In this post, I deal with the dive I took into the history of role-playing games, through playing several of the games that directly proceeded D&D. In the next post, I'll highlight some of the work of game designers that I had the pleasure of meeting.
----------------------------------------------------------
Last weekend, I took advantage of my proximity to Lake Geneva to attend Gary Con IX. The convention celebrates the life and work of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax with four days of (mostly) old-school gaming, with events ranging from historical wargaming to the 5th edition D&D.
For a few months, I've been playing Swords & Wizardry with Victor Raymond---organizer of Madison Traditional Gaming and long-time player in Prof. Barker's Tékumel campaign---and he suggested that I attend the con. So, Wednesday night I headed out to my first con, not really knowing what to expect. I figured that I would get sick of gaming after a few days, but at least the hotel would have a fitness center and pool, so I wouldn't go crazy.
It turns out that the key to a good con experience is pacing. I divided my time between playing games (usually one a day), browsing the vendors' booths, and hanging with people. Much of my good time was due to Victor and people he introduced me to providing tips and camaraderie. Thanks guys.
I didn't play a single traditional RPG the entire time, which was quite surprising. I arrived without anything on my schedule and without any idea of what I would do. But I quickly got the lowdown that this would be the opportunity to play some of the progenitors to modern role playing. So, I lined up several events from the "Legends of Wargaming" series: Braunstein, Dungeon!, Don't Give Up the Ship!, and Braunstein 4: Banania.
Braunstein
This game was one the most challenging that I've ever played. Imagine undergoing intense negotiations for 4-5 hours with incomplete information and a dozen other parties that want your time.Created by Dave Wesely, the game takes place in the city of Braunstein, a territory of Prussia during the time of Napoleonic France, which happens to be surrounded completely by enemy territory. It was acquired by the Prussian king during a territory swap. Home to a university full of idealistic youth, it is particularly vulnerable to radical ideas sweeping across Europe from the revolutionaries in France. Additionally, its security is provided by the Landwehr, a group of locals who've seen no combat and fire their weapons sparingly in order to preserve ammunition. They are well-trained by their commander the Landwehr Major but very inexperienced.
My explanation does little justice to Dave's. He hasn't published the game, making the con events that he runs precious opportunities to play. While he's admittedly an amateur historian, his pre-game briefing is something to behold. I didn't think to take video, but really, you should participate if you can.
Once the players have been briefed, each is given a role in the form a dossier, money, and name tag. The dossier explains what the character---and therefore the player---knows and what the character's objectives are. The money is in the form of marks and francs, which are mostly worthless because of the revolution, with something like 10 to a mark. None of the players know what is in the dossier of the others, and everyone is working at cross-purposes. The roles used in my game were the Baron, the Chancellor of Braunstein University, the Banker, the Landwehr Major (me), the Colonel, the Owner of Tavern 1, 3 "loyal" Students (one is the colonel's son, another is a bastard child of a barmaid from tavern 1), 3 "radical" students (one is the Baron's son), the Mayor, and the Bookseller.
The game begins with the students in jail, having been arrested the night prior for brawling and rioting in the taverns. The Owner of Tavern 1 blames soldiers of the Landwehr and wants compensated, the Mayor wants to appease the town folk, the Chancellor wants to protect the students and the university, the Major wants to maintain order, etc. Over all this hangs the threat of the French.
Before I get to what happened in our game, let me say that I found it exhausting. As the Major, you get all of the shit. Other characters have their games that they get to play, trying to figure out how to swindle the others, but the Major has the additional responsibility of overseeing the only police force in town and holding in custody people that all of the other characters want released. I had everyone breathing down my neck.
SPOILER ALERT! (the next paragraph describes the results)
In our game, the Major, Mayor, Colonel, Baron, and Chancellor worked together to achieve some comprise about the situation of the students, acceptable to all parties. While the Major was engaged in private negotiations, other characters freely came and went into the jail to talk to the students, including the Chancellor, Colonel, Baron, and sleazy Bookseller. The Banker bribed three of the six guards to let several of the radical students escape. It was later revealed that the Banker was funneling money from the Baron to the Owner of Tavern 1, who had been paying for the barmaid's child to attend university, because the son was actually the philandering Baron's.
END OF SPOILER
Dungeon!
 |
| Megarry with his original board |
 |
| Blackmoor map, outside the dungeon |
The game was surprisingly simple. I thought that it might be quite complicated, coming from a wargamer. But it was much simpler than something like 7 Wonders. In fact, I can imagine playing it as a child with my grandma. We certainly played games that were on the same level of complexity.
 | |||||||
| several groups playing the first edition of the game |
Don't Give Up the Ship!
 |
| Mike Carr measures out movement for the ships |
D-Guts, as it is called by folks in the know, is a tactical naval war game and the first game to be co-authored by Arneson and Gygax, along with Mike Carr. Our game session was hosted and refereed by none other than Mike Carr himself. Coincidentally, he was also the Colonel in the Braunstein game I had played two days prior.
The setup was a fictional battle between the French and British, taking place several miles away from the French coast (I think. I'll check the details later and update it here). The French had attempted to destabilize Britain by providing the Irish with arms and inciting a rebellion. This second fleet of ships is returning from Ireland, having realized that this plan is failing, and they just want to get home. But the British catch them.
The British have much better ships, with bigger guns and better crew. The French out number the British by one or two (it's hard to remember), and have soldiers below deck that are being transported. These soldiers can be called up to deck to fire muskets at close range or to engage in mêlée. Each side had a ship of the line in addition to several frigates, commanded by the admiral and loaded with cannons.
I captained the French frigate Romaine. We started upwind from the British, but they were more disciplined, staying together as the battle ensued. One of our captains took off directly downwind, and in front of the British, in order to distract them and draw off some ships (or maybe to run away). Another of our frigate captains carelessly sailed alongside the British command vessel and lost two of its three masts in the initial volley. It then lost the final mast moments later from a British frigate. Luckily, the crew kept their wits about them and were able to jury rig some canvas to ship to move with some degree of control.
 |
| The ships of the line are grappled and a French frigate has lost her masts |
Our ship of the line closed in with that of the British, blasted it with an opening broadside, and then grappled, attempting to take the ship from the other commander. Instead, it was lost, and the British admiral took a prize vessel.
Another British captain took a French frigate by coming aboard, and I attempted to help. After she left the French ship with only a few prize crew, I grappled to take it back. Well, she hadn't gone very far and came right back. Mêlée ensued, and she claimed two ships, distinction as the best captain in the battle, and possibly a knighthood upon return to Britain.
In the end, we were clobbered. The reserve of troops that the French ships made grappling seem like a good idea, but it never worked out for us, in large part because the British crews were better trained for fighting as well as sailing. Had we stuck to our cannons, it would have required some very good maneuvering and luck in order to sink the British fleet.
Braunstein 4: Banania
 |
| initial setup of board |
The final game that I played was the fourth iteration of Dave Wesely's Braunstein. When he ran the first game, he thought that it was failure because he couldn't keep track of everybody and scoring was a nightmare. There was not any way to determine a clear victor. But the players loved it. So, thinking about how to improve the game, in the next two versions he instituted rules to keep strict record of each character's movements and dealings. The players hated them. In Braunstein 4, he found the sweet spot of merely tracking where players were each turn, but otherwise allowing a lot of freedom.
Twenty years ago, in the fictional republic of Banania, El Jefe declares himself Presidente for life. With the help of outside investors, he turned a backwater country, known only for its crocodiles, into a banana-producing powerhouse. However, the peasants resent that they no longer own their small farms and instead get paid meager wages by the International Banana Company (IBC). In addition, the chief is in some hot water. At the start, El Jefe has left the country to deal with some pesky human-rights-violations charges, saying that everything better be in order when he gets back.
The characters this time around were the Generals of the Army, Marines, and Air Force, the IBC Manager, the Weapons Dealer (actually Imperial something, but I forget exactly), the Commander of the Secret Police, the Minister of Information, the Vice President, the Minister of the Treasury, the Peasant Workers' Union Leader, the Factory Workers' Union Leader, and the Factory Owner.
The characters could communicate with each other by using the phone or by talking face-to-face with any other character in the same location. The catch was that when you used the phone, the MoI and Secret Police could listen.
In this game, I played the IBC Manager whose role was much less taxing than that of the Landwehr Major. I won't say what happened in our game, except that things got bloody.
 |
| Major Dave Wesely executing moves between turns |
----------------------------------------------------------
Playing these games with their creators gave a new perspective on gaming and what it can be. They took familiar ideas and played with them until they got something entirely different and enjoyable. Comparing their development of these games with typical thoughts on D&D is informative. They were a bunch of wargamers, playing games where the rules are set but required a referee, due to the need to determine a winner between the two players. Therefore, while the rules were important, they weren't more important than having a fair and impartial referee. Nor were the rules, as written, more important than testing their boundaries.
When people think about D&D and its history, if they think about it at all, it seems that often people consider the lineage with Chainmail to be the most important. D&D must have been an outgrowth of a tactical miniatures game. But you have to remember that proto-D&D in the form of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign owes at least as much to Braunstein as it does to Chainmail. The thinking when playing the game was not limited to "how do I move to just outside the charging range of the orcs so that I can shoot them before they reach me?" If you read the link above about Braunstein 4 and Arneson, you may realize that these guys were constantly thinking outside of the box, outside of the rules as they were written: "if I tie a rope to this flask of flaming oil, can I whip it into the high window of the tower?" "We know that the band tracking us is headed this way. Let's try to rig to counter-weighted net trap." For those of us that played a lot of 3E, that sort of thinking was constantly in conflict with the rules and the thinking that they encouraged.
Since reading about and playing old-school D&D, I've come to appreciate how much being a good player is not about knowing the rules and how best to maximize the build for your character. It's really about figuring out the game, remembering Rule 0: the Referee is the game. By that, I mean that to play well is to constantly test the boundaries of what the referee will allow, not (always) in the sense of trying to pull a fast one, and use this knowledge to concoct successful and, hopefully, gnarly outcomes.
