Dispatches From David Wesely

It looks like BARONS OF BRAUNSTEIN will be returning, hopefully sometime this fall (most likely September), and we want to make sure we get it right and do justice to the fantastic material the good major was nice enough to provide.  So expect some additional content and a few new rules, although not enough to change our simple and player-focused model of gameplay in the least!

Now, with formalities aside...

Major Wesely was literally present for the birth of our hobby, hell, he delivered the baby!  And one of the many pleasures of working with him is hearing his FIRST-HAND accounts of what went down back in the earliest days of role-playing.

Consider this gem, where Wesely talks about his Braunstein:

ON RESOLVING SOME ACTIONS: I would resolve most doubtful questions by letting the player roll dice: The banker jumps into the river to escape the angry student mob:  I say “roll 2d6: being a fat old man, you need a high number”.  He rolls 7, and I say “Do you drop the bag of gold?” and he says “Oh yes” and I say “Roll again” he rolls 12 and I say “you grab a floating body and it keeps you from drowning while you drift downstream away from the falls.  You lucky devil” or he rolls a 5 and I say, “Too bad you didn’t drop it before you dove in.  Your body will be found in a few days.”

This man was present at the birth of
our hobby and has some GREAT stories to tell!
(From a picture taken in 2008)

THE ROLE OF GAME MASTER/JUDGE/REFEREE: In some ways, Braunstein I was “interactive fiction”.  In effect, I wrote half a novel and the players then changed it by how they ran their characters. 

It just doesn't get any purer than this!  It's friends getting together and experiencing the same imaginative play they enjoyed as children, with just a few simple rules for resolving uncertainty within the fictional "adventure".  We've come a long way since then, but we must NEVER forget where our hobby first came from and how simple human interactions underscore everything that makes it fun!