(10-30-2023, 04:49 PM)Yaztromo Wrote:(10-26-2023, 09:34 AM)klintron Wrote: This is probably well known on this forum, but: Tonisborg was created by Greg Svenson, one of Arneson's original Blackmoor players (His character was "The Great Svenny" and his handle here on the forum is Yaztromo).
I think I have to correct this little mistake: Greg's handle on this forum is actually gsvenson, not Yaztromo
By the way, I'd like to take the chance to thank Greg for being the person he is.
Ah! For quite some time i thought you were Greg. Sorry about that!
Day 2: Afternoon: Braunstein I
After playing DA5 and playing Tonisborg on Arneson's table, I could have flown home from Arnecon a happy man. But the reason I booked the trip in the first place was to get a chance to play Braunstein with David Wesely. I'd read about the game before, but really wanted to know how it works procedurally. Fortunately, I got my wish!
As I suspected from reading descriptions, Braunstein I works a lot like a freeform LARP (https://nordiclarp.org/wiki/Freeform https://larpwiki.labcats.org/index.php?t...n_freeform), with the facilitator (in this case Wesely) answering in-game questions and adjudicating anything that can't simply be negotiated between players. The only game mechanic really seemed to be "ask Wesely if it's OK." That lead to him being very busy throughout the game answering questions.
The game began with a two-hour lecture by Wesely, covering the history of Braunsteins, some Prussian history, and some history of the fictional Prussian town of Braunstein. It was a lot to take in, but somehow never boring, I was surprised how much time had passed when I looked at my phone when we started and saw that two hours had passed.
The game began as Wesely started assigning characters. In the original, he knew the players and assigned roles accordingly. At Arnecon, he just asked "Who wants to be a revolutionary?" "Who wants to be a patriot?" "Who wants to be rich?" etc. and handed out characters to the first people who raised their hands.
From there, we just sort of self-organized into different locations throughout the room. If we needed more privacy for a conversation, we'd step out into the hallway and find a quiet nook to talk.
I was one of the "students" who started out in jail. This was frustrating as it limited what we could do, and being broke college students meant we didn't have a lot of leverage. Of course, part of the game is to find ways to create leverage. But the characters who started out with a bit more autonomy to make in-game decisions, such as the mayor, banker, university chancellor, and Landwehr commander, were the most active and seemed to have a better time than most of the students and certain other characters like the bookseller and the banker's nephew.
I think if I were going to run this myself, I'd make some changes, like having most of the PC students NOT in jail but trying to get some NPC students out of jail, and/or give the students more bargaining power by giving additional goals to the other PCs that depend on the students.
The most fun part was the epilogue, where we all revealed what our goals were, told everyone what we did/what happened, revealed secrets, etc. It's where the whole story of what was going on came to light.