From Forgotten Realms to Red Steel: Here's That Full D&D Setting Sales Chart

Willie the Duck · Jul 21, 2022

Mannahnin said:
A couple of points of historical clarification.

I don't know whether Gary ever played any of the Braunstein derivatives, but as far as I'm aware he's definitely not recorded as playing the original. That was Dave Arneson and a bunch of the Twin Cities gamers.

The original Braunstein wasn't a domain management game. It was a scenario set in a Napoleonic-era Prussian town (named Braunstein) where each of the players was given an individual person as a role- like the mayor, the head of the local cavalry unit, a student agitator, etc. Very similar to a modern Live Action Roleplaying Game of the sort the Society for Interactive Literature started running at sci-fi cons in 1983. Each character Dave Wesely assigned had goals to achieve. I believe he initially anticipated that the individual characters scenario would inform the setup of an army-scale wargame scenario to follow, based on what the players did, but in practice everyone enjoyed the individual character play so much they didn't even get to the wargame.

Subsequent "Braunsteins" followed, with different settings, the name being kind of generified. One of the most famous examples being the banana republic game set in a South or Central American country on the brink of revolution, where Dave Arneson (assigned a "peaceful revolutionary" role with a goal of distributing leaflets to other revolutionaries, and more for getting them to other civilians) famously tricked other players into thinking his character was a CIA agent, ended the game flying out of the country on a helicopter with a suitcase full of money, and, reminded that he got points for distributing the leaflets, said something like "Oh yeah, I dump those out the side door, so they rain over the town."

Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games

In 2005 I was standing near the registration booths at GenCon, flipping through the event catalog while the posse debated where to go first. I had already scoured the listings online, but as I glanced across the pages I spotted a word I had somehow missed before: Braunstein. I knew what Braunstei

arsludi.lamemage.com

To my recollection, Dave Arneson first described his idea for the game that became Blackmoor as "a medieval-style Braunstein game" in his Corner of the Tabletop newsletter, when advertising that he'd be running it and looking for players.

While OD&D is definitely written to support the idea of high-level Fighting Men claiming domans, building castles and clearing the area around them of monsters, and receiving tax income, I'm not sure how much of that Gary actually did that way. I do believe that such play was characteristic of Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor, where players often controlled factions and larger forces, and a certain amount of oppositional play was common, and probably was adjudicated using Chainmail or other wargame rules for the battles, though I don't have much documentation on that. I expect there's more detail on that in the doc film Secrets of Blackmoor, but I still haven't watched it.

I agree with you, though, that it's a little strange that TSR didn't come up with and publish some more rules for running a domain some time after the 1974 set gave us (pretty bare bones) parameters, given that AD&D continued to imply that this would be common of high level play, and added in all those charts of what kind of followers would be attracted to PCs once they hit name level, and basic details in the PH about what kind of strongholds the different classes could build.

Right. Thank you for the clarification. I was being fast and lose with the individuals and the terminology. Some of it could have been Braunstein (or "Braunsteins"), and it wasn't all Gary (I was mostly focusing on him because he was in charge of the direction of the published game in this era). Some of it could have been Chainmail (your followers were largely troops after all). Some of it could be who knows what that wasn't consistent or hasn't made it into the larger narrative. Or it could be nothing (and what they really did at name level was retire, that's my second conjecture point).

Mannahnin said:
I agree with you, though, that it's a little strange that TSR didn't come up with and publish some more rules for running a domain some time after the 1974 set gave us (pretty bare bones) parameters, given that AD&D continued to imply that this would be common of high level play, and added in all those charts of what kind of followers would be attracted to PCs once they hit name level, and basic details in the PH about what kind of strongholds the different classes could build.

Yes, this is the meat of my point -- regardless of what the actual 'it' consisted of (domain management or wars or whatever), followers and a vague suggestion that you should do something with them is what fighters got while magic users kept getting spells. This survived past the point where TSR learned the demographics of who was buying the game, and that they were playing their characters past name level.

Willie the Duck · Jul 21, 2022

Reynard said:
Followers are in the 1978 AD&D PHB at least and I think in the OD&D rules as well. It did not take until Companion. Companion just formalized the domain managements and mass battle rules that has been bouncing around half written.

That's "who you get and the costs of building castles."

Jer · Jul 21, 2022

Mannahnin said:
While OD&D is definitely written to support the idea of high-level Fighting Men claiming domans, building castles and clearing the area around them of monsters, and receiving tax income, I'm not sure how much of that Gary actually did that way.

I think those rules were meant to be aspirational. As in "some day your character will have enough money and power to stop mucking around in holes in the ground grubbing for gold and be a king". The Conan arc. I also suspect that they were aspirational for Gygax in the sense that he probably had every intention at one point of writing those rules eventually, but then the "mucking around in holes in the ground grubbing for gold" game got to be so popular and lucrative that he focused on expanding that until the brand got so lucrative that he ran off to California to do the TSR Entertainment thing.

Like another project that Gygax abandoned and wasn't able to complete (cough Temple of Elemental Evil) Frank Mentzer came in and provided the rules that had been promised and he put them into the Companion Set. But by that point AD&D and D&D had divided into separate game lines, the Companion rules were tied to the "perceived as for kids (at least in the US)" D&D side of the game, and so AD&D players mostly just didn't know that they existed - and those who did know they existed thought of them more as the endgame of a game they didn't play.

Reynard · Jul 21, 2022

Willie the Duck said:
That's "who you get and the costs of building castles."

Fair enough. The domain management rules and mass combat rules did not appear out of the ether, though. People are doing it in various ways before (and after!) it was formalized.

Mannahnin · Jul 21, 2022

Willie the Duck said:
Right. Thank you for the clarification. I was being fast and lose with the individuals and the terminology. Some of it could have been Braunstein (or "Braunsteins"), and it wasn't all Gary (I was mostly focusing on him because he was in charge of the direction of the published game in this era). Some of it could have been Chainmail (your followers were largely troops after all). Some of it could be who knows what that wasn't consistent or hasn't made it into the larger narrative. Or it could be nothing (and what they really did at name level was retire, that's my second conjecture point).

Which is kind of a funny thing, because we do have some documented snippets of Gary and Rob Kuntz' campaign, and we know that characters did get up to the teens of levels but continue adventuring. There is also documentation showing things like, e.g., Rob's character Robilar built his own castle and had (IIRC) two green dragons he mastered as followers/mounts. Robilar also had an army of orcish followers he used to help him in the Tomb of Horrors. So clearly they were doing both in their own games- continuing to adventure at high level (instead of retiring) and doing some domain play, but not publishing a system for the latter.

Willie the Duck said:
Yes, this is the meat of my point -- regardless of what the actual 'it' consisted of (domain management or wars or whatever), followers and a vague suggestion that you should do something with them is what fighters got while magic users kept getting spells. This survived past the point where TSR learned the demographics of who was buying the game, and that they were playing their characters past name level.

Jer said:
I think those rules were meant to be aspirational. As in "some day your character will have enough money and power to stop mucking around in holes in the ground grubbing for gold and be a king". The Conan arc. I also suspect that they were aspirational for Gygax in the sense that he probably had every intention at one point of writing those rules eventually, but then the "mucking around in holes in the ground grubbing for gold" game got to be so popular and lucrative that he focused on expanding that until the brand got so lucrative that he ran off to California to do the TSR Entertainment thing.

Like another project that Gygax abandoned and wasn't able to complete (cough Temple of Elemental Evil) Frank Mentzer came in and provided the rules that had been promised and he put them into the Companion Set. But by that point AD&D and D&D had divided into separate game lines, the Companion rules were tied to the "perceived as for kids (at least in the US)" D&D side of the game, and so AD&D players mostly just didn't know that they existed - and those who did know they existed thought of them more as the endgame of a game they didn't play.

I suspect Jer is right. That they intended domain rulership to be part of what high level PCs did, but they had all these younger and non-wargamer players coming in (the sci-fi folks, like Lee Gold's crew in CA, were into it as of the first year) and making up more of the player base than veteran wargamers, and focused more on support for adventuring.

I would guess that they did all the domain management & wargame play more ad hoc, informed by their prior experience with the Castle & Crusade Society, where they were accustomed to running factions with a titular lord as head to occasionally RP as.

Still a little odd that they never fleshed out the domain management stuff into actual published rules until Mentzer got to it, but then, OTOH, maybe no one else in the company saw it as a real marketable thing. We know Gary published/wrote very little D&D material after 1980; mostly just a few modules in the years after.

Gary Gygax bibliography - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2022

CleverNickName said:
Yeah, I'm going to echo one of your earlier posts. I strongly disagree, but I'm not gonna argue about it.

You would need to change 5e, but it would be a minor change. You'd have to ditch passive skills, especially perception. That way players would have to direct you to exactly where they are searching for secret doors and traps, rather than just noticing them as they walk. Unless you're an elf!

Mannahnin · Jul 21, 2022

Maxperson said:
You would need to change 5e, but it would be a minor change. You'd have to ditch passive skills, especially perception. That way players would have to direct you to exactly where they are searching for secret doors and traps, rather than just noticing them as they walk. Unless you're an elf!

You don't even have to do that, as @iserith 's procedures show.

Willie the Duck · Jul 21, 2022

Reynard said:
Fair enough. The domain management rules and mass combat rules did not appear out of the ether, though. People are doing it in various ways before (and after!) it was formalized.

I must not be making myself clear, cause that was at least partly my point.

Mannahnin said:
Which is kind of a funny thing, because we do have some documented snippets of Gary and Rob Kuntz' campaign, and we know that characters did get up to the teens of levels but continue adventuring. There is also documentation showing things like, e.g., Rob's character Robilar built his own castle and had (IIRC) two green dragons he mastered as followers/mounts. Robilar also had an army of orcish followers he used to help him in the Tomb of Horrors. So clearly they were doing both in their own games- continuing to adventure at high level (instead of retiring) and doing some domain play, but not publishing a system for the latter.

That does sidle things away from the 'actually you just retired and said you led armies' theory. I would have been surprised if there was perfect consistency on any of this bitd (any more than there is now, I suppose). After a while of wanting to run armies, you want to clear dungeons; after a while of that, running armies sounds like fun. Interesting how my initial games as a kid, where eventually you ended up with castles and pet dragons (minus the eventual princess girlfriends, but I imagine Kuntz wasn't 8-12 at the time) was not far off how they ended up playing.

Mannahnin said:
I suspect Jer is right. That they intended domain rulership to be part of what high level PCs did, but they had all these younger and non-wargamer players coming in (the sci-fi folks, like Lee Gold's crew in CA, were into it as of the first year) and making up more of the player base than veteran wargamers, and focused more on support for adventuring.

Which is part of the two-pronged confusion -- on one hand, even if rulership wasn't what everyone wanted, they could have made something between '74 and '84 (and anything for AD&D before Birthright), even as an optional supplement (they certainly put out niche material). On the other, if they were instead focusing on these other players, why did they not put out more stuff for post-name levels? Sure some 9-14 modules, but like some supplemental rules for people who didn't want to do the followers bit.

Mannahnin said:
I would guess that they did all the domain management & wargame play more ad hoc, informed by their prior experience with the Castle & Crusade Society, where they were accustomed to running factions with a titular lord as head to occasionally RP as.

That is what I meant earlier, perhaps mis-attributing it to Braunstein.

Mannahnin said:
Still a little odd that they never fleshed out the domain management stuff into actual published rules until Mentzer got to it, but then, OTOH, maybe no one else in the company saw it as a real marketable thing. We know Gary published/wrote very little D&D material after 1980; mostly just a few modules in the years after.

Given the early... frustration they had with people trying to take the game in directions they didn't like, it really seems like something like this would have made it into the oD&D supplement line. Like, instead of Gods, Demigods and Heroes. That's the timeframe where I really think it is missing from the logical timeline. Of course, yes, the logical actual explanation is: they didn't release it instead of GD&H, they released GD&H. Why didn't they release it next? No one got around to it until its' time had already passed.

Micah Sweet · Jul 21, 2022

TwoSix said:
Any statement I make (or really, anyone makes), should be assumed to be my opinion only. The fact that I don't think Ravenloft needs to be coherent doesn't impact your beliefs otherwise.

I wanted to make it clear to folks new to the issue that your opinion was not the only one on the subject.

Henadic Theologian · Jul 21, 2022

Hussar said:
Yeah there’s a danger here in giving too much credence to criticism. Raven loft is an unparalleled success in 5e. Massively popular. So popular that they actually went back to the well for a second book. Nothing in 5e has gotten two books.

So I’d say that despite some grumbling, 5e rave loft is a smashing success.

But again sure there are some setting specific mechanics in Dark Sun. Although, again stuff like weapon breakage and whatnot is part of the overall post apocalyptic theme.

Like was said, it’s the story of a setting that really sets a setting apart.

We know FR is getting revisit in 2024.