Any AP reportage yet?

Cool!

Please expect me to ask many, many questions when you get an AP up.

If you have a moment to answer, can you tell me what sorts of physical stuff ( maps, props, breifings, funny hats and stick on mustaches, minis, whatever) were used?

I played Braunstein 4: Bananaia on Saturday as the army commander, and came out on top in the end, forming a new coalition government with the head of the secret police and the other military heads.

Banania, if you haven't already read about it elsewhere, is a fictional Latin American city state, a shining jewel of prosperity and democracy, ruled over by the beloved hero of the people and President For Life, El Hefe. :) (Most likely inspired by the 1966 novel Don Quixote, U.S.A. by Richard P. Powell.)

The entire event took six hours, and began with a seminar of sorts where Dave filled us in about the development of Braunstein from his wargaming experiences.

We then played a game that falls somewhere between a LARP, Diplomacy, boardgame and tabletop RPG. The players were given character roles, turn-based order sheets and some plastic WW2 miniatures to represent our units. After the initial rules explanation and set up phase, players spent the bulk of the game milling around in the hallway outside the room in various groups, negotiating with and plotting against each other. Each of the characters had hidden agendas that required us to betray someone, but we also had to work with others in order to achieve these. A few seemingly random crises events popped up as well, such as a smallpox outbreak and rumors of a looming invasion by Banania's hostile neighboring state. At the end of the game, each player was asked to vote on who they trusted and distrusted the most. I tallied Dave's spoken results up on a whiteboard so we could see who would have come out on top in the next government.

After the game, a few of us hung around for Dave to pick up where he left off with the 'seminar' and then got into a detailed discussion on the adaption and development of dice. This went on until Lou Zocchi himself came in to host the next talk.

The play of the game was fairly similar to Diplomacy's wheeling and dealing, with a greater emphasis on LARP-style character portrayal. I'm pretty sure that the players were bringing our LARP experience to the game with us, as the rules of Braunstein themselves don't address the portrayal of roles outside of the parameters of the order sheets.

Sandy Clark recorded the first four hours of the event and said that he will be posting the .mp3 soon.

Here are photos of the Friday session:

Braunstein I, GenCon 2008

In response to komradebob's questions, regarding Braunstein 4, without spoiling the game for future players:

1) The characters didn't come with any personality of their own. They did not have stats or mechanical distinction. One character had a terrible secret that would destroy him politically, but we didn't know who.

2) The miniatures were just used to denote positions of our units and characters on the board.

3) The per-turn order sheets were pretty straightforward...you listed each of your unit's current position, the position they were moving to (if any) and what they were supposed to do once they got there (like arrest somebody or defend themselves).

4) Dave was the only referee needed.

5) About six. The first turns took a while, but play sped up as the players figured out how to apply and resist tactics.

6) Dave asked some players to roll a d8 a couple of times, presumably to determine if they got shot or managed to evade detection.

7) There were no written rules for the players; some of us kept notes.

8) Each character had a short set of objectives that had to be met in order to score points, and the popularity contest was tallied afterward. I don't know if any of the goals were weighted.

9) Dave would consult the orders for each character, and move the appropriate miniatures on the board. I'm not sure if smaller events were resolved the same way or not, but there were several secret meetings between the ref and several players.

10) This is where the best fun of the game lies, so I'd rather not spoil it for you. Some actions were prohibited beforehand.

11) The other events were handled as extra turns by NPCs (This game was when the terms 'player character' and non-player character' originated, btw). We players had to deal with them as best we could.

My answers are for Braunstein I, which I suspect is quite a bit different than Braunstein IV. I'm also checking with Major Wesely to see if it's okay to post scans of the characters and maps.

Posted By: komradebob1) Beyond the briefings, what were characters like? Were they described by any sort of numerical ratings/stats. Any special rules by charactre? Metagame abilities?

No stats at all. No stats anywhere in the game actually.

My impression was that descriptive text in the character background would influence the referee's decisions. For example my character was listed as being captain of the school fencing team and I was determined to get Student B in a duel so I could humiliate him. There was no stat that said I had a better chance of winning, but I figured Major Wesely would factor that kind of thing in when he made ad hoc rulings (rule of thumb: there are no rules so everything is an ad hoc ruling).

2) In what fashion were the miniatures used (expect picky follow-up questions ...)

None at all in our game. Major Wesely said that in the original Braunstein I they were used on a tabletop map to track character locations.

3) You mentioned order sheets. What were these like, how were they used, and how often were these turned in?

No order sheets in Braunstein I

4) Did Wesely act as the only GM, or were there other official helpers during play?

Just Wesely, and since he could only interact with X people at a time he didn't see a huge portion of the game.

At one point I went out to conference with him on the balcony and he started to give me an update on the ditches I had been sadly sent to dig, and I had to stop him and say "nope, that's old news, I got promoted to Lieutenant and given a squad of soldiers to round up French sympathizers." So you could argue that no one really saw the big picture all the time.

5) Approximately how many turns were played, and how long did these take to resolve?

No distinct turns at all. Completely free form.

6) Actually, what method was used for resolution or resolutions?

Major Wesely just decided results. At one point I was scouring the city for Student B with my goon squad, bribing tavern owners to be on the lookout for him, but it was just up to Wesely whether I found him or not.

7) You mentioned the rules were explained verbally. What did you have in the way of rule books or reference sheets?

No rules. We each had a map handout showing the city and our own character briefing.

8) At what point were victory conditions and/victory points explained and counted. I know you mentioned that this was something that occured after the game, but how explicit wree the goals in the initial handouts, and was any sort of weighting of the goals given?

Everybody had objectives on their character sheets, and during the wrap-up Wesely laid out how it all turned out and how well everyone did, weaving everything back together and narrating the story that emerged so we all had some sense of the big picture.

10) Do you have examples of actions attempted by the players not explicitly covered by the rules? How was this handled? Were there any explicit actions disallowed before the game?

We moved around the room and balcony to represent zones in the game world (the far left corner of the room is the jail, etc) but this turned fuzzy pretty fast.

At one point Major Wesely did scold someone for sitting down and chatting with someone when they were supposed to still be isolated in jail, but I think they had already gotten out he just didn't know it. That was the exception rather than the norm.

11) How were the random crises handles? Did they have any direct impact on the game? How did players react to those crisis events?

There weren't random events in Braunstein I, more scripted or timed events (the bells ring to signal the approaching French, the Prussian troops arrive, etc).

First, a cry for help:
I lost Sandy's business card, could someone whisper his contact information at me or link to his website or something?

Second, what I'm doing in this thread:
I was the factory and radio station owner at Saturday's Braunstein 4 game, and pretty much did everything I could to make the minister of information's life difficult by making up stories of fake AP reporters and foreign infiltration into the top levels of our military and such. That's not a spoiler, those things weren't part of the scenario. The following might contain spoilers, so I'll turn the font color white or something when they come up.

Besides owning things, I had two other things on my sheet. Only one of them came up in play, and that was only with the referee. I managed to keep my stash of illegal foreign currency a secret to pretty much everybody. The other stuff on my sheet had to do with the various Unions, but without anyone playing those roles, I had less wheeling and dealing to do than intended.

Third, some answers:

Could you tell me a bit more about what the board was like?

Braunstein 4's map was a regular grid on brown paper, and it covered the whole area. It was 2D, hand-drawn, the squares were 12cm on a side, maybe less, and movement was based on number of squares, though players with private cars and such could pretty much go where they wanted if no one was trying to stop them.

Did you notice if Dave appeared to be using any GM-only type reference materials? Any charts or notes?

Yes, he had a big stack of notes.

Were there any values you were directly aware of in relation to the character goals ( such as Victory points or similar), or order of priority to the goals?

I had no idea what the victory point value of anything was. All I was told that I had real, foreign currency that should have been turned over to the treasury, and that if I recognized the Factory Workers' Union (I think, I'm working without notes), I would have to share victory with the leader of the Peasant's Workers' Union. And since we didn't have enough players for either of those roles...

I'll post more later, I hope!

More Braunstein stuff, including scans of player handouts from the 2008 games and recreations of the original handouts from the game 40 years ago:

http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/106/braunstein-memories/

More documents for posterity: I got the text of the other handouts from Major Wesely and added them to the page. All the characters from Braunstein I are there but a few from Braunstein IV are missing. Also includes some more commentary from Major Wesely on how the game played out.

The recording hasn't been posted anywhere (that I know of) so I have no idea how it actually came out.

The seminar started and ended with lectures from Major Wesely covering the history of the original Braunstein games, introduction and setup for today's game, and then a summary/debriefing of what happened in today's game plus more about the rise and fall of TSR (including Gary getting ousted). Those parts probably came out fine, but I can't imagine the actual play will be legible. As you said, people all over the room talking all at once.