The Braunstein Problem

I Though We Were Allowed to Hack Our Home Games?

Recently, Viktor Gorchev (The Scying Dutchman) and I did a stream talking about the recent accusations of “intellectual property theft” being leveled by Griffith Morgan III and the Gentleman who runs DaveCon. You can watch the replay of the stream below.

The offending tweets can be seen here:

What caused these accusations to be leveled against various individuals? Well, Griff and Vic (the gentleman who runs and organizes DaveCon) seem to have a vested interest in protecting the Braunstein game concept, which was first created and run by David Wesely for legends like Dave Arneson in the 60s and 70s.

There are many problems with their claims here. First, David Wesely clearly explains how the game is played in Griffith’s documentary, The Secrets of Blackmoor. I own the documentary. Despite Griffith disliking me and having me blocked on X (hahaha), I like it. Griffith has chapters of the documentary up on YouTube to watch for free, which you can watch below:

David Wesely and those who played in the game talk about what it was like running such a game and what it entailed. Also, blog posts like this one by Ben Robbins show how the game was ran, offering handouts from a game played with Wesely back in the mid-2000s.

These documents, which have been free and on the internet for the last twenty years, could be used by anyone to try to run something similar to the Braunstein game Wesely has been running for friends and those at cons for a while.

Griffith, in this recent interview here, attempts to make some arbitrary distinction and justification for saying what others are doing is a not a Braunstein. Personally, I do not buy it. As Giffith describes it, the “Arneson-style” Napoleonic wargame is very much informed by what Wesely was doing with his Braunsteins.

Putting the low-level adventuring characters aside and having the players play some movers and shakers in the world over 8 hours during a play session to see what happens in the larger campaign world, mechanically speaking, seems very much in line with what Wesely would do. Honestly, it sounds fun! Griff compares what the BrOSR and others who are messing with this concept in their home games are doing to the game Diplomacy but later says that a Braunstein game is like a UN game... The definition seems to shift to suit his needs. In the case here, I think as a cudgel to beat those he and the DaveCon guy don’t like over the head in the online discourse.

Griff says later one big difference is that in a Braunstein, you don’t need a referee. Well interestingly, in the 1977 3LBBs for Traveller, Marc Miller says the same thing about the game of Traveller itself. Page 2 of Book 1 says the following:

“Traveller may be played in any of three basic configurations: solitaire, scenario, or campaign. Any configuration may be unsupervised (that is, played without a referee; the players themselves administer the rules and manipulate the situation).”

Traveller has many rules for this kind of game, including patrons, resources, cargo, politics, laws, and other situations from which a Braunstein could easily be derived from the contents presented. If the mark of a Braunstein is the idea that you do not need a referee, then Traveller easily fits the bill since it can be played in “scenario” fashion per the rules.

“Well, you have a referee, but you don’t need a referee,” is what Griff states in the interview, and I would argue, given a good group of honest and devoted players, you could play ANY pen-and-paper role-playing game this way.

Later in this interview, DunderMoose describes what he has experienced where the Referee may call some players aside to adjudicate things. Still, players will often go off on their own with each other and figure things out without the referee knowing. Griff then says that this is “Close to a real Braunstein.”

These small distinctions, in my view are completely arbitrary and irrelevant and I refuse to acknowledge or grant them until further justification can be given. I think this claim is chopped off at the knees by Griff’s own statements. He said above that there is no wrong way to play something like AD&D, but there is a wrong way to play Braunsteins.

“Imagine people playing AD&D wrong - Nope. Well, I actually can imagine people playing Braunsteins wrong because it is a very specific design.”

AD&D is not specific in design? That tiny text spread across three core rule books is not specific and exact? This is a laughable and unjustified arbitrary distinction, and why I will not grant this as a justified position to argue from until further evidence and arguments can be given to justify this presupposition upon which all of these accusations are built. Otherwise, this is the special pleading logical fallacy: “if X then Y, but not when it hurts my position.” I say this because Griff is proud of playing a heavy rule zero and GM fiat version of 0e and AD&D as shown above. “There is no wrong way to play these games except when it comes to Braunsteins.”

This is just a sad state of affairs because Griff admitted on my show last year that the Blackmoor movie, unfortunately, did not do as well as was hoped, which is why plans for a part two, last I heard, had stalled out. Fellowship of the Thing and DaveCon need customers, and I don’t think accusing the people who would be your biggest supporters of IP theft would be the way to go. The proper way that would have been beneficial for both men to go would have been to ride the hype others have been building for David Wesely and Braunstein games or Braunstein-style games. Griff could have said, “Hey, you are all talking about this game style; just wait! We have an official book by Wesely himself coming out! You will not want to miss this book, it will illuminate so many things for the games you are trying to run now!”

DaviCon could have said, “Hey, you guys are talking about this game style; come to the convention and experience the real thing!”

Instead, they decided to attack those who would otherwise have wanted to throw money at them. It’s very unfortunate.

Lastly, I thought there was no wrong way to play? And I don’t believe that accusing people who are simply talking about their home games and campaigns in a way that implies that they are engaging in intellectual property theft is a wise or moral move.