My Life As A Gamer: The Braunstein College Is Invisible

Yesterday the Pundit cut another video about The Invisible College.

Remember that any RPG worthy of that label can be put into the Braunstein Box.

The Pundit did that himself. Go listen to the video again. He gets into players assuming the roles of major faction heads, implying Braunstein-style play thereby.

Not presuming this as the default is the single biggest mistake the Boomers that got this entire medium of entertainment started did to it, and man is that becoming more apparent with every ankle-biting freakout at the #BROSR.

Be is this game, Spycraft, Top Secret, Mage: The Ascension, Ninjas & Superspiece, Feng Shui (the Shadowfist RPG), or whatever such games play far easier with superior satisfaction when run as Braunstein-style wargames where Patron-level interactions create the skirmish-scale scenarios that most RPG player recognize as "adventures".

Why shove all that plotting on one man's shoulders? You will get far more playable scenarios delivered far faster when you distribute that workload across a network of users, which is exactly what you're doing by centering your campaign on Patron interactions.

Those interactions create points of decision--liminal spaces--wherein the actions of smaller actors can achieve outsized influence. The recent interventions by lower-tier characters in #BROvenloft and its connected campaigns

You also create other liminal spaces on the margins where those same smaller actors can carve out their own places and spaces and develop over time into Patrons themselves, including ambitious successors to slain Patrons.

Far too many just do not accept that this is a superior form of hobby organization. Far less stressful, far less time-commitment (adults with responsibilities can come and go without suffering from Fear Of Missing Out), and as more people get a handle on what this is all about the more they see the sense of it and adopt it wholesale.

This is the final revelation: all is Braunstein.