Wesely and The Baron of Braunstein!

The game formerly known as Braunstein! is about to be re-born, hopefully within the month, as Baron of Braunstein!, now licensed and endorsed by David Wesely himself and having an appendix of original material from the good Major covering the medieval period in his fictional town.  Exciting stuff!

Our purpose from the beginning was to recapture the feeling of enthusiastic amateurs making their own fun, and acknowledging the game that made it all possible only seemed right.  Mr. Wesely is extraordinarily gracious in helping us achieve this goal, and we're thrilled that he let us work in his world...

The good Major found our rules "very nice" and described them as being "the kind of product Arneson was thinking of", which is just an incredible compliment from the father of our hobby!

German castles figured prominently as
inspiration for Wesely's fictional Braunstein
(photo courtesy of Robyn George)

At the point of Braunstein, all of gaming gradually diverged into separate branches; the continuation of Wesely's mode of play, and role-playing as we know it today.  We hoped to preserve the excitement of creating these games for the first time, so fantasy fan or otherwise, it all started here...       

Yes, that's Major Wesely (U.S. Army, Ret) on
the left and Dave Arneson at the head of the table
(courtesy of the Minneapolis Tribune, 1966)

Anyone who might have purchased this title can still access it through their libraries and should be looking for an update and the return of our sci-fi Retrospace at Drive-Thru RPG!

We're both retired military officers, but Wesely outranks me as suits an elder statesman of our hobby.  He's the real Baron of Brausntein, and we're delighted in his correspondence.  Stay tuned; there's more coming, and we'll let you know.  In the meantime, if you already own the game(s), keep on playing and have fun!