How I learned to relinquish control and embrace the BrOSR 2 - The Braunstein
The name ‘Braunstein’ might not be familiar to everyone. Back in the years before DnD was ever even a glint in the eyes of Gygax and Arneson, there was a young man named David Wesley. He was part of a group of wargamers in the Twin Cities who were creating more and more elaborate wargame campaigns and scenarios. Until one day he and about 20 players held a special event. It was supposed to be a pre-wargame event, where players could influence the starting positions of the battle. It took place in the town of Braunstein on the German border during the Napoleonic era. Each player was assigned a role, some military, some non-military. One was a town major, another was a banker, a university chancellor, and so forth. Each had their own role, and a rough outline on what they wanted to achieve in the town on the eve of a battle with Napoleon’s armies.
His intent had been to take players aside and arbitrate whatever they intended to do. However, what he found was that while he was off talking to one of them, the others would game on. Some would go to different locations, causing confusion in Wesley’s careful mapping and positioning of every character in the game, talked to players, made secret deals, and at one point two players even challenged each other to a duel.
After a while the game was done. David Wesley felt defeated by the chaotic nature and wanted to call the experiment a failure, but his players were wildly enthusiastic.
Why can’t we do this in our campaign?
Well the simple answer is: you can and you should. There’s been several writings on this already, apart from David Wesley and other people of the Twin Cities gaming group. One arguable example is the Living City concept from John Wick’s otherwise not really my favourite book Playing Dirty, in which players were given the roles of other NPCs at the table to play. There’s also, since we’re talking about embracing the BrOSR here, Chanticleer. He ran a fifth Edition campaign in Waterdeep. He told players that besides their own player characters, they could also play what he called ‘Patrons’. High level NPCs that either ran a faction of were so powerful on their own as to be major players in the campaign setting. Between sessions they told him what these patrons wanted to do in the next time increment, and he’d adjudicate the results of these plots that were happening. This drove the events of his world, and created a living and breathing city, where no one knew precisely what was happening, at any one time.
So why not do this yourself? Tell players, or hell, even random people who would like to be involved but cannot make sessions, to grab one of the patrons, or tell them to make up their own. Tell them what’s happening and which rumors they hear, and what they see happening in the setting. Let them act on this and create a rich world for you.
Doing this has a few major advantages. Firstly, as I said above: it makes the world feel alive without costing you a whole lot of effort. The actions of these factions create an overarching narrative without requiring much input from you. Secondly: it reduces strain on you. You no longer have to think about what these factions are going to do. All you need to do is follow the ‘physics’. One player, running a powerful wizard, hires a group of people to steal diamonds for a massive spell he wants to cast. Maybe those people are even an adventuring party, who knows. All you need to know is what they’re planning, what measures they took and what might oppose them. You can adjudicate these events in any way you want. A simple die roll, or even a no-roll decision may be enough. You could play a solo session, like I’ve done for example when those knights attempted to retrieve the Baron’s daughter. Possibilities are endless. Thirdly: the entire group is smarter and more creative than you are on your own. Where you might have played a faction fairly straightforward (since you had plenty of other stuff to do), a patron might put a unique spin on them in a way you never would’ve imagined.
It’s no longer your world, but the entire table’s. This One Simple And Easy Trick not only outsources much of the heavy lifting, but increases players’ involvement and buy-in by making them part of the creators.
Relinquishing control
I quickly mentioned David Wesley’s Braunstein. He did attempt more of these, but these were not as successful as the first. Why? Because he tried to keep too much control. Part of what made the first tick was that each player was free to go and interact with others on his own terms. You should consider doing the same. Don’t require to be made privy of each interaction the patrons have. Let yourself be surprised when they tell you their moves. Not only is this more interesting, since you’ll be seeing things for the first time, but it also reduces your role as a single point of failure. If you’re not available (and players can get to one another to talk face to face in-game without needing interference from you) they can still plot and plan. They just need to make you privy to their actions in the end.
There’s another advantage to this: you can be surprised by what happens. If two patrons secretly start making a plot and start moving troops without telling you you can have that same feeling of excitement that other players have.You can tell players to create maps of the hexes and strongholds or dungeons they have. Outsource the prep.
Tools to help you
There are a few things that will make your life way easier running these Braunsteins. The first of these is a proper Monster Manual. One that has Numbers Appearing, and tells you how many leaders and sub-leaders and additional monsters a faction has. This way you don’t have to make this decision yourself, or at least know how to make such a decision.
The second would be the Adventurer Conqueror King system. It’s a great TTRPG system to begin with. It has a huge amount of support for the domain building that’s implicit in all of this Braunstein Patron play. Although other DMGs like the ADnD one probably have this as well, I found that the ACKs one is laid out in a way that makes things way easier to find.
The third would be a game to run larger scale battles. When we’re talking about a baron sending out troops to fight the war band of orcs that has been decimating his countryside we’re probably talking 50-200 combatants a side. You don’t want to do that using the default combat system in most tabletop games. There’s plenty of alternatives though. Chainmail, or one of the derivatives would work well. You could also run it in your favourite wargame. Warmaster, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Dragon Rampant, it can all work. As an emergency solution you could probably even just use your normal TTRPG combat but with a 1:10 scale (with each man representing 5 or 10).
And the most important tool
There’s a fourth and probably most important thing, but we’re going to talk about that one in the next post, so I’ll leave you guys on a cliffhanger here.
So until next time count your torches and keep mapping.