David Wesely: The Man Who Accidentally Invented RPGs

[overgeeked]

Is this a reply to me or someone else? I feel like there’s some connective tissue in the discussion I’m missing.

Aimed at the general discussion. It's necessary but not sufficient to play as a character for it to be a role-playing game. Likewise, it's necessary but not sufficient to have rules, systems, and mechanics for it to be a role-playing game. If there's no role-playing, it's not an RPG. If there's no game, it's not an RPG. The RP can be as heavy or light as you like, but it has to be there. Likewise, the game can be as heavy or light as you like, but it has to be there.

 

[Mannahnin]

I'd be content giving the crown to Wesely.

Western Gunfight is also an interesting side note across the Atlantic, with people emphasizing the individual characters and playing your role.

Western Gunfight (1970): the First RPG?

In 1970, a group of UK gamers located in Bristol published the first edition of their Western Gunfight rules, which recorded systems they ...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

 

[Meech17]

Does anyone know of any write ups online of playing Braunstein? Or perhaps rules?

I know in the video Ben mentions that there was something in production, but I'd be interested in reading more.

 

[Mannahnin]

Also, just saw that no one had added Wesely's response to the video here yet!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Beowulf is a pretty weird "start" to fantasy fiction.

If we're going to make those kinds of silly statements, surely we should be going with Gilgamesh.

 

[overgeeked]

Does anyone know of any write ups online of playing Braunstein? Or perhaps rules?

I know in the video Ben mentions that there was something in production, but I'd be interested in reading more.

There was a History of Braunstein published in 2008. Barons of Braunstein is up on DriveThru, though it's a licensed thing with the writers' house rules rather than Wesely's...though there is a few pages of essays in the back talking about the original version. There's probably a few interviews and articles floating around. Hopefully the project Ben was talking about is the definitive version from Wesely himself.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd be content giving the crown to Wesely.

Western Gunfight is also an interesting side note across the Atlantic, with people emphasizing the individual characters and playing your role.

Western Gunfight (1970): the First RPG?

In 1970, a group of UK gamers located in Bristol published the first edition of their Western Gunfight rules, which recorded systems they ...

playingattheworld.blogspot.com

Interesting. That part of the story is new to me. Yes, they appear to have invented a roleplaying game and not known it, hoping instead that this was some new fresh branch of wargaming, one that predates D&D by a small margin and which potentially influenced Arneson and Gygax.

I offer this up as further evidence for my "hot take" that there was something about fantasy that made it the inevitable genre winner when it came to RPGs and that it wasn't an accident that D&D was a fantasy game just because it happened to be the first one, and that it wasn't just that people happened to be culturally interested in fantasy as opposed to martial arts, James Bond, Westerns and Sci Fi.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I offer this up as further evidence for my "hot take" that there was something about fantasy that made it the inevitable genre winner when it came to RPGs and that it wasn't an accident that D&D was a fantasy game just because it happened to be the first one, and that it wasn't just that people happened to be culturally interested in fantasy as opposed to martial arts, James Bond, Westerns and Sci Fi.

Unless I'm forgetting something, there are no fantastical elements in the Braunstein setting. It's a fictional past that didn't happen, which makes it alternative history rather than fantasy - something that's more often seen as being science fiction (in the vein of Turtledove's work, for ex) if it isn't left as a sub-genre of historical fiction (which would be my preference). Imagi-nations and fictional campaigns were part of wargaming far before Wesely, although these days they're more likely to include touches of fantasy or implausibly advanced technology.

Not that I disagree with fantasy being the most likely soil for roleplaying to sprout from barring a serious divergence somewhere, but I think you're stretching to claim Braunstein as such. It certainly had an influence in that fictional or alt-history requires a fair bit of world building, and the more divergent the setting is from actual history the more work it takes - something that's equally true of fantasy, and equally important in building campaigns for roleplaying. So Braunstein reinforced the concept of crafting your own world that Gygax and Arneson and company were already getting from fantasy media.

 

[Fifth Element]

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Not that I disagree with fantasy being the most likely soil for roleplaying to sprout from barring a serious divergence somewhere, but I think you're stretching to claim Braunstein as such.

Did they claim that? Were they not referring to D&D?

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Did they claim that? Were they not referring to D&D?

It's tied to another thread discussing what genre might have begun roleplaying if TSR hadn't been a thing. I'm not as convinced as @Celebrim is that fantasy was inevitably going to be the first RPG genre in that scenario, but I do think fantasy would be a very early branch off any alternate trunk, just as scifi (and/or science fantasy, depending on how hard you need scifi to be) was an early branch in our world.

And I'm rather still proud of the absurd "What if Marvel rather than TSR?" scenario I spun over there. Very silly, but not quite wholly implausible.