so I wasn’t exactly going to take any huge risks on her behalf, but I did at least warn her.

While I was waiting for my fleet to assemble and trying to convince the Banana Men to commit more forces (there was some sort of negotiation happening at Brauna Brauna prior to the EBC’s move phase), I stumbled into the course of events which would ultimately lead to the Coalition’s total victory in the end game. I was wondering if there might not be a way to seriously cripple all the pirates on one blow when they gathered to ambush Zong Shi, and so I sought out Dua Lipa. After being informed that I had to visit her in person to use her powers, I had what was probably the greatest bit of pure luck of the whole lucky game: I just happened to be anchored at 0,-1 for my rendezvous with the EBC, right off of her home in Kingsville! I was, I believe, the first player to visit her.

It is worth an aside here to talk about a game design element which I think would have improved play immensely. Dua Lipa was a one woman faction with the power to make “predictions,” causing in-game effects at the price of gold. The purpose of her character was to bring about competition for her affections among all the various male captains, making her a power broker over the course of the evening. That might have happened, had she been able to use her powers remotely. I can’t speak for the other players, but I certainly would never have visited her had I not literally stumbled across her doorstep while waiting for my reinforcements. Her goals were monetary and romantic: romantic in that she had to have a candlelit dinner with a male captain and monetary in that she had to spend the whopping amount of 50,000 dubloons on her powers. After the game I checked the total amount of money. There were only 84,000 dubloons distributed among all the players at the start of the game, and the only way to repair a damaged ship was to spend 100 dubloons per hull point. Given that she a) needed half of all starting money to complete her goal, one which b) competed with player’s desperation to repair their ships and c) required a huge amount of players to go out of their way to visit her, her objectives were hopeless unless she was somehow able to convince most of the players to make disproportionate sacrifices of time and resources to her whims.

Dua Lipa’s mechanic was potentially a very powerful one with interesting ramifications for the balance of power. And yet, the sheer cost she had to recoup to do ANYTHING in game, combined with requirement of physical proximity, would have rendered her irrelevant if it had not been for our chance encounter. If Piratestein were run again, I would suggest that she gain her objective through the amount of times she used her powers and that her services could be secured via remote communications. These changes, I am convinced, would have drastically changed the balance of power in the Braunstein.

Anyhow, I forget the exact conversation we had, but once I realized that she was looking for some sort of “male companionship,” I invited her to come aboard my ship, and my courtesy was graciously accepted. At this point she was now my companion.

As an aside, it was also at this point that the Kraken appeared near Port Royal. This resulted in my only Brozer-style interaction with the referee, where on the spot I decided that my daughter had “always” been at Port Royal (I had never specified her location), and asked that she be allowed to raise a militia to defend my home hex. As a lawful character I instinctively decided that my headquarters was a place I was obliged by mandate to protect, and so, even though it did not impact my faction goals at all, I felt the need to risk my only other character to defend it. I was granted a militia of ten men.

Turning point: the Battle of Kingsville Straight

In so many ways, the Battle of Kingsville Straight was the determining event of the evening. When it took place, a few things happened: first and foremost, the strength of the Coalition fleet was revealed and gradually became the defining factor in the game, permanently tilting the balance of power in my favor. Second, the early game taboo on violence was broken, and several altercations broke out in the southwest at the same time that the Kingsville-Wesley Campaign was being resolved.

It happened like this: by the beginning of Turn 3, the EBC ship with its auxiliaries had arrived just north of Kingsville. I am not sure why they decided to rendezvous here, but it ended up working out. Meanwhile, the Norland Reavers captain had informed me of the little act of treachery he had planned against Zong Shi and I had warned her. Growl-Tiger had approached from the south as well, and something was happening down below. I don’t remember exactly what happened at this moment, but while they were suspicious of me, they were not sufficiently so to either attack me before my allies arrived or attempt to escape. I however, saw a potential power bloc forming and the opportunity to knock out two pirate factions at the same time. I waited until the EBC was in sufficient range and then asked for a commitment from Zong Shi. Predictably, she was noncommittal until after I had joined battle with the EBC’s support.

I am not sure what effect these events had on the other players, but the Norland Reaver’s captain seemed somewhat upset when my ambush was sprung. He tried to move his ship northward toward Wesley’s Island and I announced that I was moving to interdict. His attempts to get out of the attack were talked down by the assembled players (even what constitutes a battle is a negotiated thing in a Braunstein) and we entered the referee’s room for a crash course in naval warfare. I took operational command and while my leadership was somewhat indecisive early in the battle, once Zong Shi committed I was confident enough in our victory to divy the EBC ship and ZS’s ship to defeat Growl-Tiger while I went after the Reavers alone.

The first few rounds of combat established the superior weight of my ship’s cannons, which did substantial damage to the Reavers and forced them to retreat. I rolled excellently with my four dice while he rolled poorly with his three, and was forced to withdraw while inflicting relatively minor damage to my ship. I wanted to catch him though, and so Dua Lipa got to use her powers for the only time in the game, when I offered her all of my 10,000 dubloons to “predict” that a southward wind would slow the Reavers. This proved insufficient, and while I was able to inflict serious damage, the Reavers escaped intact. My ship was too slow to keep up with them and that did cost us (or EBC at least).

Meanwhile, in the south, Growl-Tiger was double-teamed by boarding parties from both the EBC and the Braundong Confederacy and having been grappled could not escape. The EBC had consumed bananas prior to the battle, which gave an initial advantage, but our combat ran so long that turn five began before it ended, and this became a disadvantage. Meanwhile, the close combat skill of the cats inflicted substantial damage on my allies’ forces, but not nearly enough to make up for their difference in numbers. All three of our ships had a free gunpowder phase while GT had none, and after my ship returned from her pursuit of the Reavers the sheer attrition of three rounds of gunfire AND three rounds of melee proved too much and the cat crew was destroyed. While GT himself put up a serious fight, he too was overcome and the day was ours.

Battle Analysis: My principle in the battle was the one which had given me the vision of the Coalition in the first place, namely that my ship was superior to anyone else’s in direct combat. I was too cautious to attempt boarding the Reaver’s ship, which could possibly have netted me victory and another ship, but I knew I outgunned him and so I decided to press that advantage instead. The result was that he escaped and healed all the damage, precluding total Coalition victory at Kingsville. Nevertheless, I was able to drive him off, forcing him to abandon his only ally, who was then destroyed. The Coalition fleet was therefore successful in its opening engagement, dissolving the only power bloc with any potential to oppose it and capturing a ship (the Terror of the Thames) that we would make great use of.

Some notes on combat: the mechanics used were simple, straightforward and encouraged some tactical thinking in a multiship engagement. We were able to resolve an important and complex battle in a reasonable amount of time. Nevertheless, mechanics also forced a choice between boarding and firing. Since firing did not influence boarding actions in any way, you were incentivized to choose either full guns (as I did with the Reavers) and therefore sacrifice any attempt at plunder and capture, or risk everything with a boarding action. We opted to board only with overwhelming force. Furthermore, there was no live capture mechanic, which made the goals of those who required captives for execution, ransom or sacrifice to be almost unachievable.

Pursuing the Reavers

The Coalition Fleet was victorious over the ad hoc pirate alliance and the conversation now turned to how to distribute Growl-Tiger’s assets. I was perfectly content to leave with just the body of the cat-lord for hanging up in Port Royal, but my allies butted heads over how to distribute loot. I did not want to alienate the EBC by just giving the Terror of the Thames to Zong Shi, who I was also secretly afraid would scurry off if she got that much of a material advantage, but I also was in urgent need of pursuing the Reavers who in the meantime had just sacked and burned the home area of the EBC, sacrificing everyone there. In the end, I promised to let Zong Shi have the ship after we pursued the Reavers and was saved by Zach Marrow’s untimely demise through unrelated events. The referee, seeing a player without a game, assigned him to take command of the captured Growl-Tiger ship. Because Zong Shi was unwilling to assign any of her crew to man our new prize, and the EBC was only willing to offer a token force, the ship was given to the Royal Navy, and her new captain was made a RN Lieutenant (Castle) who had distinguished himself in the battle. I quickly realized I had secured a loyal proxy willing to follow my lead and look after my interests.

Aside: this is a moment where the players (and by omission the referee) resolved things in a way that further tilted the balance of power. From this point on the game was largely a one dimensional game of “hunt the pirate” that had to be resolved by recourse “npc” armada events. A note for referees that power blocs such as the Coalition need special attention!

At this point, two events happened that could have broken the Coalition if things had gone differently. First, as we were negotiating our ships, Growl-Tiger used his life and respawned, with his body (my share of the loot) vanishing from the hold. At the same moment, the Reavers sacked Wesley Island, the EBC HQ, and sacrificed its whole population to Cthaylor (and I subsequently found, repaired all hull damage at the same time).

Aside: I think that the Reaver player should have been more greatly rewarded for destroying Wesley, given that he accomplished it after escaping an ambush and a pitched battle. It would also have been a good occasion to adjust the balance of power. I, for one, started the next fight expecting his ground troops to be demonically powered or something and that impacted my decision to sink him with cannons rather than engage him up close.

After a turn to repair and rebuild our crews at Kingsville, I set off with the EBC and the Thames to go after the Reavers after they inexplicably sailed back towards Dave Island… putting them just in range of our anchorage. If they had sailed the other way, I think the EBC would have left to go protect Brauna Brauna and my fleet would have dissolved… I suppose at this point the sheer combat power had convinced Whittington that splitting up was a bad idea.

At any rate, the Reaver move brought them right back into the range of our fleet. Zong Shi left with the goal of “cutting them off” as they passed around Dave Island, and then ended up heading for Arneland and a series of events that I didn’t quite understand (see the above footnote). Meanwhile the EBC, the Thames and my Overtaker managed to engage the Reaver ship. If memory serves, their fast ships caught up with him first and then my vessel plodded along behind. Nevertheless, the Reaver captain was out for blood and determined to take me to the bottom before he perished. He came close, and since I was out of dubloons reduced my total hull health to 20/100 for the rest of the game. At any rate, our improved speed was able to prevent further Reaver flight and this time our superior firepower sent them to the bottom. No one could oppose the full might of the Coalition Fleet!

Balance of power at the end of turn 6:

The Coalition Fleet: Overtaker, Terror of the Thames

Dua Lipa: Coalition aligned, on board the Overtaker

EBC: Coalition aligned (beginning to drift)

Braundong Confederation: Coalition aligned

Banana Men: Coalition aligned, in effect neutral

Pirates of Penzance: neutral

Flying Dutchman: neutral

Growl-Tiger: enemy, shipwrecked

Norland Reavers: dead

Branaugua: dead

V. Gameplay Phase III: Rule Braunsteinia! (turns 6-10)

Romance, Treasure and a Risk

At this point, I had accomplished far more than I expected given by Brozer experience. Whatever followed from here was just icing on the cake. So while the EBC went to go off to Brauna Brauna and see to their interests (read: abandoned the Coalition out of disgust with its game-breaking power), I regrouped and received a lovely invitation to a candlelit dinner from my passenger Dua Lipa. Having become better acquainted I happily assented to her request to sail to Le Tourneau and dig for treasure. We spent the next couple of turns pursuing a series of treasure coordinates until finally she told me it was time to go see the Kraken.

I had trusted DL up to this point and she had not done me wrong. I knew that there was a substantial possibility I could lose myself the whole game being too trusting, but I really wanted to see what would happen if she took control of the Kraken. Without explaining to my subordinates what I was doing (ZM/LC thought I was going to go solo the Kraken!) I unloaded all my extra cannons (12 guns) and most of my crew onto the Thames with orders to continue the fight against the pirates in the event of my untimely demise, and set off.

How I was rewarded!

When we arrived, the referee gathered the whole group together and announced that Dua Lipa had shed her mortal guise and united with the Kraken by offering it the heart of Davy Jones. And then nothing (bad) happened to me! Dua Lipa’s loyalty to me had proven to be firm and now my closest ally had just become THE KRAKEN! The Coalition fleet had a KRAKEN NOW. This was where the game functionally ended, as it was then that the referee quite reasonably decided something had to be done to restore the balance of power.

Before we get to that though, one more dramatic turn of events. While I was off treasure hunting with Dua Lipa, another round of pirate intrigue took place in the south. At the end of it, Growl-Tiger was dead and Zong Shi had the Braunagua’s ship (marriage deal between Penzance and the Braundong, I later found out). Oh, also the Dutchmen debt on Zach Marrow had transferred to the Pirate King of Penzance and he was headed for Port Royal at full sail (whenever the current debtor was killed, the debt transferred to the killer).

Endgame: the Battle of Port Royal

I rushed with the Coalition fleet as fast as I could to intercept them before Penzance killed my daughter, foolishly left where she was most vulnerable with a scanty ten militiamen to defend her! The Pirate King knew that we could wipe him out as soon as possible and I was openly bragging that we were going to hand him over to the Dutchman. If he had wanted to storm and sack Port Royal, unless my garrison won by some miracle there was nothing I could do in time to stop him. I tried to negotiate a truce with little success.

The resolution to the standoff was not so much an agreement as an “out of context problem,” namely the arrival of a 36 gun French man of war (played by the Norland Reavers captain). He demanded permission to retake the small island Le Torneau on the other end of the map. If I had had a normal fleet I likely would have let him pass as I could not take him on without serious casualties. There was a brief moment where I considered negotiating, but it ended when a), I considered the fact that I had a Kraken, and b) they decided to take in the Penzance pirates as wards and pirates fled to their location rather than try and tackle the Port Royal garrison. At this point the opposing forces (I THINK) consisted of the following:

The Coalition Fleet:

HMS Overtaker: 20 hull points, 12 guns, 12 men

HMS Terror of the Thames: 80 hull points, 24 guns (12 transferred), 30 men

THE KRAKEN (Dua Lipa)

Nearby: Zong Shi

Junk King: 100 hull points, 12 guns, 25 men

Pistole: 80 hull points, 18 guns, 25 men

Vs

French Ship: 36 guns, 100 men, 200??? hull points

Flabbergaster (Penzance): 15 men, 18 guns, 100 hull points

EBC Wesleyan (late arrival): 32 men, 18 guns, 100 hull points

I decided to attack and so the final battle began. I immediately handed over control of my ship to Growl-Tiger’s character (he became Captain Kevin Durant of HMS Overtaker) and transferred my flag to the Terror of the Thames. I was at this point truly an admiral rather than a captain, with my subordinate players handling the individual ships and boarding actions. The leadership of ZM’s player was important here, advising me on proper courses of action to which I assented. Meanwhile, I convinced ZS to join the fight and tried to call for assistance from the EBC. The battle was more of a matter of who would be left at the end than an actual battle. As powerful as the broadsides of the French ship were (6 dice), the Kraken was a different order of force entirely (10 dice). Even so, there was still a real chance that our fleet would be wiped out to a man, leaving me dead and Dua Lipa the Kraken as the only surviving member of the Coalition. That doubtless would have been the case had Zong Shi not come. Who knows what would have happened then! At any rate, (I think) I ordered my subordinates to attack and board the Penzance ship while the Kraken handled the French vessel.

Because I wasn’t actually leading a ship at first my recollection of the battle is fuzzy. We first focused our attention on the Penzance ship. Somehow that boarding action ended with the Penzance Pirate King dead, the Dutchman debt transferred to Kevin Durant and the Flabbergaster in Coalition hands. The Braundong fleet did come to attack when I told them it was urgent, and arrived at about the same time as the EBC who promptly declared for the French and opened fire. The Dutchman arrived at about the same time and we left Captain Durant and the Overtaker to his attention while we focused on taking down the enemy alliance fleet. The Overtaker was sunk, her (read most of my) crew was killed and Durant was taken away to Davy Jones’s locker.

The rest of the battle was somewhat confusing. After the French ship fell to our combined fire plus the 10 dice the Kraken was throwing down each shooting phase, he transferred his whole crew to the EBC ship (which we allowed given our overwhelming advantage) and he realized his last chance was to lock us in boarding action that prevented the Kraken from attacking his crew without destroying our ships. He then boarded the Junk King, flagship of the Braundong Confederacy. As the Kraken destroyed the EBC ship and with it half of the 120 man Franco-EBC contingent, the other 60 leapt over the gap and onto the Junk King. We decided to commit all the men we had left to one last crazed melee aboard the Junk King, only saving enough men to send our remaining ships (Thames, Flabbergaster and Pistole) back to Port Royal to press some reinforcements.

The number was 48 (defender) to 60 (attacker) and it was here that I discovered an unfortunate truth that I corroborated afterwards online: while the defender has the advantage in small “risk-style” battles, in large scale ones the attacker has quite a significant advantage. About the time that our force had been reduced by 25%, we collectively agreed that the situation was unsalvageable and decided to have the Kraken sink the Junk King. ZS used her special ability (raft-launching) to abandon ship with her crew, leaving the last 13 navy men to fight a desperate last stand to hold the Junk King before the Franco-Whittington alliance could use it to “ship hop,” wipe out the rest of our vessels and take Port Royal. Alone and leaderless, the remaining royal navy crewmen left on board the Junk King held out long enough for the Kraken to drag the ship -along with Whittington and the remaining French troops- into the sea.

The Coalition emerged victorious, having wiped out or co-opted all pirate factions and repelled a foreign invasion. With the sea scoured of pirates and the devoted Dua Lipa at his side, Admiral Peter Brown found himself the major power in the region.

VI. Analysis and Conclusion

The Royal Navy victory and the Coalition building strategy

I put my success down to the combination of a simple, straightforward and flexible plan combined with just plain luck. The Royal Navy’s mission and alignment both turned out to be advantages that outweighed the strength of my guns. My character objectives were straightforward and did not force me to interact with any specific or contrive elaborate schemes to secure MacGuffins. I was able to choose an effective means to accomplish my objective and pursue it with single-minded determination throughout the entire game. Tactical indecision is a survivable blunder, it turns out, if you have your priorities straight by default. Before the game even began, I knew my objective and the resources that I had to work with.

Lawful Coalition-building proved to be a simple exercise because there were two known factions for me to work with at the game’s start, each of whom had something to gain by a stable alliance (even if in the case of the EBC there was a hidden mission to undermine me). I think the strategy that I followed is a relatively simple one that is applicable in any Braunstein where there are at least two lawful, non-evil factions without interests that directly conflict, and since no one faction can accomplish its goals alone this is a key starting boon. If the Banana Men had been more willing to commit in the early game it is possible the Coalition’s power could have snowballed even more quickly, and given the BM missions the faction had no reason not to cooperate with my Coalition. Indeed, I swapped character sheets with the BM player before the game’s start, and had I not done that I would have attempted to follow roughly the same plan but as the junior member of the partnership. I entered the game with almost a ready-built power bloc and the EBC’s hidden “undermine the Royal Navy” objective was not enough of an incentive to betray the Coalition until it was far too late. Grand coalition building seems to me to be the bread and butter win condition of the lawful-good powerful faction in a Braunstein, so I would not want to do away with it from Piratestein. Nevertheless, my experience here suggests that an optimal Braunstein design would have to somehow include measures to prevent a Coalition-style force from snowballing quite as quickly as mine did.

I will also be the first to admit that I was also very lucky. I was fortunate that Whittington, whose player has proven to be both devious and remarkably creative in both of the Rumpsteins in which he participated (he was the lich Suleiman in Trebstein), was aligned with me at the game’s start and willing to tow my line for most of the evening. I was fortunate that there was a built-in pirate seeking an out to whom I was able to offer my Letter of Marque the first turn. These two pieces of luck let me get my Coalition off the ground and meant that I was ready to make my move at least a turn before anyone else. The pirates had not yet formed factions or made enough power plays for a dominant group to emerge to oppose the Coalition and I saw to it that the only closely aligned pirate pair was wiped off the face of the earth before they were actually able to accomplish anything. Finally, I was unfairly lucky in coming across Dua Lipa when the rest of the players were ignoring her. This chance encounter turned my partial victory into total dominance of the map.

Finally, I was also lucky that the players I was at the table with were for the most part quite inexperienced, at least with what exactly I was planning. I kept my eyes peeled and my ear to the ground for any developing power blocs in the early game, but I don’t get the sense that the other players really paid me much heed. Perhaps the open map made them somewhat complacent or my lack of a definitive target until the last minute convinced NR and GT that they could still work with me. Either way, I doubt I would be able to pull the same trick with this particular group again…

Personal development reflection as a player

I arrived at the table with a ready-built strategy for victory that paid off in spades. I discovered a powerful technique for taking a militarily strong Braunstein faction and multiplying its power into dominance. I played the game from my roots as a wargamer, thinking in terms of military and political power and this suited my relatively simple faction quite well. I didn’t need to engage in intrigue when I had an alliance of 3-4 players. The Letter of Marque was my one genuinely resourceful moment and I think that it would have been an obvious move for anyone who had ever watched Pirates of the Caribbean II or played Empire: Total War. In a different game with different players willing to play hardball on negotiations, my Coalition strategy might have been far more difficult. Nevertheless, it far exceeded my expectations!

In terms of improvement, I need to become more flexible with the resources I have. While this game was an almost uninterrupted series of triumphs for me, it lacked the sort of special moments that come from creative play and trying to test the limits of the world. There was no crazy moment when Chaz’s officer Droggo actually managed to steal the Frog Shaman’s staff. Compared to Whittington/EBC’s player, my gameplay was fairly linear and conventional. A personal danger for me is rigidity of thinking, and if I play with these people repeatedly then eventually my favorite gameplay strategies will lose the element of surprise. In addition, developing the ability to “think outside the box” with factions, resources and characters is the spice of life for a Braunstein player. A few more victories like the one I had at Piratestein might make the format stale for me.

There’s also the matter of player etiquette: when the game started I was almost single mindedly committed to victory, and was perhaps a bit too brusque at times. Years of gaming have revealed a serious character flaw of mine, namely that when there’s something I really want (or want to avoid) I will push rules and technicalities as far as they will go, with little regard to the amount of fun that those around me are having. I still have to grow in finding the right balance between healthy competitiveness and devolving into a nuisance…

Reflections on Piratestein as a whole

Strengths: Piratestein was a success in the criteria that ultimately matter for a Braunstein: stuff happened and the actions and decisions of players determined both the pace of the game and the outcome. My favorite moment of the game, for instance, was when Whittington’s player used the term “The Coalition Fleet” in regular conversation, and I realized that I had created an entity that had not existed at game start and was now an integral part of the world. The game was fast-paced, lethal, and allowed enough time for all players to have a legitimate crack at completing their objectives. The absence of a fog of war encouraged me, at least, to be bold and confident in my ship’s power and to go out to get stuff done. This speed of play was possible because the mechanics were simple enough for us to resolve battles without direct oversight by the referee. Action could progress apace, without grounding to a halt to resolve a slow battle. Even at Kingsville Straight, where we were learning the mechanics as we went, we were still able to resolve the battle without disrupting the game, because Rump introduced the key mechanic that the 1:1 turn time still progressed as the battle went on.

Additionally, while the game mechanics were simple, the cast of characters was diverse enough to guarantee interesting interactions. At least through the Battle of Kingsville Straight I always had the sense that there was a wider context to my actions and that the other players were either a threat or had something to offer. The Flying Dutchman was a fascinating added element which I always had to factor into my accounting and further added to a sense that even when my Coalition had mastered the world I was not God of the setting. I enjoyed the player interactions and the chance to see my grand plan unfold, and had a good time (puffed up by victory of course!).

Weaknesses: I will say that after the Battle of Kingsville Straight I was left with a sense that I had won and that no one could stop me. The rest of the game was going to be mop up and that did take some of the wind out of my sails, pun intended. I get the sense that Whittington’s player turned on the Coalition at least as much out of this sense of disappointment as anything else. I think there would have been a better chance for interactions if we had had more time to let our character sheets percolate as well, but I did feel like the format lent itself to some one dimensional combat play on my part (build big fleet, steamroll opposition), and once the Reaver-Tiger group had been swept up there wasn’t really much else the remaining players could do to touch us. There weren’t enough alternative paths to victory to stop a Coalition of 20-40% of the players, and 30% of the cast were non-pirates. Once I pulled off what I was attempting, everyone else had to either get in line or get out of the way.

There has been some discussion about the combat system. In general, that simplicity was key to getting as much done as we did in (not long over) four hours, though there were some flaws. Risk-style boarding actions between four or more combatants do give the attacker an advantage, so that must be balanced. Additionally, as discussed there was no live capture mechanic or mechanic for battles between captains. I also think a slightly more detailed crew roster with officers could have opened other avenues for asymmetrical play.

Furthermore, there was quite a bit of information that ought to have been included in the character sheets. For example, it was only after I burned all my doubloons on Dua Lipa’s powers that I discovered that I needed my gold for hull repairs, and this had a noticeable impact on my decisions after the second fight with the Reavers. I will give Rump a pass on this as I know he put the event together quite quickly but as a general object lesson I would suggest that referees give all relevant mechanics info they have to players with at least a few days notice, especially when dealing with a crop of newbies.

The only other major critique I would mention is more a question of degree than of a specific change: a defining feature of my Brozer experience was the 1 on 1 meeting with the referee. Communicating orders and resolving movement secretly added an air of mystery to the game which was decidedly lacking in Piratestein. The game was far more lethal because players had good enough intelligence to track down and kill one another in an open game world. As I noted above, this was quite good for moving the course of events along. However, the referee was absent at points in the game, and this dissuaded forms of subterfuge like trying to sneak bananas into other ships’ rations. Hands-off refereeing made Piratestein what it was for better and for worse, and yet that is also the reason for this AAR: there were simply events that Rump was not even aware of, and had to be explained to him after the end of play.

Two brief suggestions: My suggestion is that more secret faction mechanics be added that require some referee mediation, and that a time is still allotted each turn for each player to meet with the referee if they have things to resolve. Perhaps they could even just hand him a slip of paper to prevent the meeting from being bogged down in conversation. That might add an air of mystery and danger back to play without resulting in the “referee does everything” bottleneck that secret movement and orders threatens.

I would also suggest that the referee delegate non-game tasks such as pizza money collection. If there is a dedicated “support staff,” the referee can dedicate his whole attention to the game (and his kids, if we’re playing at his house!), and since player time is slightly less packed than ref time, players should be bearing some of the load.

Conclusion

Don’t let the length of the strengths and weaknesses sections fool you. This game was an absolute blast and it was remarkable that Rump was able to orchestrate the presence of ten dudes for a four hour game in person session at the speed with which he did it. I can see that since my time in Brozer he has grown a lot as a ref, and he can rightly count Piratestein as a success. Perhaps this report can be a helpful revelation as to the thinking that goes on in the mind of at least one sort of player as well. I, for one, look forward to the next time I can show up at the table!

“Wooden ships, on the water, very free (and easy). Easy, you know the way it's supposed to be… Silver people on the shoreline, let us be… Talkin’ bout very free, and easy…”

(You may wish to skip to the “Report” section. Below is just context.)

I am counteracting my own “They don’t really play” allegations recently hurled towards me by announcing that I have run another in-person session Braunstein. It’s true that I have been playing much less lately, for a variety of factors, with time being the most predominant one. But #Piratestein has proven once again that the single session Braunstein can be the most engaging regular solution to the dreaded “time” problem.

The inspiration for #Piratestein came from an obvious place. I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl with an eye for fun and not trying to be critical in any way. The film succeeds in being fun throughout. The key is to never ask “is this dumb?” but instead to always ask “is this cool?” And Pirates of the Caribbean is cool. The idea for a Braunstein really became clear when Jack Sparrow is revealed to have stolen a cursed medallion, turning himself undead, while dueling Barbossa, and the question is asked aloud, “whose side is he on?” At the beginning, Jack saves Elizabeth, who defends him, and Jack immediately betrays her trust and uses her as leverage to escape. Will Turner duels Jack early on, but later joins forces with him to save Elizabeth and break the curse. Elizabeth demands a “parley,” as a means to negotiate. As a 1:1 player:character Braunstein, you could use the following factions: Jack, Will, the Governor, Elizabeth, Norrington, Barbossa. I immediately began to brainstorm what a pirate-themed Braunstein setting would look like. Moving to the wider scope of the second and third films, and taking from various other pirate themed media, I borrowed the following factions:

1. Jack Sparrow and his crew

2. Commodore Norrington and the Royal Navy

3. Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company

4. Davy Jones and the crew of the Flying Dutchman

5. Tia Dalma, the human form of the goddess Calypso

Had I devoted more time to this, I am sure that I could have come up with 10 distinct factions across all the films, but I simply looked for other sources for inspiration.

Something about me that I am learning. Whatever “gonzo” style play is, I am finding that I actually love it, especially for these single session Braunsteins. Things are allowed to be goofy. This opened up the possibilities for factions in my mind. Inspiration came to me in the form of music as ideas came to my mind.

The song “Banana Man” by the group Tally Hall was my first unconventional idea. A tribal faction who hands out bananas that have some sort of ritual effect. It actually seemed really on theme! The other very unconventional idea was to use “Growl-Tiger,” a character from TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and featured in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats based on that work. A wicked cat-man hybrid who travels up rivers, commits evil upon the world, hates the Siamese, but has a soft spot for romance also seemed on brand with the setting. In he goes. This also gave a natural spot for convergence, I just needed to get an Asian pirate in the setting.

These were the factions in #Piratestein and their faction leader.

1. Pirates of Braunagua

   1. Zach Marrow (Jack Sparrow, PotC)

2. Royal Navy

   1. Peter Brown (Norrington, PotC)

3. Banana Men

   1. Talahal (“Banana Man” by Tally Hall)

4. Flying Dutchman

   1. Davy Jones (PotC)

5. Braundong Pirate Confederation

   1. Zong Shi Sao (Guangdong Pirate Confederation and Zheng Yi Sao of history)

6. The Jellicle Cats

   1. Growl-Tiger (Cats)

7. Dua Lipa

   1. (This is the Tia Dalma faction, the only factions without a ship or crew)

8. Norland Reavers

   1. Angus Macready (Lifted straight from #BROZER)

9. Pirates of Penzance

   1. Pirate King (Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan)

10. East Braunstein Company

    1. Marmaduke Whittington (Lord Beckett, PotC)

This made 5 pirate factions, 2 “civilized” factions, and 3 neutral factions. I will post the writeups for all of these in a follow-up post for those interested, although…

This was very rushed.

While #Piratestein was ruminating in my mind for weeks, the game materialized 8 days prior to its play date. I also did not have my usual downtime set aside at my regular job to work on this. My summer job of moving tables and chairs all day is not conducive to writing, although a lot of ideas come out of those moments. The entirety of the game was written in a span of about 24 hours. Because of this, the game was undoubtedly THROWN TOGETHER. The nice thing about Braunstein is that this doesn’t really matter all that much. It does matter, but this is why we call the game “anti-fragile.” Even a poorly or haphazardly designed game can be a blast for everyone actually playing the game, because the compelling part is not in the setting or in the mechanics but in the interaction the game promotes.

The Report

The Roster

Once I had a date confirmed at home, I invited everyone who has played in a Bruanstein with me so far. Out of that group, 7 immediately accepted (all rejections were due to prior scheduling commitments/work). I was able to get 3 more players who played in one for the first time. One is actually a part of the “original D&D group” I had years ago who was finally able to make it, while the other two were individuals targeted as being likely interested. 10 is likely the maximum number my house can hold WHILE MY FAMILY IS ALSO HOME. We will likely be looking to change venues for the future if the numbers are 10 or higher.

The Premise

The Braunagua Atoll is home to several islands. Piracy abounds, but the King of Braunstein is looking to clear up the area to keep its colonies safe. The mighty Kraken has surfaced, as well as active sightings of Davy Jones’ Flying Dutchman. Each faction is there for a reason, and they need to accomplish those goals using only what’s in front of them.

The Map

Players received a detailed hexmap and had a larger vague map to represent the game map. Players had to move their pieces across the board to go to different islands or to attack other ships. If they were in the same hex or an adjacent hex, they could engage with another ship. The game map was not to scale unfortunately, so players tried their best to determine who was where exactly. This didn’t seem to cause any issues. Because of this, ALL SHIP LOCATIONS WERE REVEALED AT ALL TIMES. This does away with about 80% of the referee work. While it removes the biggest part of what a fog-of-war game is, the tradeoff in what it does for pacing more than makes up for it.

The Time

The session was scheduled to go from 5-9. As one may expect, not everyone shows up on time. 5:30 to 9:15 was more accurate. I used turns that allowed ships more movement: otherwise there was no restriction on actions per turn. Every turn allowed them to move their ships to a new spot on the board, most places being about 2 turns away from each other for the standard ship. The key to maintaining pacing was that turns progressed even as combat was occurring. Players did not need the referee for combat, so I threatened them at the first big combat: if this goes any longer, the turn will change and the other players will get to make their moves. To my surprise, players had no problem with losing their turns in this way! And if they did, they may disengage combat to get their movement in. Only one faction had a mechanic tied to a turn. Davy Jones’ heart was recoverable by him after turn 8. On turn 8 he arrived on land to where it was buried, just to discover that it had been dug up on turn 7!

The Combat

Combat was split between naval combat and melee combat. While much has been said about what is best for a Braunstein’s combat, I have what I think is a unique problem: My players are USUALLY neophytes to ANY system, or their experiences do not overlap between OSR, 5E, Warhammer, etc. Boot Hill 2e isn’t something I had time to condense down or teach to the whole room. Instead, Naval combat was resolved using a system I came up with a few hours before the start. Each ship has a hull value and a gun number (multiple of 6.) You roll d6’s equal to your gun number divided by 6 (most ships rolled 3d6). You subtract that number from your enemy’s hull. When their hull hits 0, their ship sinks. You can move towards or away your opponent, depending on your ship’s speed score. We made up a quick system to determine running away, comparable to death saving throws in 5E, but you roll xd6 where x is your speed score.

Boarding another ship led to melee combat, where we just used RISK rules. This was unsatisfying for most as they realized and was later confirmed that RISK favors the attacker if numbers are equal. This favored aggressive play, which is not altogether bad!

How this played out in an example: Davy Jones’s primary goal was to press Zach Marrow into 1000 years of service upon the Flying Dutchman. However, the Dutchman is too slow to catch Marrow’s ship, so their first engagement just led to Marrow fleeing. Jones needed to get another faction involved, and got the Pirates of Penzance to help stall Marrow long enough to board him and capture him.

I learned this from the design of Diplomacy while playing #DiplomacyByX. In Diplomacy, you cannot advance without cooperating with another faction SOMEWHERE. You can design your factions in a way where they cannot achieve a goal without the help of another faction just from a mechanics standpoint.

Combat needs to be fixed. I am thinking of a d10 way based on Tiny d10 that can be a way to resolve Braunstein combat at any level, that can be picked up in about 5 minutes while playing through it. If all your players know how to use AD&D or Boot Hill, that would be preferable. But for my scenarios, maybe it doesn’t need to be so deep?

The Goals

Goals were usually too vague or TOO specific. Go read Parker's Substack report on his first Braunstein to get an idea about what I mean. I needed to spend more time crafting the goals. It turns out this is the ONE part of the Braunstein that really needs to be hammered down before the game. The biggest flaw was that players didn’t quite feel motivated to pursue their faction goals and focused on their personal goals, probably because they were more specific and more interesting.

Romance Subplot

I introduced a “marriage” mechanic where players could essentially trade women as wives. It did keep some people busy, but it was almost entirely forgettable. What I think WAS successful was the idea of introducing subsystems to keep players always working on something, especially if it goes across alignment.

Treasure Maps

Nobody started out with magic items. Instead, I gave players coordinates to follow to find buried treasure. Some players used it a lot, some ignored it completely. It was inconsequential for all but one: the map to a map to a map to the location of Davy Jones’s heart.

The Most Interesting Part

Here is the most interesting sequence of events. Dua Lipa, the sea witch, had the goal of essentially falling in love (Based on Calypso in PotC as stilted lover). The only player who gave her the time of day was the Royal Navy Admiral, who ferried her across the sea. Dua Lipa’s treasure map was the one to Davy Jones’s heart, or rather it was a chain of maps that eventually led to it. The Royal Navy took her to each location not knowing what it was. But when she got the heart, I revealed to the player what he could do: If she took it to the Kraken, she could actually use its power to take the form of the Kraken and essentially become it. That is what the player chose to do, and rewarded the Admiral for his affection by being the equivalent of a 60 gun ship with 4 times the hull strength and 3 times the speed. The crazy part is that the Admiral did not need this boon! He had already leveraged his position to such a strong spot it was icing on the cake. He used the Kraken to sink a French ship that came through (given to a player whose captain had died). Braunagua Atoll is now safe from all pirates, protected by a literal goddess of the sea following the orders of the Royal Navy! It was an incredible way to end the evening.

Overall

I pushed the limits on “low-prep Braunsteins.” I learned that goals need to be well crafted and well communicated to players. I was very happy having an open map for players to track their own movement, but obviously it needs work. I was pleased with simple combat that resolved itself, but I need to develop a system that is fair to both sides and instead highlights a faction’s specific traits and bonuses.

My players kept talking about what we should do for next time. That assumption is SO AWESOME TO HEAR. My players WANT to do this again. They want to try out new settings. One is looking to run his own.

This feeling beats any D&D campaign. I am creating a growing community of gamers who cut across different groups and interests. Maybe we turn this into a legitimate clubhouse. An in-person clubhouse. All I can do is keep playing games and inviting more people. That’s all I intend to do!

It turns out there is one such work from an Appendix N author, L. Sprague de Camp, with his book The Unbeheaded King. While this particular book was published in 1981 after Appendix N was compiled, it belongs to a trilogy (“The Reluctant King”) which began in 1968. So I think it gets a fair pass from Jeffro’s “Never read anything after 1980” rule.

The Unbeheaded King is the story of a man who is trying to abscond with his wife. In the Kingdom of Xylar, every 5 years the king is beheaded, the head is thrown in the air, and the man who catches it becomes king. Jorian, a clockmaker by trade and adventurer from a nearby realm, catches it and becomes king. He serves his time as king, but escapes when the time for his beheading approaches, putting the Xylarans on high alert for him. This all happened prior to this particular story. The book begins with Jorian alongside his wizard companion Karadur flying in a bathtub possessed by a demon (much magic in universe is performed by pacts with extraplanar beings) to pluck Jorian’s preferred wife, Estreldis, from the castle. The plot fails and they escape, but not without inconvenience.

Jorian’s adventure takes him to several different places, but in every place he has mundane concerns. How will he and Karadur eat? Where will they live? How will they manage getting along with the locals? The solution is foreign to your conventional play storygamers: Jorian gets a job at a mill, where he works for months to save up the money to further his next scheme to get Estreldis. When that plot fails, it’s back to the drawing board, with more time spent NOT adventuring.

Every chapter followed a structure: Jorian and Karadur come up with a plan, they go somewhere to execute that plan, they spend several weeks OR MONTHS waiting for the next phase of the plan. In the interim, it gives them time to gather information, form relationships, gather resources, and make contacts. Every part of the novel’s narrative is used somewhere to create a very satisfying ending. Over a year after the events of the book begin, the story concludes.

These times between adventures (adventures which include fighting a dragon, personal duels, pursuit by soldiers, etc.) give lots of time for comic relief. This is important, because it needs to retain the interest of the reader. But in your 1:1 campaign, downtime should be largely no-nonsense activities that set you up to achieve your further goals in the future. It allows you to have the time to gather information, accrue resources, make relationships, all away from the table.

So what is the purpose of the session? In a game like “Dungeons and Dragons,” the session should involve going into Dungeons and slaying Dragons. That is to say, your session should be action-packed. Set off to your destination first thing when the session begins. You can’t achieve one part of your overarching goal in 4 hours by session’s end? Then you need to evacuate to avoid capture. You got captured? Jorian spent weeks in a cell. He made an enemy in the guard who later was convinced by a feuding wizard to try to kill Jorian. Having your PC spend weeks in a jail cell can actually be compelling world-building!

Books do not have true cliffhangers from chapter to chapter. You can just immediately read the next page to see what the immediate result is. Instead, chapters are presented more as distinct volumes in a larger narrative. This type of episodic play is what AD&D assumes you will be doing when you read it. Stop-time has a huge problem with time being relevant. You can say “We keep track of time. We know that days go by. Between some sessions we say "‘Okay, a month has passed.’ What’s wrong with that?” The problem is that your mind is not experiencing the passage of time in the same way that the world is. It is much harder to appreciate the passage of time in game, then, if you cannot perceive it correctly. This is why people handwave away anything that limits us with time in games. “Okay, two weeks passed. Now you get to use the magic weapon.” No consideration is given to the impact these two weeks had on the world.

The final consideration is delayed gratification. We often appreciate things more when we go without them for a spell. The harder we work for something, the more we savor finally having it in our grasp. Jorian learns lessons that allow him to move on after his quest ultimately ends in failure, back at nearly the exact point he started. But the stories he has to tell are legendary. His legend grows over the course of the book, because time is allowed to pass in the world. Your player characters, likewise, will have their legend grow organically. You will actually start to feel like the powerful, important character the level on your character sheet says you are. You will feel like you are a person with a place in the world, and you will feel like you have actually meaningfully interacted with the world. And maybe you will retire to become a tradesman, like Jorian, giving the world room for new adventurers to live out their own stories.

Bdubs1776 has posited for a while now that anyone can take any brand new 1:1 Dungeons and Dragons campaign, run it for six sessions, and come up with a workable Battle Braunstein session. I am pleased to report that this is not only a viable option, but has produced high level gameplay with almost exclusively players brand new to Braunstein and some even brand new to D&D. Before we begin, if you don’t understand the Braunstein style, click here, download the free BROZER: Isle of War and Winter PDF, and read through some of the short essays. That will give you an idea about what type of game I ran.

I. Background

Back in December of 2024, I ran BROZER live as a single session Battle Braunstein event. I wrote about that experience here. Despite the headache it caused me, some of my players being disappointed with fairness, and the fact that the entire time I didn’t know if things were working the way they were supposed to, I realized that the experience for EVERYONE was better than ANY time they have played D&D. This was a huge revelation for me, and I still believe a monthly Battle Braunstein session is a viable strategy for a group of friends to engage in the hobby.

What is a Battle Braunstein? This is my brief working definition: Players representing different factions competing over different goals in a fog of war over the course of a single scenario. Players can make and break alliances as it suits them. Players are also encouraged to GET CREATIVE with what they want to do, stressing TOTAL PLAYER AUTONOMY.

Around the same time, my nephew started to read about Dungeons and Dragons. His enthusiasm to be a player coincided with me wanting to actually run a campaign again after joining #BroXT and the general BrOSR space. Between my brothers and their children, we have had 6 players play in at least one session. My sister’s boyfriend is by far the most experienced, playing since the early 2000’s, so he plays and helps me rules-lawyer. We run 5E with as much emphasis on RAW mechanics as possible, but the overall feel of the campaign is certainly lifted from AD&D.

I DM as a “zero-prep” referee. I have never prepared for a session yet. I generally use AD&D Dungeon tables to stock the nearby dungeon, and I am learning where AD&D can be used to generate content that 5E does not provide. However, through solo play, I have found that 5E DMG has a serviceable dungeon generator, only it just says “main inhabitant,” “pet/ally monster,” or “random monster” in its generators, which is why I still use AD&D to generate encounters. We also run initiative by side, which is a 5E variant rule tucked away in the DMG.

II. (Zero) Preparation

Zero-prep is the only reason a viable Braunstein scenario surfaced. I began to prepare for the Battle Braunstein during the second session of the D&D campaign when through basic world generation and dungeon rolls I had already four factions: The King, Orcs, Dwarves, and the Church (The Church was not used in the Battle Braunstein). During the third session we generated a Pirate slaver faction, derived from one of the PCs being “pirate” themed. It was supposed to be a throwaway adventure session, but it wound up mattering. Further play with random rolls back in the dungeon revealed the Orcs to have hostile clerics (so they must be Half-orc to fit in 5E), which created a faction. I also engaged in some solo play between sessions. I rolled up some undead, some elves, a Druid, and some Hobgoblins. All of this is zero-prep.

The zero-prep part was now over. I had an assortment of potential factions to choose from, so it was now my job to put the pieces together. This DID require the creation of some factions from whole cloth, but the heavy lifting was all done through random table generation. I wound up with 8 factions, 6 organic, 2 made up specifically for the Battle Braunstein. These new factions now exist in the campaign milieu after the fact.

• Krobok, the Orc zealot

• Suleiman, the lich necromancer

• Hamilton, fearsome pirate lord

• Lord Luvidico, strongest vassal of the king

• Carric, Wood Elf captain

• Zefon, Dwarven patriarch

• Alexandros, King of Trebzeron

• Zenodotus, Trebzeron court wizard

I needed 8 players, and I was not JUST planning on using the campaign players. I needed outside players as well. I invited everyone who had played in our BROZER game, but nobody could make it that day besides my younger brother. Fortunately, every member of the campaign except for the experienced player could make it, and my younger brother got two of his friends (young guys without much going on) to come out. I also let my nephews play, who are around 9-11 years old. It has been theorized that children would not make good Braunstein players. I have things to say on that later.

The roster set, I had to make faction writeups. I had a lot of ideas running through my head over the preceding days, but I unfortunately didn’t have the time I wanted to really flesh out 8 factions the way I wanted to. Instead, they all got relatively basic writeups of the following:

• Soldiers and Officers

• Faction Secret Ability

• Writeup/Faction Description

• List of Goals

• Unit Statblocks

• Short list of magic items

Here is an example of the Printout that one player received. This information was PRIVATE, for his eyes only. Don’t worry about the combat system specifics.

I was worried that it wouldn’t be “enough,” but nobody sat around thinking they didn’t have anything to do, so it must have been workable! Most players did NOT engage with their magic items or officers in a truly meaningful way, but they had the option to. Magic items were randomly rolled using AD&D tables, ignoring results that would be useless or were thematically off for the faction.

III. Setup and Scenario

Here is the scenario as provided to the players.

The Kingdom of Trebzeron is in turmoil. The Royal Army has been split several ways around the border to fight off skirmishes from hostile neighbors all around, leaving the capital city largely unattended. Unfortunately, the King did not realize that the largest threats sometimes are internal! It started with reports of orc activity increasing in the nearby once-inactive dungeon, then the arrival of a horde of Dwarven refugees, then increased Pirate activity from the lawless Swamp Kingdom, followed by reports of undead wandering the woods and dungeon, then the elves, usually content to be sequestered deep in the woods, have brought a contingent of soldiers and constructed a fort at the forest's edge.

Through a variety of spying missions, intelligence has found that two rival orc factions have arisen from the depths of the underworld. One pledges allegiance to an ancient Lich, Suleiman, while the other group views Suleiman's and the undead presence as an affront to the orc god Gruumsh. As their numbers swell Alexandros, king of Trebzeron, has brought all available soldiers into the city in preparation for an orcish assault, although all are uncertain of everyone else's current status.

As tensions flare, Lord Luvidico, strongest vassal of the King, and a minor claimant to the throne himself, has marched outside the city with his army upon hearing about this chaos. While he has always maintained his fealty to the king, that doesn't explain why he has brought along siege equipment!

In a last-ditch effort, King Alexandros has called on his court wizard Zenodotus to intervene. By utilizing an arcane artifact of great power, Zenodotus has created a magical shield around the city, preventing anyone carrying a weapon from marching either into our out of the city. This magic will wear off in three days, after which the free movement of arms and armies will resume unimpeded.

This was enough context for players unfamiliar with the campaign world to get to work. I will now list the “secret” abilities of factions, as they matter to understand the events of the game. Many of these were time-specific abilities

• Krobok - Orcs become stronger if kept in base for 3 straight days

• Suleiman - Necromancy powers are tied to a book, immovable until day 4

• Hamilton - At Day 3, reinforcements arrive in their base

• Lord Luvidico - At any time, can ability to cause 25% of Alexandros’ army to defect to his command.

• Carric - On Day 4, ref evaluates alignment. If True Neutral, gains control of several high powered Druids

• Zefon - Has a tunnel from the city to the dungeon

• Alexandros - No hidden ability, but had the strongest army.

• Zenodotus - Can put down the shield at any time.

When players arrived (fashionably late, of course) I described the game by describing the game Diplomacy. I used some actual scenarios currently playing out in Alchemic Raker’s ongoing #DiplomacyByX game, but I added on that you can do ANYTHING, and that each faction had goals to achieve. I stressed that if you aren’t talking, you will lose the game. You should always be talking.

The goals were all relatively unique to each faction, although their desires overlapped: The Dwarves and Elves could either choose to reestablish the status quo, or they could push for independence. Since this was a “real” campaign, I tried to make the scenario realistic to what was happening. This may have made it slightly less engaging overall, but it made the outcome fit well with the ongoing campaign.

The main thing I wanted to study for this Battle Braunstein was about the role TIME plays in shaping your game. The game was set up in a Day-Night cycle. Orders could be implemented in the day, executed either immediately/simultaneously or at night, secretly. During the night phase, no orders could be given. This was to let me focus on adjudication if I needed to, or just give me a break. Since we started late, I cut the turn length down from the intended 45 minute Day-15 minute Night to whatever seemed prudent. I still intended the game to take no more than 4 hours.

A lot of the goals are centered around time, giving factions a power spike either earlier or later in the game, although in retrospect this wasn’t very well-executed. I was hoping that it wouldn’t be “three days of negotiation, then a big fight,” although I was prepared for that possibility. Ideally action would start immediately, potentially finishing the game before Day 4 even arrives.

IV. The Game

Off the bat, Zefon the Dwarf and Krobok the Orc were played by children, intentionally done because their play is pretty straightforward. Their factions were relatively unscathed the entire game, which may have been the adults going easy on them. The only player with Battle Braunstein experience played the single-person faction Zenodotus, the court wizard.

Players IMMEDIATELY started talking as if they’d been playing Braunstein-style their whole lives! Even the kids picked it up immediately, and they were scheming just as hard as everyone else was. The youngest kept coming in to tell me what he was planning with other players. I told him he didn’t need to do that, but I think he was mostly just processing all the information. The older child, the entire game, kept yelling about his tunnel system and its potential. So much for secrets! Despite the secret being out, it was never used until the very end of the game, when the shield was down anyway. My players had a lot of questions about what exactly they were supposed to be giving orders for: I told them it was for troop movements, secret missions, and anything they couldn’t handle amongst themselves. Halfway through they stopped asking questions to clarify, although some only gave very basic orders. Subterfuge was incredibly underutilized, I think because this scenario TRULY is about negotiating and leveraging the situation to make your faction better off, as opposed to hyper-specific event-oriented goals such as “kill this person, acquire this thing, destroy this place.” It definitely made the game more open-ended.

Here are just some of the interesting events that took place.

• Pirate Lord Hamilton and Elf Captain Carric were headed to attack each other, their armies collided head on, but within three minutes they had declared an alliance.

• Suleiman the Lich set the forest on fire, but used magic to disguise himself as the Court Wizard Zenodotus when he did it. He was however spotted doing so by Pirate Lord Hamilton’s spy.

• Pirate Lord Hamilton sacked the inland village of Hill Hamlet. The motive remains unclear to this day.

• Suleiman used magic to create the illusion of zombie ogres guarding his base. The players, due to fog of war, were fooled, deflecting the coalition army away for a day.

• Krobok and Suleiman (the two orc factions) had a tenuous alliance and fought side by side. That is, until the very last moment when Krobok switched sides (for seemingly no reason) and almost every faction flooded Suleiman’s base and attacked.

• Carric the elf stayed behind. This was a good idea because Pirate Lord Hamilton’s reinforcements would have been able to take the city of Trebzeron had Carric attacked Suleiman.

• Suleiman was defeated but escaped with the Gate spell. Nobody knows where he went, but he was separated from his unholy book, leaving him incredibly vulnerable, and possibly powerless/lifeless. Not sure! But chances are his story is over here.

The game ended with Suleiman’s demise. This entire sequence was incredibly rushed and secret orders became impossible. I put everyone in one room and they declared their actions one by one. They could interject whenever they felt necessary, however, but at that point the game was running essentially at 1:1. It resembled a game of Dungeons and Dragons more than Braunstein for a few minutes!

Here is how each faction turned out, ranked from most successful to least successful:

Zenodotus - The court wizard elevated his status to key advisor for the King. He eventually was the one pulling the strings. He also gained control of the Necromicon and earned a personal tower in the forest.

Alexandros - The King retained control of the kingdom, he eliminated the Lich King threat, Luvidico was impressed by his performance, Pirate Lord Hamilton caused limited damage.

Pirate Lord Hamilton - Granted a fiefdom in the Kingdom on the coast. (Will be interesting to see what this looks like, as he is Lawful Evil in a Lawful Good society.)

Carric - The Wood Elves became recognized in the kingdom and are formally autonomous, although not independent.

Zefon - The first non-winner. The Dwarves did not do much to improve their position.

Krobok - While the heresy of the Lich King has been destroyed, the Orcs would still be hunted on sight out in the open. Conflict will likely still occur between Men and Orcs in the campaign.

Lord Luvidico - The first loser. He lost a substantial portion of his army, he did not gain any power, and he also struggled to show value to the king. He returns home worse off. Ambiguous loser.

Suleiman - The biggest loser. Banished from this dimension, cut off from his power. Unambiguous loss.

V. Aftermath

This Battle Braunstein was an unambiguous win for my players, my campaign, and the hobby in general.

Player Engagement

Battle Braunsteins are easy to learn and are intuitive to play in. Anyone with creative thought, even children, can be a serviceable player, and you will discover which players are naturally good and which ones might need some coaching. You can do this coaching mid-game. If a player seems lost, feel free to give him leads. Of course this should not violate the fog of war, but remind them of their faction’s abilities and resources, give them potential allies or enemies, or prod them into responding to the actions of another player.

Just as I found with BROZER, most players enjoy Battle Braunstein more than a session of Dungeons and Dragons. However, Dungeons and Dragons can be run with zero prep, while we haven’t perfected the “Zero-Prep Battle Braunstein.” It took several weeks of thought and then two weeks of consistent work in my free time to prepare, although that also involved cobbling together a combat system. If we ever perfect “Zero-Prep Battle Braunstein,” I may cast away D&D altogether if the players wish.

Players were interacting form the first moment to the final moments, and they were upset that there wasn’t more time to play, or more time between rounds to get orders in.

Campaign Results

Battle Braunstein is a method for players and 1:1 campaigns to resolve higher level play when PCs are at lower level. The ongoing campaign’s PCs are all at level 3 at most. That’s not exactly feasible to beat a level 18 magic user. In a 1:1 campaign, NPCs aren’t going to sit around while they wait for the PCs to hit the appropriate level to defeat them. So, a DM can either ignore ALL high level concepts until their players hit higher levels (which we know rarely happens in conventional 5E play) or he can run these high level NPCs as factions in a Battle Braunstein. My players told me that this session helped them understand the context of the campaign world they were already playing in. Remember, a good campaign is focused on the world, not on a party of players. It’s good to move away from PCs from time to time to enrich the world those PCs live in.

Hobby Implications

I am pleased to report that you can, in fact, run a new campaign for six session using zero-prep principles and create a playable Battle Braunstein. That includes a bit of solo-play as well, but considering it was 3 months of 1:1 time from the start to the Battle Braunstein, if your campaign plays more often than mine does you should have no issue generating content. At this rate, a campaign can realistically create a Battle Braunstein scenario at least four times a year. Choose a date every season. Invite anyone you think would do well. Generate your factions.

One wrinkle I like as a possibility is PCs interacting with the game world prior to the Braunstein session. If your players are active enough, they can be changing the world up to the week before the session! I think this is fundamentally what people find attractive about the hobby: their actions affect the world.

Moving forward we will return to the campaign world. The low level PCs will be able to engage with the orc menace, maybe they can meet up with Zenodotus in their tower, maybe they will take up with the Dwarves, or maybe they finally explore the hostile Swamp Kingdom. The Trebzeron Dungeon has many, many, many more levels as well that have not even begun to be explored by men of Trebzeron.

I will also resume work on Dracograd-stein, based on a setting my friends and I made a few years ago, as well as a Pirates of the Caribbean inspired session. Pirate-stein, Rum-stein. Who knows!

At a recent trip to the used bookstore I picked up a handful of novels from Appendix N authors and chose the one most fitting a fantasy setting. My novel is The Unbeheaded King by L. Sprague de Camp. After only a few pages, a group mentioned in passing caught my attention. While they are mentioned only briefly and seem to have existed in the distant past, I decided to write a faction on the cannibals of Paalua.

In the book, the only thing that is mentioned is that the region the protagonist was flying over (in a bathtub possessed by a demon) was inhabited by “the descendants of dragons” brought by an expeditionary force of Paaluan cannibals on a “foraging” mission. You can imagine what kind of forage they sought! The cannibals were said to be “sophisticated.” This seems to be their only mention in the whole story. This means we get to fill in any gaps.

My intention with this post (besides winning the BroXT challenge) is to lay out my thought process when making Braunstein factions. While BDubs lays out some simple rules for mechanics of faction creation, the real bread and butter for a Braunstein faction is in its unique theme, its Appendix N influence, and the opportunity it allows for Role Play.

Paaluan Cannibals

Description: On a nearby land mass, there exists a civilization of men which marries the savagery of tribalism with the order of rule of law in the form of systematized mass cannibalism. Their success, in their eyes, hinges on their way of life, and their way of life hinges on having people to eat, as demanded by their patroness deity, Xyla. Besides hegemony over their neighbors, the Paaluans have also been gifted with mastery over dragons, having subdued and bred a generation of black dragons.

Paalua sends foraging (raiding) parties into foreign lands both to round up victims to sate their macabre appetites and to scout out new lands for colonization. A sizable force of soldiers is led by a high ranking captain, accompanied by a Doctor (magic-user) who advises him and a ranger who manages the dragons they bring along with them. Many villages willingly surrender sacrifices at the sight of dragons, and villages that do not comply will have their towns burned and their women dragged off.

Alignment: Lawful Evil

Leader: Jorian, 5th level Fighter

S - 14 I - 14 W - 17 D - 12 Co - 17 Ch - 12

Jorian leads the expeditionary force, employing a variety of hit and run tactics and quick movements. Leading a retinue of his own personal horse archers, he is a fearless fighter and a wise tactician. Jorian wears a Phylactery of Faithfulness, which helps him align his goals with that of his patroness deity. Discuss with your referee what benefits the patroness deity will confer on your faction, assuming your actions match with your alignment.

Officers:

Level 3 Magic-User (5001GP)

Doctor Gwiderius

Advisor to Jorian, Gwiderius assists him by identifying magic and using spells when appropriate.

Level 2 Ranger (2251GP)

Kynoc

Beast-master, trained in the Paaluan ways of dragon-taming. His presence in the army is necessary to keep the two black dragons tame.

Dragons: The Paaluans use subdued black dragons as instruments of war, but also as diplomatic tools to get what they want. They have been known to spread dragons into areas aligned with Good to weaken them before invading. Stats for the dragons can be found in the AD&D Monster Manual, with rolled specifics shown below.

Dragon 1 (1600GP)

Young

8HD - 16HP

Average size

Speaks

No magic

Cost 1600GP

Dragon 2 (7000GP)

Young

7HD - 14HP

Small size

No speak

Troops:

A modest army accompanies Jorian. Cavalry make the bulk of the fighting force by making use of their mobility, with infantry acting more in support roles. 325 soldiers in total.

Location: Jorian’s company will be found camped on the fringes of some civilization, close enough to raid but far enough away to avoid major confrontations.

Goals: The Paaluans need more victims to eat. Surely there will be a great reward waiting for him should he return was abundant quarry. However, Paaluan warriors all feel a drive to spread their “civilized” ways and thus always are looking to conquer and set themselves up as petty kings to terrorize their neighbors. Regardless, alignment should always be taken into account in pursuing these goals.

“Designer notes”

Almost half of the allotted money was spent “purchasing” the dragons. I rolled 10 different black dragons and took the two cheapest but viable options. This is why the faction has virtually no magical items. The Phylactery of Faithfulness was randomly rolled, so I added a bit of role-playing flavor to it and kept it in. There also was not much to spend on officers, so instead I focused on what I thought was necessary and “splurged” on soldiers to make up the difference. The result is a Lawful Evil combat-focused faction that has a clear way to play but a few options on how to take your game.

This weekend I will be running my second in-person session Braunstein. The roster is mostly set, and while I haven’t written out the factions I do already have the major dynamics set. Look for another post before the session on Sunday, as well as an after action report. This Braunstein will be the events of the current in person campaign, so we will see up close how running session Braunsteins can change your campaign!

SOLO PLAY

Markos - LG Human Ranger 1

Veniamin - NG Human Bard 1

Gregorios - LG Human Fighter 1

Urist - LG Dwarf Paladin 1

After two "parties" of only one character met untimely demises in solo play, I took the time to roll up 4 characters. Because I am using AD&D Method III, the stats are absolutely bananas, with basically everyone having a relevant +4 bonus to something they use all the time. I will probably stop using this method in 5E, as it seems like my characters were a little TOO good. The +6 to hit bonus for a level 1 character was meaningful a few times in this session! I like Method III because it does lead to variety in what your character will be, as you don't control what your best scores are, but it's still too high. I might give Method IV a shot (Roll up 12 characters straight 3d6 and pick one), or I'll just do straight 4d6 drop low down the line.

My table hasn't played in a while, as our last session was killed by schedule conflict at the last minute. My nephew said he was sick, too, but "might be better by then," which meant we had one, possibly two players! I elected to stay home with my family instead. In other table news, my older nephew may be joining soon. This will be nice to have, as we can't seem to find a day that works for everyone. More players in an open table setting is good for this.

Most recently, the party was supposed to go to the Forest Dungeon and seal the first level to stop nasties from staying there. This must have fallen through, however, as the session never happened! So, the kingdom sent another group of adventurers, these truly being green, to investigate. A Ranger, a Bard, a Fighter, and a Paladin, all good, adventured down. In the first level of the dungeon, they encountered no hostiles (based on reaction rolls) but ran into a company of elves. I rolled for the contents of the rooms around them and got skeletons and zombies. Necromancy! But I ruled that the elves already dispatched them.

Where did the elves come from? There is an elven kingdom, but it isn't exactly close by. Instead, these elves are native to the Great Forest of Trebzeron, living isolated in the hills. Things must be pretty bad for them to venture to the forest's edge. They were sent to explore the dungeon, as the forest has had an influx of monsters, tracked to here.

The undead are an interesting twist addition, as well. There are TWO orc factions in the dungeon. It began as a Necromancer (determined this morning by myself that it's the wielder of a Necromicon) amassing power and convincing orcs to join him. But, as the society got larger, zealots (led by half-orcs) for Gruumsh started to push for purity and now there are two distinct groups, with orcs brawling openly between the camps. There is no war between the two just yet, but it's clear the zealots are no longer cooperating with the Necromancer. Back to the session now.

This new set of adventurers started to go through the dungeon on the side I did not explore with Yeoman (poor, poor Yeoman…) The party found an iron door, and trying to open it led to a wandering monster encounter with Giant Rats. It was nasty! Those rats got a ton of hits in, causing the party to do a short rest after. During that rest, they encountered another set of wandering monsters, again Giant Rats, but they were not hostile and moved past. Inside the iron door was a tiny cell with a druid. The druid had been in the dungeon investigating the undead, working with the elves it seems. Druids are now active in the forest. The druid left.

The party moved on to a small temple. A Piercer almost impaled Gregorios, but instead it was quickly smashed. Inside the temple, orcs jumped out to take on the party. 3 orcs and a half-orc cleric. I am finding that 1st level NPCs really can't do as much damage as the default orc can in 5E. I'm still practicing quickly generating meaningful leveled NPCs, as 5E doesn't seem to consider this as a mechanic: NPCs just have monster stat blocks.

(I like the idea of NPCs being leveled characters because it makes your characters seem like CHARACTERS in the world in a typical sense, and not special "chosen" PCs. Especially when you play with multiple characters, as these characters truly become just "another part of the world.")

The orcs rolled terribly and the party rolled very well. The rats were more difficult!

Here is how I have been handling 5E combat with initiative by side and theater of the mind. I know approximately how much space is in the area, and that determines who can attack who. In our ten foot passages, there is enough space for a front line of two and a back line of two. 5E rules state that creatures can't move through hostile space, so there is no way things are getting through a front line of two, as they control 5 feet each. The adventurer's fell back to fight in this passage, and I don't worry much about line of sight of people blocking others' line of sight for ranged attacks. A back line of ranged weapons can target an opponent's back line or the front line. Maybe I'd be more motivated for learning more about line of sight if I had larger fights. I'm sure I'll get there some day.

I'm getting better with 5E book control, which is letting me not have to rely on AD&D tables as much. I think I will still use the Dungeon encounter tables, as I think it fits better thematically with my vision than using Xanathar's Underdark rolls. The dungeon was rolled, besides encounters, with the 5E rules and not AD&D. I'm even transitioning to using the 5E treasure rolls and not the crazy AD&D numbers. My real players may notice, although it looks like magic items may come in greater droves now. I gave my solo guys a treasure horde just to try out the mechanic, and it netted them 4 magic items! Two will be sold. I have decided to use the "Sane Magic Item Prices" document for prices. Not RAW, but, as noted, there isn't quite enough in RAW to make sense. And it's 5E, so we can disrespect it if we want.

I am also maintaining AD&D surprise rules and wandering monster checks. I don't have a way to track time very well in dungeons, unfortunately, so it is very subjective, but I am hoping as I learn more, it will be more consistent.

My forays into solo play have given me more material for a potential session Braunstein. I think I have enough to play it. For context, there have been 4 table sessions and technically 3 solo sessions, although only one was very meaningful.

Here are my thoughts for the session Braunstein. I will be going a bit into the lore, as this will basically be a first draft of materials that will be handed out.

SCENARIO: The Kingdom of Trebzeron is in a tumultuous time. While there is no open war, forces are working to stretch the King's army thin.

The chaotic Swamp Kingdom's pirate denizens have made raids on the coastal cities. Pirate Lord George has come into the nearby port city with more than just a ship of swashbucklers, looking for booty or slaves to sell in the kingdoms of the north.

The capital city has had a huge influx of Dwarven refugees, driven from their mountain kingdom by an upstart duke; these Dwarves were granted residence, but where do their loyalties lie? As they have settled in, they are beginning to organize for their interests.

Meanwhile, evil stirs in the dungeon below the nearby ruined fort in the forest. First it was just reports of orcs and a cult of Gruumsh, but now there is evidence of undead activity. Underground, an army has formed but is splintering as the Necromancer who drew the evil out competes with Gruumsh zealots over leadership.

Deep in the forest, the elves have established their own autonomous society. While they usually stick to their own in the wooded hills, they have been working alongside the Druids to investigate the unnatural goings-on. They have dispatched an expeditionary force to put down the living dead.

Upon hearing about the upheaval, Lord Luvidico, the king's strongest vassal, has mobilized his army and marched it to the city of Trebzeron. Luvidico has always spoken that his oath to serve is true, but never has the power structure in Trebzeron been as vulnerable as it is now.

As these conditions come to a head, Aristophanes, the Trebzeron court Wizard, uses a magical artifact to buy the city some time. A magical barrier prevents any army from marching into the city, but in three days the barrier will fall. What happens then? Will the King be able to unite his disparate factions to fight off any adversaries? Will the orcs unite to bring ruin to mankind? Will the other factions stand by and let their opponents fight amongst themselves before swooping in and claiming what they want? The fate of the city of Trebzeron is in your hands.