How to run a Braunstein RPG

If you’re reading this, you probably already know a little about Braunstein’s role in the history of role playing games. But if you want to read more see Ben Robbins’s article and my list of Braunstein resources.

There is no published ruleset for playing Braunstein (the book published by Olde House Rules uses the name with permission, but is an entirely new D&D-esque game with few, if any, similarities to David Wesely’s games). David Wesely told me at Arnecon 2023 that he’s working with the publishers of The Secrets of Blackmoor documentary to publish a Braunstein book. In the meantime, however, there are enough materials and resources available for you to run the game yourself if you’re willing to put in a bit of work. Below, I do my best to fill in what’s missing based on my experience playing with Wesely at Arnecon 2023. This is a completely unofficial document. I claim no authority in how things are done or should be done, this is just my advice based on my observations.

If you’re going to do this, you have to accept that you’ll never run it quite like Wesely does because, well, you’re not Wesely. You can’t run a true re-enactment of the original Braunstein games. Remember that those sessions happened before D&D, before video games, before Magic: The Gathering, and all the other things that have shaped our ideas of what games can be. You and your players can’t approach these games with the same mindset that Wesely and his players did in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Also, not all of the rules, game mechanics, and setting information Wesely uses are player-facing, so you will need to make some judgment calls yourself, at least until Wesely finally publishes some rules.

This is still a work in progress. I have yet to run a Braunstein myself. If you have any feedback, please reach out to me at klintfinley@gmail.com or klintron on Discord.

What you will need

The handouts and materials for the Braunstein games run at GenCon 2005, published by Ben Robbins:

• Character handouts for Braunstein I
• Map for Braunstein I
• Character handouts for Braunstein IV: Banania
• Map of Banania and page 1 of additional character notes
• Banania additional character notes page 2
• Banania Move Order Sheet

Some knowledge of the settings. If you don’t have any knowledge of Prussian history and the Napoleonic Wars, you might want to at least spend some time on Wikipedia familiarizing yourself before running Braunstein I. Likewise, it might be useful to read a little about real-life banana republics (the political-economic term, not the clothing retailer) before running Banania.

Several players. You probably need at least six to make the game work. Braunstein I has handouts for 12 different characters, and Braunstein IV (Banania) has handouts for seven (plus notes for a few more). Personally, I think you will want at least six players, not counting yourself.

Enough space for all these players to spread out and talk and have private conversations.

Something to use as in-game currency. You can use Monopoly money or anything else you have available. Also, keep in mind that some characters will start with different currencies. For example, some might have French currency instead of or in addition to Prussian currency. In Banania, some players might have US currency in addition to local currency.

For Braunstein IV: A larger version of the map (Draw this yourself on a large sheet of paper or poster board)

For Braunstein IV: Miniatures to represent the player characters and any forces they control.

Optional but strongly recommended: Some rules for resolving both mass combat and skirmishes (one-to-one encounters). If you and your players are already familiar with a particular set of wargaming rules, you could use those. This is further discussed in the mechanics section below.

Preparation

• Read all the handouts and materials for the Braunstein game you plan to run. Internalize the goals and relationships between the different characters.
• Read actual plays of the games and read or listen to interviews with David Wesely. You can find plenty of material on the Braunstein RPG Resources page. And here’s an actual play report from someone who ran Braunstein I on Discord, inspired in part by this article.
• Rank the different possible character roles by order of importance. Decide which ones are required at minimum to play. This will determine the minimum number of people you need to play. For example, if you’re only going to have six players, which six characters are you going to assign, which are you going to play yourself as NPCs, and which will you simply leave out?
• Choose a way to resolve combat or other issues (see below for more)
• For Braunstein IV (Optional): Create handouts for the additional characters described in the handouts. You’ll need to use your own creativity here.
• For Braunstein IV: Draw the larger scale map and decide which miniatures will represent which characters and forces. It’s probably best to have multiple miniatures for large forces.
• For Braunstein IV: Note the “points” each character receives for achieving their goals. Some of these are specified in the handouts, but some only say that the character receives points for certain things without specifying how many. You should decide these things in advance and create a document you can use to tally up the points at the end. You could also edit the handouts to remove the references to points if you don’t want to deal with scoring.
• For Braunstein IV: Create “Move Order Codes” for each player character and add these to the handouts. See below for more on this.
• Create handout packets for the players. Print the write-up for each character on their own sheet of paper (so the players can’t read about the goals and secrets of the other players). For Banania, you’ll also need to give each player enough copies of the Move Order Sheet for each turn (12 copies per player should be enough for a three-hour session, see below for more). Wesely also provides a printed copy of the map for each player and includes starting funds. The starting funds aren’t mentioned in the published handouts, so you’ll need to use your judgment.

Resolution Mechanics

In Braunstein I, most things are handled by GM fiat, though there have been some cases of using dice to resolve things. Braunstein IV is a bit more involved. Wesely uses some sort of wargaming and skirmish rules, possibly his unpublished Strategos N rules. Any simple rules that you are comfortable with will suffice, but here are some simple rules inspired by accounts of the original Braunstein that you can use:

When D&D creator Dave Arneson and another player wanted to have a fencing duel in the original Braunstein I session, Wesely had the two players do an opposed role using d6s. Wesely had Arneson roll 2d6 and the other player roll 3d6, because his character had more experience than Arneson’s character. Arneson lost the opposed role and his character died instantly. (Note: Some versions of the story differ slightly.)

You can adapt this opposed d6 roll system for many things. If two PCs have a conflict to resolve, have them each roll 2d6. Give one player an extra die if their character has the edge. Whoever has the higher role wins. For PCs vs. NPCs, or unopposed rolls, have the PC roll 2d6. An 8 or better is a success. Add or remove a die for advantage/disadvantage.

For mass combat, give each side a single die. Then give each side an additional die for each advantage they have. The larger side gets an extra die. If one side has the element of surprise they get an extra die. If one side is better equipped or more motivated, they get an extra for each of those factors. Have the leader of each side roll their dice and add them up. Whoever has the better roll wins.

Running Braunstein I

Braunstein I works a lot like a freeform live-action role playing game, with the facilitator (Wesely) answering in-game questions and adjudicating anything that can’t simply be negotiated between players. The only game mechanic seemed to be “ask Wesely if it’s OK.” That led to him being very busy throughout the game answering questions. This is the role you will take on.

Wheeling and dealing is the essence of this game. For the most part, all the players need to do is talk with each other in character and try to achieve their goals. In some instances, you might want to use a dice roll to adjudicate a situation (see above).

Keeping track of the passage of time is a challenge. This is resolved with the turn system in Banania IV, which you could adapt to Braunstein I if you want (though you’ll need to work out for yourself exactly how it will work). Wesely seems to just wing it and you’ll probably need to do the same.

You’ll start the game by assigning characters. In the original, Wesely knew the players and assigned roles accordingly. At Arnecon, he just asked “Who wants to be a revolutionary?” “Who wants to be a patriot?” “Who wants to be rich?” etc. and handed out characters to the first people who raised their hands. If you know who will be playing, you can think in advance about what roles you might want to assign. Otherwise, you can follow the Arnecon example.

Once we had our characters, we sort of self-organized into different locations throughout the room. If we needed more privacy for a conversation, we would step out into the hallway and find a quiet nook to talk.

Most characters are free to move around the town, but some characters start out in jail. Wesely played the role of the jailer. Getting out meant convincing a player outside of the jail to pay the bail, or finding some other way to talk yourself out of the cell.

Be sure to save some time at the end for a debriefing. This was, for me, the most fun part. Each player says a little about who their character was, what they did, and reveals their goals and secrets. The story comes together in these moments. Note: Wesely had us vote on which players “won” different categories (“Which character did the most to further the aims of the Revolution,” “Which character did the best at looking out for themselves,” etc.). You can come up with your own categories or skip this.

Running Braunstein IV: Banania

Braunstein IV involves a bit more setup and structure than Braunstein I. When I played, Wesely used a large map, hand-drawn from a printed ASCII map, and miniatures to track all the character locations.

As with Braunstein I, players get a packet with their biography and goals, a map, and starting money. The packet also included a sheets for writing down what actions they want to take at the end of a turn. More on this in a bit.

Miniatures represent each PC and any faction(s) they control. For example, I was the factory union leader, and I had a few minis representing union members, and one representing my bodyguard.

The game is divided into “turns.” When I played, each turn was about 15 minutes, which seemed like plenty of time. I had to leave early so I’m not sure how many turns there were, but you can adapt this to the amount of time you have available.

During a turn, players can talk to anyone at the same location as them on the map, or make phone calls to anyone anywhere else on the map. PCs can’t move to another location on the map until the end of their turn. Those playing the Secret Police and the Minister of Information characters can “tap” any call to listen into phone conversations (ie, they can go anywhere in the room to eavesdrop on any PCs speaking by phone). To have a private conversation, PCs should meet in person at a location on the map during their next turn.

At the end of each turn, each player will fill out their Move Order Codes sheet and hand it to you. On these sheets, a player can specify where they want their PC to go, where they want any factions/forces they control to go and, optionally, specify a Move Order Code. For example, the union leader can use a Move Order Code to tell the union to strike or stop striking, and/or tell them to picket if they’re dissatisfied or to sing uplifting songs if they’re satisfied. These are not in the published handouts, so you will need to create them yourself. See more below.

You will then go through the sheets and move all the miniatures based on what the PCs specified. Wesely has downplayed Diplomacy as an influence on the creation of Braunstein, but it does seem procedurally similar, in that there’s a period of discussions, then simultaneous movements, then any resolution necessary. You might need to call for some additional narration, role playing scenes, or skirmish battling depending on what happens here. For example, the commander of the Army might instruct their forces to fire on protesters gathered at a particular location on the map if they don’t disperse. You could then ask the player in charge of the protesters whether they instruct the protesters to disperse. If they disperse, you would likely move the miniature to different locations on the map. If they stand their ground, the Army will fire and you will want to use some rules to resolve the conflict (See above).

Example: In the session I played in, something very much like the above happened. Wesely used some skirmish rules, but I don’t know what they were. The person playing the General rolled a d10, then Wesely looked up the results on a table (one civilian was killed by the military opening fire). Then the bodyguard of the PC in charge of the protesters got a turn. That player got to roll a d10 to have his bodyguard attempt to shoot soldiers. For every successful roll, he took out a soldier. When he finally failed he was taken out by the soldiers (Wesely described this as movie logic: as long as you’re shooting, no one else is shooting at you).

Be sure to save some time at the end for a debriefing. Have the players explain their goals and accomplishments. If you’re playing with points, you can tally the scores and see who won the game.

Braunstein IV: Move Order Codes

As described above, different characters have different actions they might want to take at the end of a turn, such as attacking nearby forces or declaring a strike. Wesely included a list of these actions and the corresponding codes in each character handout at Arnecon, but these don’t appear in the published handouts. You’ll need to go through and create codes for the most likely actions each character might want to carry out, and create for yourself a key to interpret them as you go through the Move Order Sheets at the end of each turn. You’ll want to keep it simple, giving each character perhaps two actions each. If I recall correctly, Wesely used letters and numbers to represent the possible actions. Example: “To order the union to picket, write U1 on your Move Order Sheet. To have them sing uplifting songs, write U2.”

You could also just let players write something into these spots freeform, though this could get chaotic.

Note: Instead of printing multiple copies for each player, you could consider creating custom sheets. For example, you could create one for each turn that is shared by all players.

Additional resources

• Many people have described “megagames” as a modern successor to Braunsteins. Megagame Assembly has plenty of megagames you can play and resources for your own.
• Greg Svenson has mentioned that Western Gunfights might be the rule set used in Duane Jenkins’s Western Braunstein, Brown Stone. At any rate, it includes everything you’d need to run your own Brown Stone game.