The Braunstein Posts over at chirine's workbench (links)

[Crimhthan The Great]

Links to @chirinebakal 's essay on The Braunsteins.

Essay On The Braunstein - Part The First, For July 15th, 2014 - Art or Science?

Essay On The Braunstein - Part The Second, For July 17th, 2014 - Science Or Screenplay?

Essay On The Braunstein - Part The Third - July 19th, 2014 - Rulers, Numbers, And Crunching

More On The Braunstein - Questions From The Floor! - July 21st, 2014

Essay On The Braunstein - Part The Fourth - July 28th, 2014 (Game Aids - 1)

On The Braunstein - A Pause For Questions...

The Braunstein - More Of Your Questions!

The Braunstein - A Question From Ed

A Braunstein Interlude - Maps And Campaigns

I think that is all of them, @chirinebakal please let me know if there are other posts that should be included.

[Crimhthan The Great]

Basically, Dave Arnesons involvement in Wesley's Napoleonic Braunstein in 1967 led to Dave eventually running his own Braunstein using Chainmail. This went by the name Blackmoor and you know the rest of the story.

The looseness of Braunstein is very appealing. It really seems to be the bridge between wargaming and RPG's. This freer form of play is what drove players, like Dave Arnesons, imagination. They realized they could attempt anything that came to mind. Also, the secret orders and faction cards fed this bent to inovate in the game, since a player could be deceptive of his true intentions and form alliances or make deals with other players.

Yes, it seems like Wesley had the realization that the umpire could coordinate a very imaginative scenario and did not have to be restricted to strictly military simulation. It is interesting that Arneson added back a certain amount of wargaming style rules to the more free-form Braunstein games.

The funny thing about that is that Wesley was actually in the military, yet it seems he was more interested in players motives, real life interaction, and examining real life issues in the context of his games. He was not interested in simulation or fantasy "escapism". Dave on the other hand, pursued a fantasy element and brought back a certain amount of simulation (he was a wargamer after all). You certainly see it in FFC, but some of the early accounts of Blackmoor sound very free rolling like Braunstein.

Jul 20, 2014 17:07:13 GMT -5 @gronanofsimmerya said:

They were. According to Dave and others including Greg Swenson, Blackmoor started as rather a "Medieval fantasy Braunstein," and became a large complex Good vs Evil medieval Braunstein, and then Evil got smooshed and everybody still wanted to play so Dave started playing the bad guys...

That's actually a pretty profound shift in how the game was played Mike. You're saying Dave went from the role of unbiased over seeing referee who arbitrated rulings and the players ran different factions, to the referee taking on the role of the opposing faction against the players, yet still maintaining oversight of the game. Much like current rpg's are run.

Jul 20, 2014 20:56:39 GMT -5 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Well, yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. In one rather long sentence I traced the evolution from wargame to RPG.