If you’ve got room in your schedules Friday or Saturday night, allow me to make a suggestion. Paul Stormberg always recreates some amazing, seminal games under his Legends of War banner. This year, the new additions included: 2 of the Braunsteins – run by none other than David Wesley himself (making his GaryCon debut, I believe – at least I’ve never seen his name come up before). When this game was announced, it immediately went straight to the top of my want list, alongside Recall the Beginning. I have a suspicion that this article is correct, though, in saying that even a lot of grog-y old schoolers don’t know what the Braunsteins are or their historical importance to gaming. http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/1 ... ing-games/ http://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... -the-hobby To summarize for the lazy: Late 60s, plenty of people play board games and war games. Wesley creates a home ruled game (Braunstein) where players control 1 character and can try to do anything, not just attack someone. Players love it, so he makes more. Wesley leaves to serve in the military. Former player Dave Arneson takes over and moves the games from a military to a Swords and Sorcery setting. Wesley isn’t into fantasy settings and drops out of the picture. Gary Gygax, on the other hand, loves the sound of it, and after he and Arneson connect, Dungeons & Dragons is born. These games were a critical piece in the transition from miniature wargaming to role-playing games…and because they involve a lot of players, there’s still seats available! Fill these games up and don’t miss out on this ground-breaking piece of history! (and it’s only 3sp)
Those were the very first games I registered for! I'm very excited about getting to play them. I'm surprised they didn't fill up immediately.
I would have gone there first as well... But then I got to play a Braunstein at the 2009 GenCon with Dave Wesley in the condo I was staying at...essentially unplanned and put together while walking down Washington Ave... But I brag....heh.... :lol: If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I'll provide what answers I can, if I can...
Please elaborate on how awesome it would be to partake in both Braunstein I and Braunstein IV at GaryCon. Back up the Pimp!
The Braunstien was a fascinating experience. It was interesting and fun on several levels. Here's what happens. You are given an overall scenario...In this case you live in the town of Braunstein and two armies approach, The Prussians and the Frnech. In the town there is a university. There are poeple in the town who think they should surrender and succumb to teh French and loyalists who think everyone should/must support the Prussian army to help defeat the invaders. Then the characters are assigned. These are all people in the town ranging from the mayor to students on either side of the brewing battle to spies gathering and delivering information. Each character has motivations and goals, mostly kept secret. Then basically you start interacting with each other as those characters. You have to try to convince people and cajole poeple and intimidate people and try to achieve your goals. If you come to am impasse, you go to the referee for resolution (say someone is challenged to a duel, for example). I ended up being one of the students in hot support of the Prussians and looking to whip up the masses against those traitorous students who wanted to submit to the French to save the city or some such nonsense. I was in jail for the while, I had to convince the headmaster of the school to let me stay afger being released from prison. I had to piss off the head of the French-sympathizer students to getg him into a duel...all the while the other 10 or 15 people playing are doign teh same thing for their characters. It was awesome. At the end, The Judge/Ref collects all the papers and goes through each character scoring each based on achieving goals and so forth. In addition to being a ton of fun, it really gave me an even deeper understanding of the origins of the hobby - which I found immensely interesting. I'd play in one of these in a heartbeat except that I've been fortunate enough to have done so once before so I figure I'll leave it for others to experience. However, I will be keeping my eyes on these and if stars align I'll jump in...
Excellent recap Jim. Sounds very enjoyable. Hopefully the stars will align and you can partake once again.
The LoWG stuff is all excellent and should be on everyone's list to hit at least one a year. Paul does a bang up job bringing this to Gary Con. What a great series!
Last Call coming up quickly at midnight. It is an excellent opportunity to partake in a game that is vastly different than roll playing.
