Isegoria

I’ve mentioned the Braunstein, the proto-roleplaying game before. Now Ben Robbins discusses the roots of roleplaying games and calls David Wesely The First GM [game-master]:

“French Lancer Colonel. His unit is hiding off the board at (B). He has infiltrated the town in civilian clothes to check out its defenses, and been arrested during the student riot last night. Starts in jail.”
–Braunstein 1

Once upon a time, tabletop gaming meant wargaming. Roleplaying games did not exist yet. Wargamers met and played out famous battles, recreating the last moments of Acre or the charge at Crecy and seeing if maybe with skill and clever tactics they could alter the course of history.

Major David Wesely took his usual wargaming group and tried something a little different. Instead of having them command armies he set down the two opposing leaders in a Prussian town before the battle, their troops nearby but not on stage. To give the other players something to do he let them control other people around town: the Mayor, a school Chancellor, some revolutionary students, etc. The humble town was the eponymous Braunstein, “brown stone” in German.

Wesely felt that the chaotic first Braunstein was a failure, but when he tried to reduce the chaos in subsequent games, the players revolted. They loved the free-form nature of the game.

One player, Dave Arneson, took the out-of-the-box thinking to another level in Braunstein 4, which took place in a Banana Republic facing revolution:

“Peaceful revolutionary. Gets points for printing and delivering leaflets to each of his revolutionaries, and more for handing them out to other civilians (who may be agents or guerrillas of course…). Starts at home. (B-4)”
–Braunstein 4, Banana Republic

“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”

Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…

Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points

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