Dubzaron Battle Braunstein: "The Shucked Oyster"

Introduction

As I discussed in my last blog post, the summer of 2024 has been a celebration of the success of the Battle Braunstein concept. Jeffro Johnson (of "Appendix N", "How to Win at D&D" and the amazing 1e Advanced Dungeons and Dragons "Trollopulous" campaign) defines a Braunstein as an approach to tabletop roleplay gaming where "multiple independent actors [operate] under a fog of war". 

Can DM Dubs run a whole session from 3 
paragraphs from an unreleased KS module?

Dubzaron, with 1:1 Jeffrogaxian timekeeping, is an "Always On" campaign. But sometimes there is too much diffusion between human controlled players (PCs, Patrons, etc) and not enough convergence. The former is where players take their character off to do solitaire play in downtime (usually to acquire cash and prizes) and the latter is where players find a way to involve each other in scenes and events within the game world. 

Due to this frequent issue I forced a Battle Braunstein which I dubbed the Fishstein back in 2023. There were many hanging elements in that part of the game world at that space/time that I knew, had I not ran a Battle Braunstein, the players would simply run from those elements out of fear or an attempt to "get the ruby" in a less dangerous part of the world.

The Fishstein was a great success for the Dubzaron campaign but this session, which I am dubbing the #Shuckstein may be my greatest DMing triumph.

The Fishstein proved you can take the big armies your players are building and give them a wargame scenario they are actually excited to fight out. Credit where it's due again, Jeffro says this nearly verbatim all the time about the Braunstein.

I told him a few weeks back in private messaging that, the next time I DM, I was going to force the Dubzaron PCs to play in a Battle Braunstein against their will; with very little warning or planning. But this Battle Braunstein session would be based around the PCs issues with one another.

Essentially, I was jealous of all the success Jeffro was having as a referee of his fantastic Traveller campaigns and sessions. He was using my Total Nonstop Braunstein concept to great success and I wanted Dubzaron to enjoy the fun the concept could provide.

Total Nonstop Braunstein

I define this concept vaguely and more in terms of gameplay. So, this session report itself will give an example of the TNB more than a definition. The main idea behind it is that somewhere in 1e AD&D Core Books (I'm not a gaming anthropologist like Jeffro so I can't find you the page or exact quote) Gygax states matter-of-factly that PCs will begin to be at odds with their armies and various resources once they achieve mid to high (name) level. 

Dubzaron and most of the BROSR campaigns are NOT seeing this sort of PVP happen so it's clear we're missing something. A proper gaming culture clubhouse? An improper understanding of Appendix N concepts? An improper understanding of D&D as a slow-motion co-operative videogame? 

In any case, the Total Nonstop Braunstein looks to fix this by various means. One way, which I'll demonstrate in this session, is to force the PCs into a scenario where they have very few ways to co-operate as a single fellowship "get along gang" and many more ways to screw one another over as "factions of one".

The Shucked Oyster

The Shucked Oyster is a wildly popular modular RPG product currently being crowdfunded at Kickstarter. If you're reading this before the campaign ends on 09/05/2024 you really should get over there and give money to your friends and mine, the writers of "The Shucked Oyster": Black Lodge Games.

Prior to reading the Kickstarter launch page for the Shucked Oyster, I didn't know what scenario I wanted to place the PCs into which would potentially put them at odds with one another. After reading the opening page concept of The Shucked Oyster, wherein the titular bawdyhouse burns down and PCs are (potentially, based on a random d8 chart) blamed, I knew THIS was the scenario that could work. I could put The Shucked Oyster location into my campaign worlds barbarian city of Claymore Crossing with no issue.

The material available to the public about The Shucked Oyster, on the Kickstarter right now, is the above starting point and two courtesan NPCs. Upon listening to the Black Lodge Games fellas on various podcasts, most especially The Rollin' Bones podcast with the seminal Ryan Howard, I was struck by their OSR era commentary that NPCs should be simply interesting people in the world that have their own drives, feelings, wants etc.

Well, my own opinion on NPCs in a D&D style game is that all players hate all of them and that they bore me to DM; no matter how interesting they are. When I run NPCs I feel like I'm playing amateur theater with myself while PCs roll their eyes in boredom. Perhaps, being theater kids (not an insult, I love theater kids!) they are simply better at NPCs and NPC story webs than me.

But Jeffro's Traveller game gave me the idea on how to bridge this gap and turn The Shucked Oyster into, perhaps, the best Battle Braunstein that's ever been ran!

The Antagonists

My concept for the Total Nonstop Braunstein has always been that PCs should be potential antagonists to each other. Not necessarily in throw-down arena style battles, but in working at cross purposes in downtime (for sure!) and with Total Nonstop Braunstein, in session. Not to sabotage their own goals (when you're in the dungeon you assure your boys live so you don't die) but to sabotage bigger goals.

Some examples might be the thief using treasure from the delving to build his syndicate and the paladin setting up troops to root out crime. Or the two PC fighters building armies to try and capture the same land; whoever gets there first wins. Stuff like that; but in the dungeon or when there is wetwork, PCs will generally have each other's back.

Sadly, I've found BROSR PCs overall have been unable or unwilling to bridge this mental gap. I've heard a million excuses why: "the rules push co-operation", "it's just how players are", "I've never read Appendix N" etc. 

I argued against these excuses, I begged mine friends to follow me into the new frontier of Total Nonstop Braunstein, I've tried to show the way as a PC in their various games. No dice. Little success. BDubs dark night of the rpg soul. Cue "Laura's Theme" and picture me pondering my ACKS Core book.

Jeffro, in his usual kinetic way, found a simpler solution in his Traveller campaign. Just force session players to be NPC antagonists. Brilliant! 

He probably thought this is what I meant by Total Nonstop Braunstein. Well, it is now!

I quizzed PCs in the back channels on which other PCs that had issue with and why I found that very few of them thought very deeply about any of this. There was little (although some!) in the way of Appendix N pulp thinking or pop psychology. They were not posed to be great antagonists to each other in a Battle Braunstein Session. 

So, like Jeffro in his Traveller game, I put out a call online for new players to come on and play antagonists in a Battle Braunstein for an evening. I used two NPCs from the KS materials for The Shucked Oyster but twisted them to my needs. And added a third antagonist based off of a patron's vassal. I will describe them here.

Madam Svetlana: This is a character from The Shucked Oyster module that is described in the Kickstarter materials. I took the barebones of the idea which is: she's beautiful, a madam of the titular bawdyhouse, and is a true believer cultist in some megademon. Also, she's actually a hag in disguise. Lastly, she has a boyfriend (another NPC in the module) who is a high priest of the cult and she intends to sacrifice him at some point (sorry, honey!).

I changed the character in a few small ways. Firstly, because the Fishstein had a cultist leader trying to raise a demon (CThaylor!); I didn't want to repeat myself.
I made her Big Goal different in that she needed to sacrifice 10 Levels worth of human controlled players on an altar in the basement of the Shucked Oyster. If she did so, Stormbringer (the evil artifact sword of "Elric Saga" and various BROSR campaign events fame) would appear on the altar. She wanted it for reasons unknown.

Making her a hag was easy, I just generated one in ACKS, chose spells that made the most sense, and handed that to the player.

Jalaan: In The Shucked Oyster module entry for Svetlana it mentions her boyfriend is "Peter" and he's a high priest or something. That, and the fact that Svetlana might betray her boyfriend, was all I had to go on for this other character. I changed his name from Peter to Jalaan to make him more mysterious and changed him from a cultist high priest to... Slenderman! 

Jalaan was lookin' good, jack!

The Dubzaron PCs spent months trying to find and kill Slenderman in the Queens Rest Mountain dungeon. From some no-prep random rolling I did during those sessions, I resolved some various things about how Slenderman escaped the dungeon before it erupted and how he was using the Black Lodge "Twin Peaks" curtains in the dungeon to travel to Jotenheim to speak with Surtur the King of the Fire giants. 

This is all Norse myth stuff and I've had a long term goal of bringing the Norse pantheon to Dubzaron if player action could do it. This idea was always focused on convergence.

Bottom line is Jalaan was not allied with Surtur but he wanted to be for various reasons. And he learned of the evil altar in the The Shucked Oyster basement which he had reason to believe, if it was physically carried to the Black Lodge "Twin Peaks" curtains at the rubble of Queens Rest Mountain (a recently erupted volcano which didn't destroy the curtains because they're super-magic) he could open the curtains to Jotenheim and let Surtur into Dubzaron world. 

I chose "carry the altar" for a few reasons. I didn't want two antagonists trying to kill people on the altar. And I figured this would twist Jalaan's goals to be more about making allies so he'd have manpower to carry the altar. Could maybe get caught in the street doing so etc. This is all very easy game design type ideas that come to you when you're running a Battle Braunstein.

Lastly, Slenderman/Jalaan had 4 vampire dames from past sessions but I didn't want to have him with that much power so I determined he introduced them to Warlord Kyle OConner, a patron I didn't want players running to for help during the event. Perhaps Kyle could also be saved? Oh, and I took away Slenderman's level drain effect for the event because I thought it would make things too easy and cheap. 

Mayor Lambert: In solitaire patron play Kyle generated a war focused Fighter to hold the Foward Operating Base at Queens Rest Mountain for like a year. At some point in the spring of 2024 PC Barbarian Einar convinced Patron Kyle O'Conner to give him the land instead. Then Kyle's city grew too much and, being full of barbarians, was wild and disordered. Officially in his solitaire notes, Lambert was put in charge of using his hundreds of troops with "upholding the peace" in town.

So, Lambert's design goal in this event was to have tons of troops to use for patrols and such and to try and figure out who burned down The Shucked Oyster (a highly respected establishment) and calm tensions down. Also, a military bunkhouse on the same block was destroyed by the fire. I added this to explain why he might be more antagonistic during the event. The player could then in an emergent story way determine if he liked his new job, hated it, was angry with Einar or happy with him for the past, etc.

The Protagonists (PCs)

I will try and keep this part short since this blog is running extremely long and regular readers probably know who most of these PCs are from past session reports.

Einar: He's a level six barbarian who held the clanhold around Queens Rest Mountain until said volcano exploded like two weeks ago. He's currently in town with a few companies parked outside deciding what his next steps should be. He also turned Chaotic due to events inside the dungeon a long while back and made oaths to the evil Norse King of the Fire Giants: Surtur. Most of his party members do NOT know that and only found out at the end of the Shuckstein due to Events.

Standing Mountain: He's a mid level Elven Spellword (same as a BX elf). He's Neutral and is lately seeking to change the negative perception of elves around the city of Claymore Crossing (where the session takes place) by bringing evil elves to Kyle Oconner's justice. He has a few powerful hench, many good magic items, and some flying mounts.

Xanthos: He's a higher level Lawful Cleric of the Empyrean; which is the Roman style ACKS civilization. He's respected by Kyle but the Lawful cults are not followed in this city of Claymore Crossing. He has some good martial henchmen and access to terrific divine magic power. 

Tuck: He's a level 6 barbarian with a very good fighter hench and bard hench. Tuck has been around the world of Dubzaron doing many things. He was once the Mayor of Fishton before CThaylor took over. Who would he throw in with in this event?

Doc: Doc is a level 4 Lawful thief. He's made oaths to the Empyrean (Roman) gods of Law and has studied medicine. He's been in the city of Claymore Crossing for some weeks enjoying the Shucked Oyster's many wares. He's Lawful, not dead.

Scoring

The scoring system was none at all. I made it clear to them I would simply look at their play and decide who "won" based on what seemed to make the most sense. Winning could be killing PCs they didn't like, bringing Surtur to Dubzaron, summoning Stormbringer, framing their pals for the fire, or proving their innocence of same.

What I failed to say at the beginning is that one of the human controlled players DID in fact set the fire at The Shucked Oyster. I determined who randomly with a 1d10 roll for all human controlled players modifed by their Wisdom. Lowest roll was the culprit. I private messaged the culprit and demanded he provide me with the how and why it happened and that might inform the story. I added this to game design "This is DunderMoose"s murder mystery party idea he always uses as an example when he talks about Braunstein play. Solving this could be a win condition!

Reward

First Place: 12,000 xp and training costs paid in ANY BROSR campaign. I let the players know I was prepared to bully a different DM into honoring this.

Second Place: 5,000 xp and training costs etc.

Third Place: A golf clap and "attaboy" from DM Dubs.

Fourth or Lower: Not worth discussing.

The Introduction

The session started with everyone in the barbarian ran city of Claymore Crossing either enjoying "The Shucked Oyster" or just walking up to the building when the fire started and the place burned down. I took this directly from the module itself as it appears to be the intro to get things going. It's a brilliant and deceptively simple starting point for a city adventure. No matter what players think about it, they're forced to make a choice one way or another. Well done, Black Lodge Games!

I considered having the PCs make Save Vs Blast (Breath) checks to see if they were caught inside but thought it would be dumb to kill or disable players at the intro. 

I did, however, want to have less hench involved in the session since they are very cumbersome to adjudicate in combat and almost never add anything interesting to a story part of a session scenario. They're usually just force multipliers not story ones.

I had players make Loyalty checks to see if their hench were too busy partying in the Shucked Oyster when the fire started and they didn't obey their liege to get out of the place. 

Two Venturer hench were caught in the fire and injured. I don't think they died thanks to ACKS "Mortal Wounds" rules but I didn't care as much about that I mostly wanted henchmen out of the session not the campaign. Sadly, like 80% of the many many henchmen in the game stayed involved. This would make the bit of combat later kind of cumbersome. Sad.

As the bawdyhouse burned down I used a bunch of purple prose to describe it falling, the venturer henchman collapsing in the street in front of their PCs, and I did NPC control of Jalaan and Svetlana that they saw some guards approach from the nearby bunkhouse and point at PCs and say "they did it!"

I then ruled Jalaan and Svetlana took off into some alleyways to get them out of the combat which then commenced. Players later realized that Lieutenant of this group of about 20 guards was under magic control from Svetlana to try and apprehend the PCs without Parley. 

This was a game design decision to assure that the PCs either: let themselves be apprehended and were in custody, or would be on the run for certainly killing some guards. Lambert was not present for this battle but would hear about it later and need to determine if a few dead guards bothered him or not. Making these sort of thing a Player decision helps with convergence and is more interesting than me doing a reaction check.

The PCs made short work of the guards, killing 4 of them and running off the rest with Xanthos casting Summon Swarm to hit them with a bunch of angry mosquitos. Standing Mountain used magic on the NPC LT Reigns and said LT was unconscious by the end of the fight. 

With this quick battle resolved I then went to the meat of the Battle Braunstein situation and the gameplay that is actually interesting.

Approach to Play

The Battle Braunstein is, essentially, a party game. DMs must needs accept this and try to emphasize it. For this session I made a handful of private voice channels to place characters in who were local to each other. They could talk all they want. Discussing plans and schemes and trying to get one over on one another is the crux of the Braunstein gameplay. It's like "Diplomacy".

In the Fishstein I made a macguffin reason that Players could all talk to each other through their minds thanks to a "Twin Peaks" radio a magic elf put in their head for a few weeks. This time I decided not to add anything like that. If you wanted to talk with another player you had to agree you were in the same physical space in the city.

I controlled this aspect early on as I went to various voice chats to ask the Antagonist PCs what they wanted to do, and the PCs what they wanted to do. I was looking for an action item from each and then I would put all that together and see where the convergence was.

Later into the night I stopped trying to control which players would move themselves to other voice channels and trusted they would be fair about it and tag me for help if they needed to resolve a hostile situation. Which they did.

I also titled one voice chat "The Shucked Oyster" which I let everyone know was the ruin of the brothel. If you went to the scene of the fire it would get around town quickly you were present there (or most recently seen there) so you could jump to that voice channel with it meaning your Character went there to confront someone, to investigate or whatever. The other voice chats could represent anywhere in town and could be "lying low" or hiding or whatever.

This decision allowed me to do a fantastic convergence for ALL PARTIES later and even have an "icing on the cake". Stay tuned!

Initial Actions

Let's start with the PCs. Firstly, after the combat Einar tied up Lieutenant Reigns and carried him out of town to where his (Einar's) troops were bivouacked. He suspected foul play against himself and wanted to question the Lieutenant with enhanced interrogation. Notably, Einar didn't invite or wait for ANY PCs to join him.

Standing Mountain tried to save his nearby pawn shop from the spreading fire. 

Lambert put out word via his troops that he wanted Einar and Xanthos to come in and talk to him. A good start but I can't recall if I acted on it since I was mostly avoiding NPC stuff. But this did let all players know where they could meet with Lambert at his garrison or whatever if they asked and wanted to. Convergence!

Doc the thief chased Svetlana and Jalaan down the alleyway they escaped to. Tuck followed a few rounds later. This was the initial slower part of the session and I allowed the other PCs to discuss their plan in their own voice chat while I adjudicated this. It was the most interesting initial action.

I did some sneak checks for Doc to see if Svetlana or Jalaan knew he was there. They did (sorry, thief!) so Svetlana and Jalaan decided to try and rope Doc in close where the courtesan would attempt to Charm him. Their plan was Jalaan run off and hide and Svetlana appear to be lost and confused like she'd been abandoned by her man. Jalaan (really Slenderman) actually turned invisible but he was hiding this ability from Svetlana (even though it turns out she has Witch Sight and knew he was invisible; wheels within wheels!).

The thief decided to approach like "how you doin' girl" and Svetlana cast Charm with just her look thanks to an ACKS class proficiency she had. Thanks to this proficiency combat wasn't triggered by her indicating casting the spell. It was the first (but not last) time Doc would be charmed tonight. 

Tuck ran up at this point and I described the scene to him. He decided to be a cool wingman and let Doc shoot his shot. I left the voice chat the 3 of them were in at this point so I don't know why but eventually Doc and Tuck let Svetlana go and they later told me they'd try and tail her in hiding. Doc explained he was worried Jalaan was a bad guy and he wanted to keep an eye on Svetlana and it's totally not a stalkery thing to do ok.

Timekeeping

It was at this point I realized something amazing about the Shuckstein. Thanks to this all being contained within a city, the time it was taking for me to get back to players about their actions and how long it would take their characters to do said actions; seemed to align almost perfectly with the REAL CLOCK.

If I figured it would take a guy about 10 minutes to finish a declared action I would usually be back in his voice chat in about 10 minutes. If it took me 15, then his action took 15. 

As such, the Shuckstein was the first actual 1:1 minute to minute BROSR session to ever be played. "The Shucked Oyster" burned down at session start time of 08/07/2024 8:30 PM EST and the city part of the event was resolved around 12:10 am EST on 08/08/2024.

The icing on the cake was some game days later...

Second Phase

I don't remember every action around the middle part of the session so I'm going to drop the hits.

Svetlana and Jalaan found a flophouse to flop and try and lay low for a while. Doc and Tuck tailed them there and were not seen at this point. Svetlana eventually got bored of this and went off to find Lambert and plead her innocence. When Doc tailed her down the street Jalaan saw Doc and decided he would try and come out of invisibility right in front of Doc walking down the street and use his vampire "Enslave" ability which requires he be seen and look in Doc's eyes. Jalaan didn't see that Tuck was tailing Doc about 60 yards down the street.

I ran the initial round of this little mini combat between 3 players, including surprise etc but then I realized something really cool about BROSR play. Jalaan was being played by one of my co-DMs. I asked all involved if they were comfortable adjudicating the combat on their own so I could get back to the real meat of the Battle Braunstein which was going around the digital table with other players to see if they needed rulings. They were cool with it.

The BROSR is the best.

I came back later to find that Tuck and Doc were both magically Enslaved to Jalaan. Sorry guys.

Svetlana had talks with Lambert which I wasn't present for. They summed up for me that she was going to help him figure out the mystery and to watch out for Xanthos (the cleric, really?) and Standing Mountain (elf? checks out) since they were clearly at fault here.

At this point I was reminding players that, while interesting and entertaining, I wasn't really concerned with the agreements, emotions, or psychology of their characters: I just needed their actions. The mental part of the play was on their side. I will ponder the mental state of all these amazing characters likely for months and months but in the heat of DMing a Battle Braunstein I simply did not have time to worry about WHY they did things. I just needed to know WHAT they were doing.

Svetlanta went back to The Shucked Oyster and Lambert went out with a platoon of troops to try and meet with Einar. 

Einar had by now interrogated Lieutenant Reigns and learned what he already knew: someone used magic to make him attack the party without Parley. At this point Lambert showed up and I had to be present to see if Einar and Lambert would throw down outside town with their armies. They both assured me they were not presenting a hostile appearance and would be happy to parley. I left them to it. When I came back I found out the conclusions they came to from this talk... you won't believe it.

Third Phase

I may have this timeline all wrong. 

What you need to understand about a Battle Braunstein is no one is privy to ALL the information. This is like a group of eight people finding an elephant in the dark. Someone will find the tail and think "this is all about this tail" someone will feel the trunk and think "no no, the trunk is the thing". There is no way to put it together as an elephant without hearing from all sides. I hope the players will comment and add their own thoughts and "session reports" to this. Players are playing by talking when the DM isn't present!

The biggest action of the third phase was Svetlana going to the ruin of "The Shucked Oyster" and having two of her assassin courtesans hide in the rubble to attack any players who approached her. Her plan was to paralyze some PCs who did so then take them down to the basement of the place to sacrifice them. Get Stormbringer, win the Shuckstein. Simple as.

Standing Mountain and Xanthos were the first who came to her spider web. The assassins jumped out and one hit Standing Mountain but he made his Save Vs Paralysis and the fight was on. This turned into a pretty interesting duel between spellcasters as Svetlana was trying to first use "Curse of Swine" which turns a bunch of targets into pigs if they fail to Save Vs Spells (some of Standing Mountain and Xanthos hench failed and were pigified) and then Svetlana turned invisible to escape only to have Standing Mountain cast Glitterdust on her and essentially ruin her invisibility. Cool!

This combat was a bit of a slog with all the henchmen and Svetlana's player (Robert the Heel Stephens!) was brand new to ACKS; meaning we had to slow down to adjudicate spells and distances a great deal. One cool part, however, was that I was jumping back and forth out of the combat to the other voice chats to see if anyone was taking ACTIONS (not ideas or plans) and where I could find a convergence.

Einar private messaged me that divination spells could ruin the mystery aspect and I told him that's fine since you'd still need to prove who did it or get them apprehended or something to constitute a win. Just knowing whodunit didn't really mean much. I decided it would be fair for his shaman to have a vision of his deity Surtur from this Commune cast to say "Jalaan knows how to get me to the world of Dubzaron!"

As such, when Jalaan showed up at Einar's camp, Einar talked with him rather than attacked. I was shocked to jump back into their private voice chat and Einar said "ok so fyi I know Jalaan is Slenderman and I know he wants to bring Surtur and I'm going to help him we're going to frame the elf and cleric for the fire and I convinced Lambert to arrest them".

WHAT?!

I got with Lambert and asked for his actions and he confirmed most of this that his next action was to march down to The Shucked Oyster to apprehend Svetlana, Standing Mountain and Xanthos. The three people who were currently in a D&D style combat!

The Final Convergence

When you DM a Battle Braunstein you are looking for how the actions of the players are going to converge into a scenario worth playing. If you run things well you will always have at least one big blow-off between players before the end of the Battle Braunstein end of the session.

At this point it was obvious to me what was happening. Lambert and Einar wanted to come in force with troops in the street to apprehend three player controlled characters. Said characters were kind of reaching the end of their D&D style battle so I just decided the cavalry (literally and metaphorically) showed up.

Svetlana, thanks to spells and some luck of the dice, actually extricated herself from the ruins of The Shucked Oyster and her combat with Standing Mountain, Xanthos and their various hench. I allowed the possibility that any of those parties would refuse to surrender when Lambert showed up demanding it.

Standing Mountain and Xanthos did not resist arrest. This surprised me a little bit but we were getting late in the night and both players may have not wanted to have us run too late and/or they were worn out of running round to round D&D combat. They also probably assume they'd be found innocent by Lambert in downtime (where things are less dangerous) or Patron Kyle OConner would just shrug and let them free. 

We'll see about all the above. I occurs to me things should be a bit harder than that.

Svetlana, meanwhile, had no intention of surrendering. She ran out the back of the husk of the brothel and tried to escape to a back alley. Unfortunately for her Einar sent me a private message before the scene commenced that, as per his martial personality baked into his ACKS template, he was approaching the scene from "an oblique angle". I ruled this meant a back alley so Svetlana ran right into him.

She used her Wand of Cone of Fear to scare off Einar with magic for one round before Einar's mage cast Dispel Magic to get him back in the fight; but Einar's hench downed her. She was at exactly zero hit points when Einar dragged her back to the brothel and presented her to Lambert. In a fun display Doc, the thief with many ranks in Healing, asked Lambert if he could tend to her but (secretly in private message) just stabbed her in the stomach to kill her instead. Oops.

Everyone agreed this was probably for the best and Lambert took two PCs into custody and told everyone else standing around "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here". The 1:1 minute clock was done. We had done something really special. This was a D&D session for the ages.

The Icing on the Cake

But wait, there's more. 

I said basically all this to all players present, to great cursing and shock at the various revelations. Why hide anything at this point? Fog of war is boring if there's never anything learned at all!

After everyone left the scene of the battle and arrest, Jalaan (Slenderman) and Einar came back to the ruined brothel and went into the basement. Slenderman ordered Doc and Tuck to help carry the evil altar from beneath the tunnels below The Shucked Oyster and up into a waiting wagon in the street. 

For some days this party, along with Einar's soldiers, traveled back to volcano of Queens Rest Mountain which erupted some weeks back. They traveled only at night since Slenderman, being a vampire, needed to stay out of the sunlight. They had Einar's troops and Doc and Tuck, with some humiliation and not a little bit of pain, dig into the hot lava rocks of the erupted volcano. 

Eventually they found the Black Lodge "Twin Peaks" curtains standing on a wall; seemingly completely unaffected by the volcano eruption. They heave-ho pushed the big stone altar from beneath The Shucked Oyster into the curtain to a great flash of black light.

Surtur, the king of the fire giants of Jotenheim, and his massive host of Ragnarok ready giants, came screaming from the curtains. The evil portion of the Norse pantheon erupted into the world of Dubzaron and all Lawful divine casters in the world went unconscious with pain of it all for 3 days.

Surtur and his host climbed the Dark Wall with ease but seemed to float into the clouds. Are they material or merely of divine manifestation? It's uncertain but it is certain that new cults to them will pop up all over the Borderlands.

Einar heard the thanks of Surtur in his mind; "you have served me well. You will be rewarded."

Einar's player asked "wait doesn't Slenderman go back to Barsoom? He told me Surtur promised to send him there..? I helped him partially because I wanted Slenderman out of Dubzaron! I hate him."

"Did Slenderman promise you that," I asked innocently, "sounds like that's between you and him."

Einar exclaimed angrily in one last moment of clarity about the wheels with wheels of double-crossing in a Battle Braunstein, "Slenderman... you lying son of a..."

Conclusion

Dungeons and Dragons is a Braunstein. If you are running it without Braunstein elements you are running D&D wrong: sometimes called Conventional Play.

Jeffro defines Conventional play as "players generally operating cooperatively and mostly staying together in a single group and very rarely operating secretly, independently, or in conflict with the other players". I do not claim that playing in a Conventional way can never be fun. I've had hundreds of hours of fun playing in a conventional manner; particularly when using 1:1 time and patron play. 

But I've also seen the best BROSR D&D campaigns of my generation destroyed by getalong gang madness. 

The BROSR used to believe that a campaign would never die if you used 1:1 Jeffrogaxian time and played RAW. We now know better. To assure your campaign stays engaging and immersive, you need stop playing in a conventional manner. You need to run D&D as a Braunstein.

I dream of a day when the Total Nonstop Braunstein is the norm among long running D&D Campaigns. I dream of a day when I don't need to introduce explicit one-shot style antagonist player controlled NPCs to a campaign. I dream of a day when players will look for the PVP (and otherwise) convergence within all the dozens of PCs they have in these campaigns.

I know we can get there. I believe in the Total Nonstop Braunstein!

Introducing antagonistic NPCs and running a session Battle Braunstein now and then like will help train your players to get there. I'm hopeful the minds of my players have been opened a bit. I'm hopeful they don't want to stop. I'm hopeful you read this session report as a call to arms for your own campaign.

Just say the name of the Total Nonstop Braunstein and it will appear. If you want it!

Oh, and Standing Mountain the elf was the one that burned down "The Shucked Oyster". Around elves, watch yourselves.

Dubzaron Session 160: The Hunt for Treedancer

Introduction

The summer of 2024 has been revelatory and celebratory for the BROSR.
TNB. Say its name and it appears!
Jeffro's call to action back in the fall of 2023 to try what he calls a "Battle Braunstein" was very bold indeed. While the event itself was revolutionary in the BROSR clubhouse, it appeared that some players perhaps didn't dig it OR it wasn't going to make the cultural splash with the bros which I believed it deserved. Thus I ran the second ever Battle Braunstein which I called the Fishstein.

Unable to contain my excitement (despite my players hating the experience overall) I then went on the "Rizzmaster Dunder Moose" yortorb podcast and challenged ALL The bros to run a Battle Braunstein before the summer or be left behind. Guess what, they did!

You can watch myself and Bob Stephens rate these Braunstein's on "Rizzmaster Dunder Moose"s show

at your leisure; enjoying the comedic and promo stylings of myself and Bob. We deemed some Battle Braunstein's classics and some meh but the final conclusion was the same: this game mode rules.

Not content to simply receive my well deserved flowers for helping Jeffro champion his amazing idea; I surpassed Jeffro in gaming theory boldness. This may be the first time in his public life this has ever happened to him!

Enter the TOTAL NONSTOP BRAUNSTEIN.

"What could this mean" thought Jeffro. "How could it never stop," thought Dunderrizz. "Where can I use my soup coupon?" lamented Griff.

Well I'll tell you, pal.

The TOTAL NONSTOP BRAUNSTEIN is a mindset change. It's time the players of our campaigns improve and step up. The name of the game, as Jeffro (back on top as being the foremost thinker in gaming after my weeks long time at the top) says: is convergence and diffusion. Convergence is when Player concepts converge for good gaming moments. Diffusion is when Player concepts go off on their own solitaire player or 1v1 with the DM (using up his previous time to help them acquire cash and prizes).

While most legacy bros are still grappling with the above ideas (and ALL are still beneath me on their understanding of TOTAL NONSTOP BRAUNSTEIN [including Jeffro]) a new crop of Developmental Bros have arisen. Scutifer Mike, Night Danger, and others; who just seem to GET IT. RizzMoose, the undisputed winner of the Moonstein, also just Gets It.

So, we celebrate. The BROSR is winning and will continue to win. Despite some boomers wanting us to call it a Sparkling Blackmoor, the Braunstein concept will not stop growing. You may pronounce it as you wish but you cannot deny it's power. Say its name and it will appear in your campaign. And soon you will have no choice but to believe in the TOTAL NONSTOP BRAUNSTEIN.

What does this have to do with my session report for session 160? Not a great deal in and of itself. But I challenge you to read the elements in this session report and see where I may soon be forcing a Battle Braunstein on my Dubzaron players in way(s) they are certain to hate. Put your thoughts in the comments or with your certain screenshotting of my blog on twitter about it.

You see, I simply cannot allow Dubzaron, the best long form campaign in the BROSR (undisputed), to fall behind in TOTAL NONSTOP BRAUNSTEIN thinking. Soon, they will believe! Or ragequit. Whatever.

TimeKeeping: Session played on 07/09/2024 with 2 days of adventure. 1 day of rest required after (unless the PC has Endurance). Can take actions again 07/12/2024.

Session Report

This session had a new Caller and a new mission thread the players haven't seriously explored before. Before I talk directly about the session I'll give some background information on the state of the Dubzaron world that is pertinent.

Last summer I decided to experiment with allowing some yo-yo timekeeping in my game but align it with something story-based and gameable. It was a "Midsummer's Nights Dream" campaign wide event where, for 3 days, each night moved at 1/60 time. Meaning each evening, after twilight, time would begin moving 30 times faster until the sun came up. I came up with "weirding time" based on the "weirding way" from Lynch's "Dune". In weirding time, characters and NPCs could also enjoy the extra downtime but ONLY in the town or hex in which they were at when the sun went down. My purple prose reason for this was how it's so hard to walk long distances or do a road trip in a dream.


Maybe not true in all cases, but it served the purpose of allowing PCs and Patrons to get an extra month of building and crafting each night for 3 days. Essentially adding 3 months of crafting/building to my campaign world each year. Everyone says they want more time to build castles, right? I tried to help!

The event itself was kind of a bust and very few players used it to explore the crafting skills. But Standing Mountain the new (at the time) PC elf used it for some big things.

You see, I made the event so elves could travel wherever they liked in weirding time. That included PC elves. So they could essentially teleport across the map each night. This also meant domain encounters with elves were rappant for those characters with Domains who actually run those.

While the hostile weirding elves didn't really challenge any domain havers for real, Patron Kyle OConner decided to make some story hay out of all of the ones he had. Namely, his daughter was captured by a chaotic elf named Treedancer. Now, some months later she was saved becase... I don't know. But Kyle still holds a grudge against Treedancer who hasn't been seen since the summer of 2023.

This also meant Kyle's peasants hate elves. Just hate em. They kidnapped the princess!

Now, this week, Standing Mountain the elf decided he was tired of being hated when he came out to Kyle's Domain of the Sepia Uplands. What can be done?! Standing Mountain spoke with Kyle and learned all this backstory and decided "surely the peasants will love me if I bring Treedancer to justice?" asked Standing Mountain. "Perhaps," answered Kyle "and don't call me Shirley."

So, this session, with basically nothing to go on, Standing Mountain gathered a group of PC misfits and also-rans, to try and find Treedancer and then apprehend or kill him.

I only vaguely remembered this even from last year and Kyle knew nothing about Treedancer except he's a jerk. As such, I was chatting with Kyle as the PCs discussed on mic how they might actually find some random elf. The "meme it up with rumors" rules in Dubzaron weren't going to be extremely helpful (I decided correctly imo) since there's just no good reason why the people of Kyle's city Claymore Crossing would be keeping tabs on Treedancer to A YEAR. The rumors just confirmed "there is definitely an elven fastness in the forest to the north". But the info didn't tell them n which exact hex or whatever.

The PC plan then was to go to this fastness, likely not Treedancer's exact location, and quiz those elves about where Treedancer might be.

They were all on flying mounts which seems a bit weird to me since these are so expensive and slow to train. I'm assured all the rules are on the up and up so I wasn't going to annoy the PCs or slow down my session by arguing this point.

Point being, they were traveling at like 30 miles an hour. I hoped they Got Lost so I could send them hundreds of miles deep into parts unknown and surprise them with a very different session than they had planned, but the dice assured me they were not lost. Since George of the Jungle and his fantastic direction sense was part of the party, I needed to roll a 1 on a d20 to get them lost. So it was always stacked against me.

They approached a forest hex which had some weird effect for miles wherein the trees were purple, silver, and black and the grasses were dead and crackled underfoot. "This seems fine" they decided and searched the place for Lairs. Indian Jones, Standing Mountain's Explorer, got really sick from this environmental effect and was puking curry for hours. I think all the PCs made the Save vs Disease I called for in this case. I called for another an hour of game world time later and some other folks got sick. This land was not healthy!

They found what turned out to be a treant lair and I described it as a gnarled and messed up copse of trees grown together to form a sort of giant football shape with the tip sticking up. Brad the Pitt (Thief) was sent in invisible to scout the place and the ACKS sneaking rules shined here.

It took about 30 minutes of game time but it was a tense scene of Brad sneaking into the place and seeing a single treant that looked gnarled and evil. He was doing some odd thing of dipping his head into an eerie pool that looked oil slicked then painting other trees with the liquid. Brad noted he had a nice necklace with expensive amulet hanging on a low branch so he pick pocketed that off the treant. Another treant awoke when Brad almost failed a sneak check and that let the thief know there were at least 2 in the place.

Outside the other PCs did some tracking and believed some giant snakes and evil hounds were in this hex. The party decided there were no elves nearby so they split with Brad's sneaky grabbed gains.

The next location they came to they found a lair of brigands who were friendly, for some reason. The party stayed the night there and learned that the bandit queen Valeria hates elves (although Standing Mountain "seemed like one of the good ones") and her men had ongoing tensions with the elven fastness some 3 miles away. The party received a map to the location.

The next day they went to the elven fastness learning its leader's name is Raindrop who loves music. He played "Aqualung" on his flute.

The elves were also Friendly to the PCs (thanks alot, dice) and told them where Treedancer is believed to be... far off in the Istrith forest. This would be a problem for PCs who didn't have like 8 flying mounts. But this was just the party for the job!

During the night the PCs stayed with the elves and I made one check needing a 6 on a d6 to see if the brigands raided the elven fastness. The PCs plan to catch Treedancer would likely run out of time if they go involved in a big army battle!

The 6 hit! Then I made a 2d6 check to see how serious the brigand attack would be. 2 would be the full force of the brigands right at the elves. With 12 meaning the elves caught the brigands scouting or something and made light work of them. It hit in the middle so it made sense to me that an elven scout crew would run into a brigand scout crew.

With ACKS battle rating system I could quickly roll these results while the PCs slept as a sort of background thing. Insanely enough the elves made no successful attacks on the brigands and the brigands destroyed them. The chances of these were miniscule. But it meant the brigands killed 15 elves and took 15 more prisoner. The was about half of all the elves on site!

The next morning the elves went out scouting and found the bodies of their fallen and wrapped them in giant leaves for planting. Raindrop: "please Standing Mountain, join us to bring justice on the bandit queen and her chaotic men of evil!"

Standing Mountain: "pretty busy right now bro... I'll come back later or something".

The PCs flew out to the Istrith and immediately found a longhouse made of giant lotus petals which they could only assume belonged to Treedancer. Brad the Pitt the Thief was turned invisible by Standing Mountain to try the same schtick of sneaking up for recon as before. This time it was no-go since some magical NPC elf (who seemed to be invisible himself) had See Invisible cast and caught Brad approaching his abode.

Treedancer, we can assume that's who it was, started casting a spell at Brad which made the thief aware he was caught. For the first real round of combat Brad reacted faster than the bad guy and ran around the lotus house to try and break line of sight from the spell. This seemed to work since no spell targeted Brad. But the house itself started to move as if it were alive and grew eyes and a giant mouth.

Soon after this some treants who seemingly obeyed the elf tried to pick up Brad. He mostly avoided this for a few rounds since the treants didn't have See Invisible and had to go based on orders.

George, who was was the closest to the action trying to watch from a tree, cried out to get the other PCs' attention. They had to run/fly etc closer to the house since they were far enough back to not be able to see it through the thick growth trees. Despite being able to free, they didn't watch the action from the air.

The fight, which took about an hour or so to run, had the following results and big moments:

-more treants came

-Brad was grappled but escaped only after a round of damage

-Tuck and the other martial PCs rocked the treants down... but it took a while and they took many hits

-multiple casts of Summon Beserkers which were cleaved through by the treants

-no more apparent attacks or spells were cast by Treedancer. He spent the whole combat invisible and at one point just wasn't there anymore. Did he flee?

-two Giant Hawks were lost by the PCs

After this the party flew northwest to one of the smaller Turos forts of the Lawful empire. It was late so they didn't fly back to Kyle's town.

Musings

The story of this session, as a DM, was one of no-prep and bully-prep. The first is obvious. I haven't engaged with much of this background story and none of these parts of the wilderness. That which I did engage with (Kyle's stuff) was long forgotten from last year.

Treedancer himself came from a nice player named Arbethil who ran the insane beserker during the Fishstein. He's a very good tactician who in fact won the Fishstein thanks to this. I realized about 8 months back I suck at running leveled NPCs; especially spellcasters. The evil witch I ran during a Barsoom session just sort of shot a fireball (which I screwed up its damage to the airship) and then got sliced in half. I needed help with tactics, and spell choice!

So, I asked tArbethil to make a few NPC parties for me with various themes. Treedancer had a different name in his notes but I took the magic items, spell list, tactics, and general personality and applied it to the situation Treedancer found himself in.

Arb is now a PC in dubzaron but he wasn't in this session so couldn't sniff out the tactics I was using and know what they were facing and what the NPC was likely to do.

The players appeared annoyed and confounded by the elf's tactics. Which seems just right to me.

Participating PCs

Brad the Pitt: L6 Thief, Tomb Raider. Neutral, probably.

George of the Jungle: L5 Beastmaster. Lawful.

Standing Mountain: L5 Elven Spellword. Neutral.

Tuck: L6 Barbarian.

Hench

George: 1 War Dog

Tuck: Duck L4 Fighter. Ye L4 Bard.

Standing Mountain: Red Sky L4 Half Elf Mage. Indian Jones L4 Explorer.

Total Cuts: 13
XP for Kills: 8,000
XP for Treasure: 9,763 (763 is loose for splitting. 9,000 is in the form of one piece of jewelry which can't be split)
XP for Magic Items: 0
Total XP Pool: 17,763

PC Cut: 2,733
Hench Cut: 1,366

Class Grades

E for everyone except Standing Mountain who gets an S due to leaving the Raindrop elves hanging in their upcoming battle against the bandit queen. I know there were in game reasons for doing so (he was Caller and the other players were depending on him to focus on the task at hand) but it's not in role for Standing Mountain who shares an alignment and value system with the Raindrop elves.

Analysis of Dubzaron session 120: “I hate everything and everyone”

Introduction 

Today is June 20th, 2024 and my name is BDubs. Below is the session report and relevant stats for Dubzaron session 120. I never released this report publicly because I was so confounded and unsatisfied by the whole event. At the time I wasn’t exactly sure why. But with almost a year of hindsight and the amazing success of Jeffro Johnson’s “Battle Braunstein concept and my own success with the Fishstein, I have a better idea of what went wrong here for myself as a dm and the (lack or) campaign excitement itself. 

I’m placing the session report as is directly below as it was written in July of 2023. Then after that I will have some analysis from where I stand today in June of 2024. 

Why do this? Well I was recently on a string of extremely successful podcasts where I publicly stated my thoughts on the Braunstein concept. I rated the other BROSR campaigns here and I discussed the concept itself with Jeffro here. 

Both streams had BIG FINDINGS and BIG CLAIMS which I realize now apply to this unfortunate session of Dubzaron. 

 Now here is what I wrote last year:

07/19/23 to 07/22/23. Rest 07/23/23. Actions 07/24/23

**Cast:**

Dilly the Dwarven Fury, L1, Neutral

Edelweiss, lvl 8 mage Magical Scholar, Neutral [Mortal Wounds where she jumped back up and did some yoga]

George L4 Beastmaster, Lawful [mortal wounds where he's a superhero who got shot 36 times]

Gront Coldsky, Level 7 Neutral Barbarian Housecarl

Tuck Tenders You Death Level 6 Barbarian Pit Fighter with Ducky Level 4 Fighter (and a cast of thousands)

Marauder Barbarian Neutral (Group 2)

Standing Mountain L4 Elven Spellsword

Xanthos L7 Lawful Cleric(Mendicant)

**Hench**

Tuck: Ducky L4 Fighter

Edelweiss:

Frost Weaver, lvl 4 spellsword Captain, Neutral

Davian Cruise, lvl 5 Dwarven Machinist Artillerist, Neutral

Azalea, lvl 6 Shaman, Neutral

Lily, lvl 6 Bladedancer, Lawful

Gilford, lvl 6 Venturer, Neutral

Xanthos:

Ulysses L1 Neutral Explorer(Mariner)

Koite & Potami L0 Dudes

(Not a hench but there) Fides III, Hunting Dog

George: Wolfie - Wolf

Gront:  Hafgrim, Level 3 Neutral Assassin Cutthroat. Bravis, Level 4 Lawful Mage Elementalist

Foray XP Pool: 11,660
Mass Combat Kills XP Pool: 1,200
Spoils from Defeated Troops: 14,760 (half to be paid to troops or Calamity) = 7,380
Foray Cuts: 25
Hench Foray Xp: 467
PC Foray Xp: 933

Session Report 

Edelweiss led a big army to sack the town of Fishton. There was a mass battle the dm was not prepared for between the Lawful forces and the Fishton kind of vaguely Cajun and Lovecraftian hybrid folk who live there. They had french napoleanic troops which were interesting for story but not particularly powerful in practice. The session only had time for one Heroic Foray and this itself took about 2.5 hours. It was a grind with essentially no chance of any players losing much of anything due to them be bedecked with many powerful magic items acquired primarily in solo or downtime play, and each having about 3 or 4 buff spells cast on them.

Said foray involved 4 dragons on the bad guy side which scared none of the PCs due to all the buffs, hundreds of musketeers and hussars on the Chaotic side, and like every single pc and hench. The chaotic side also had a warlock that was able to pop off a fireball before his next spell was fizzled and then a giant strength Standing Mountain threw a boulder crushing him into the dirt. There was a big robot there too fighting for the PCs hench, apparently. Who knows.

The whole thing was very unsatisfying and I wonder if there might be something to say for the overall #brosr preference for 1e AD&D.

During the battle a couple of Barbarian PCs were hiding out in fishton and stole away into the unguarded Huge Tower and grabbed a chest full of gold and platinum. That would have been ran better and been more fun if my mental capacities were not tied up making an army of thousands with their relevant leaders and such; just to get stepped on like roaches.

George and Edelweiss fell during the battle but Xanthos is a powerful cleric so they were healed back up.

Also I got a headache.

PC Grades:

Perfect on all cases. This is truly elite level play which will be celebrated across the cosmos for all time. Starring: that guy and The Pc who was buffed a lot. And super wizard. (dubs 2024 note: I was being sarcastic… in a way since they did kind of play their in session “get the ruby” role but didn’t go beyond that.)

DM Grade: D-. I played the Foray quite badly wherein I lost the use of a dragon breath due to not realizing a player had a particular item to mitigate it. Dragons are smarter than that but I’m not. I also should have focus fired more PCs with muskets & focused on missile fire more. Additionally, I added no story elements of any interest and nothing I said about the worldbuilding will be remembered. Except the jagermeister mist off the river; the only reason I didn’t get an F.

Analysis by BDubs 2024

I'd like to start by saying I don't hold any ill will to my players at that time. They were playing the game that was put in front of them. My annoyance with this session, and the subsequent splitting headache I got running it, was due to mine misunderstanding of what a real D&D campaign (at the time).

I was missing the axioms! But which ones? And what am I talking about?

Well on my recent podcast with Jeffro Johnson he made the bold claim that real D&D has a handful of axioms that, if changed, will result in a different (worse) game.

Some of the axioms are this:

1. Play your game RAW (rules as written) NOT with Rule Zero "due as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law".

2. D&D is appendix n focused. Reading these books/stories will make it easier to run real D&D which is a pulp fantasy simulator.

3. 1:1 time is foundational to real D&D.

4. Scaling up for mass combat is foundational to real D&D. (Example: 20 troops etc = 1 unit on the board)

5. D&D is a Braunstein!

So if you read the above report, and certainly if you were playing BROSR style in the summer of 2023 and before, you'll realize that I was failing to follow the 4th and 5th axiom!

Scaling up is not something I have tried much in my ACKS campaign because, well it's ACKS. Alexander Macris wrote what I believe is a pretty cool wargame called "Domains at War" which is built to work with ACKS perfectly. It uses a Battle Rating system. So, who needs to scale up, right? Wrong.

I'm going to start exploring scaling ACKS up to be like 50 men = 1 unit on the board or whatever. I have zero wargaming background so we'll see how that goes. But you can read above that the wargame and "heroic foray" took the bulk of the session time and had little to no interesting strategic or tactical elements. I was bored and had a headache the whole time despite (just look!) there being DRAGONS, and GIANT ROBOTS, and HUSSARS. Like... how could this be boring? How could this not be worth running? 

I'll tell you.

None of us had the fifth axiom in our mind, that real D&D is a Braunstein.

Let me take you back to 2023 Dubzaron and how the town of Fishton came about. I was on a break from DMing and playing due to irl concerns. And some great Co-DMs stepped up to fill the void and keep Dubzaron alive. Thank you all!

During some of these sessions the PCs went exploring the wilderness in search of a new city to buy and sell goods in. They wanted to pay less taxes, or not need to bow to Patron Drakon, or maybe DM Ambrose just wanted to try using Appendix B to generate random wilderness and see what would happen. (This was at the height of my "zero prep is best" rhetoric which had taken the BROSR memesphere by storm in the DesertSwamp.)

So Fishton was generated in session. Including it's crazy elements of having Napoleanoic troops, and a Taylor Swift Lovecraft monster named CThaylor and the cult of same. The PCs found the crazy town and were chased off. So they went back to the drawing board of 1:1 downtime to bide their time, lair smash, and get all the best buff spells and items to attack Fishton and take it for themselves.

I don't fault them for this. It's the game in front of them at the time. But it's become clear in June of 2024 that this was inferior gaming. Because this was NOT a Braunstein.

This was a name level Get Along Gang that was building up big numbers to come blanket me (the poor bedraggled DM) with huge numbers and spells and buffs that there is no way I'd be able to parse well enough to give them a real challenge. I missed that Edelweiss couldn't be hit by a breath attack because I was trying to run an army of thousands and parse the 4+ buffs that were on EACH of the PCs. Meanwhile my NPCs had bascially no buffs on them (and the PCs still whined that one of the NPCs could See Invisbility.)

In BROSR 2023 style I came to DM Ambrose to ask him what the troop numbers would look like in this town he created in a noprep session. Now firstly, his notes weren't great. That's just one of those things. My DM notes suck, as well; and I'd be loathe to try and communicate them to another DM to challenge me and my Get Along Gang army if I had to.

But if the sacking of Fishton was run like a Battle Braunstein (rather than a Get Along Gang beat down to the DM)... oh man I promise you DM Ambrose (now playing NPC CThaylor) notes on his army numbers would be impeccable! Because he has something to lose. He cares. He wants to beat the other PCs. He wants to hit them with his own "stupid PC plan".

Recall my last podcast where I joked how Jeffro's one player was broken and ragequit due to being faced with ONE "stupid PC plan"? Well DMs like me face these plans every week. And session 120 almost broke me.

This was compounded by the fact that Edelweiss the mage was playing solitaire every single day to smash lairs and get more cash and prizes preparing for this attack on Fishton. This, until recently, was celebrated as a sort of Elite level downtime play. It's similar to what Mandalf did. Except Mandalf generated many interesting sessions for PCs to enjoy during this downtime solitaire. Edelweiss had a few, but was overall just focused on stacking Gs, man.

Myself and the better BROSR DMs have had, since discovering the solitaire approach to 1:1 downtime play, an uneasy feeling about this. Something not quite right about PCs playing a solitaire game in which they can't really lose. But we couldn't put our finger on it beyond thinking it was probably just too easy.

I felt in 2023 as long as the Patron or Name Level PC was generating interesting session hooks that it was probably ok. They were doing their job as a sort of adjacent "co-DM". Smashing lairs for cash and prizes was kind of their reward for helping co-dm and create campaign hooks. While I still think this is BETTER than just playing solitaire for cash and prizes, it doesn't quite hit the mark.

Because the mark is the Braunstein. 

These players should be playing their role in a way that looks for contention. That looks for the faction based PVP. That generally ignores the NPC aspects of the campaign world because the DM honestly can't be bothered to figure all those out or create them in such a way to be challenging. Even if I made every NPC of Fishton perfectly, they wouldn't all be decked out in +3 Armor, shields, and swords. They wouldn't all have the best possible spells and troops they could find. But the PCs did when they attacked Fishton!

I would never, as a DM, try to hit the PCs with a totally unfair plan like PCs often hit a DM. There is a social element there, an unspoken agreement that PCs will think the DM is a real jerk if he did something like that; if CThaylor sent a sleep demon to eat them during 1:1 time before they could get their army in place. But if PCs did it to my NPCs? It's all good, man!

So as long as a DM is hemmed in by the Goldilocks theory of challenges not being too hard OR too easy, there's no way a PC vs NPC campaign can be as engaging as PVP.

So, as a I discussed on "This is DunderMoose", this is why approaching D&D as a Braunstein, and some sessions as a Battle Braunstein is key.

Doing so would have prevented Dubzaron Session 120 from being titled "I hate everything and everyone" and I wouldn't have needed to give the campaign world a do-over with the Fishstein. We'd have instead had a city sacking for the ages. A session we'd have all been buzzing and talking about forever. Instead, we had a session which I hid from the public for a year.

What a disaster.

Dubzaron Session 154: Dancing with Darkness

Session 154: Dancing with Darkness 

Time: 05/22/2024. Rest 05/23/2024. Can take actions 05/24/2024

PCs

Einar: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. 

George (of the Jungle): L5 Beastmaster, Lawful. 

Kyrandis L2 Wonder-Worker, Wrath-Bringer, Lawful.

Rory: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral.

Tuck: L6 Barbarian, Neutral.

Xanthos: L7 Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful.

Hench (others were brought but did not dungeoneer for XP)

Einar: Magos (Mage 4), Thiefos (Thief 2)

Tuck: Duck (L? Class?), Ye (L? Bard)

Xanthos: Agenor (Fighter 5), Tigga (Phase Tigga 6HD)

XP For Treasure:33,025

XP for Kills: 2,850

XP for Magic Items: 0

Total Pool: 35,875

Total Cuts: 18

PC Cut: 3,986

Hench Cut: 1,993

Session Report

I am writing this session report over a week after it was played so my memory may be fuzzy. However I feel this report has something to offer since it was nearly completely NoPrep and the random charts and rolling helped inspire me to create and give exposition on some major world-building of the Immortals scale. 

For months now the Dubzaron campaign has been slouching towards Ragnarok. Last summer I was chatting with Kyle Oconner (Patron) about how his witch got her soul eaten by the evil sword/demigod Stormbringer during Operation Muscle Thunder. This event set off a chain of deeper events within the BROSR multiverse (along with BROvenloft) wherin Mr Wargaming was asked (demanded of) to run a cosmic war for the Fate of Stormbringer. The links in this paragraph will lead you to some of the most incredible D&D content and moments that anyone has ever done. Or as the #BROSR calls it, Tuesday.

During my talks with Kyle we were also wondering what more could be done with Queens Rest Mountain; the extremely high level dungeon inside a volcano at the edge of his domain. The Necromancer Queen who was in torpor in the place woke up last year and split; she's assumed to be deep in the Wastes growing an undead army. 

(The NPC and Dungeon is based on ACKS "Sepulcher of the Sorceress Queen" module. I recommend it if you are a module enjoyer with a high level party you're having trouble challenging.)

Since the dungeon is empty of its original stocking I've been restocking it on the fly with the random encounter charts from the Fiend Folio. This has made the place very deadly and very very strange.

So what more could be done with the dungeon? How about an interplanar war? Yes! I told Kyle I loved the idea of perhaps bringing a Neutral pantheon to the world of Dubzaron. ACKS's pantheon is a nice Not-Rome group that works well for its three point alignment but, for my money, there's a big hole for the Neutral barbarian sorts. One can assume they do ancestor worship and maybe like the nature and war gods of ACKS just fine. But one can also break out the AD&D Deities and Demigods book and think "wow the Norse pantheon rules".

So after this conversation with Kyle last year I've been dropping hints here and there about the Queens Rest Mountain dungeon and how it was some focal point of a planar... something. I really didn't know or need to unless play took us further in that direction. 

Kyle wanted his witch back so he dropped a hook to go into Queens Rest Mountain to find a way to get her back... across the planes or something. Because it's me I told him "there's some Twin Peaks curtains in there somewhere which a seer says leads to Celeste your former witch". Simple.

Slowly little story points in the bog standard dungeon delving have given life to the dungeon and life to the original vague concepts. During this session, it really started to become clearer. Here's how.

They entered the front room of the dungeon and found their Cloud Giant friend Primanti laying on the floor dead. Dead as a doornail. Why?

They hadn't been back to the dungeon in a few weeks due to it spewing poisonous gas. So I decided there should be a chance something bad (or even good!) might have happened to him. I took on DM Brigadine's 2d6 method of this sort of question. 12 = great!, 9-11 = good, 6-8 = nothing happened, 3-5 = bad, 2 = TERRIBLE. It's like a B/X reaction roll. And I rolled snake eyes.

So he's not only dead but all his treasure is gone. Here's where the session magic happens. I didn't really know WHY he was dead but the players had a tracker and wanted to investigate. I think the tracker failed by looking more and more over the body they realized his big honkin neck was covered in vampire bite marks. 

Why? Because a few weeks back the found that Slenderman was lairing in this dungeon. He's a not-vampire they met on Barsoom who absconded through the portal to Dubzaron when they Escaped from Barsoom. His powers are very similar to a vampire but there appear to be something differences which we'll get to later.

Well the players know that Einar the Barbarian is charmed by Slenderman so they got on edge. How could the vampire kill their friend! Some of them wanted vengeance but they realized Einar might not help them fight (or worse!) and also realized that Slenderman has 4 ladyvamps and they would be taking 5 (FIVE) level drain (TWO LEVELS) attacks each round if Slenderman and his ladies had the standard Vampire attack routine. Yikes.

So the stage is set for one of my favorite Dubzaron big bad evil guys since The Man from Another Place or Ferigno.

In the next room however the good guys got some help. I randomly rolled up a restocking for a room they'd been through 9000 times and got some ultra powerful thing in the Fiend Folio that was essentially an archon or angel or something and Lawful Good. The plot thickens!

In the monster entry (I don't remember what the thing was called) it was described as like a colorful unicorn made of wind. Ok... and it had the ability to build wooden things at will. Oh here we go. Well in this room was an evil altar that the PCs destroyed like a year ago or more. So I determined the air unicorn was creating a Lawful Good statue where the altar once was. And the statue was of THOR!

The players investigated and the guy with knowledge skills hit his roll to determine who the statue depicted so I described all that to him. Then Xanthos started talking with the wind unicorn. Who really liked him of course because alignment matters in real D&D.

Here's where I just started giving exposition for my vague concepts of Norse stuff going on in this region. The hits that the archon shared with Xanthos and the party were something like this:

-Dubzaron world will be the field of the next battle leading to Ragnarok

-Surtur the fire giant of Jotunheim of Norse myth is falling back in the ongoing battle because Celeste the Witch (Kyle's lost witch) is there in the planes and helping the Asgardians with planning and such (Joan of Arc coded)

-Thor is leading the Asgarding host and must claim Dubzaron world for the good guys of the pantheon or Terrible Things will happen

-They're in another world right now but the battle there is winding down. What the PCs do here will impact that battle and may decide the winner and Celeste's fate.

-The twin peaks curtains are how all of this will come to dubzaron world across the bifrost bridge. They'll likely see Heimdall if they can get the curtains to work.

-Strormbringer is involved... somehow. (Audible gasps from the players.)

-the curtains are north then west (Xanthos got the nigh exact location of the thing they had been trying to find for months).

-Slenderman is between here and there in the dungeon.

The last two were more direct items they just needed to keep moving and do their PC goal. The Slenderman comment had them all groaning. Rory the Barbarian (despite being kind of dumb) started wondering out loud if may his pal Einar was charmed by Slenderman and how if they went against the vampire Einar would not help or fight them. Xanthos and Kyrandis discussed if there's something they could do while Einar assured them Slenderman is great, a good friend, no problem. 

The next room had the giant statue of the Necromancer Queen which needed the Scepter and Orb placed in her hands to open to the next room. The party took months collecting these items and finally placed them to open the door (even though Einar almost broke the Orb dropping it during his climb up the statue).

And right there in the next room was Slenderman and his 4 dames. They were doing some swing dancing to a ghostly band in a giant sepulcher room with beautiful coffins for each of them. 

"So nice to see you Einar!" 

"You too man!" the barbarian replied "but you haven't been lifting! Look at your spindly arms!"

It went on this way with the two "friends" chatting it up as all the rest of the party stood awkwardly and Xanthos and Kryandis angrily held their tongue and damaged their cleric class grades.

Slenderman had a positive reaction check with the party arriving at his new much fancier lair (filled with the Cloud Giant's lair treasure, natch) and allowed them to search for secret doors to get to the curtain room.

Finding this secret door took them to another room where they fought a cloaker (thanks Fiend Folio!). The room had a big treasure haul of like 6,000 platinum pieces which they gathered up. Then finally to the room with the purple twin peaks curtains.

The curtains moved like the little room was fool of wind even though it most certainly wasn't. On the opposite wall was a mural of the Asgardians fighting with the Jutenheim giants and Celeste by Thor's side.  More hints at DM Dubs' vague worldbuilding. In play I changed the mural from being an ACKS focused one. Using a module's map and general room concepts for your own material is that easy.

The party debated going into the curtains or not and ended up voting on "not". Most of them believed they may get in a fight with Slenderman's crew and they wanted to have game time to deal with that. Also they were doing the math on their score of the platinum pieces (and some other smaller score I've forgotten about) and wanted to secure their level and cash for training. 

Only Rory's player was really pumped to open the curtains and made his opinion known despite falling in line behind the overall decision.

On the way back out Slenderman was still happy to see the party and grilled Einar for information about the twin peaks curtains, getting their general location. "I think I'll check out those curtains," the vampire replied. "No need to that," Einar tried to convince him to no avail. "Oh I'm looking at them," he said between lindy hops.

The party escaped the dungeon and got back across the wilderness to a safe spot without further impactful encounters.

But they did debate what they could do about Slenderman. How can they remove Einar's charm or curse or whatever. Would Slenderman just start the Ragnarok himself? How would he be involved? Would he find a good enough follow for his flawless lead?

DM Musings

This was alot. I'm sure most of you didn't follow all the years of worldbuilding implicit in the above or why it's so important. The worldbuilding is important because it was almost all done IN PLAY so at least some of the players at the table each week care about some of it. It's not all just in the DMs head where he ponders how great his ideas and personal immersion is.

It's also important because I hope this will show you why Gygax states in the forward to the AD&D Deities and Demigods book that it's "obvious to anyone who plays D&D why this book is important". I'm paraphrasing. 

Just reading D&Dg likely won't instill understanding of its importance. Playing D&D will. It's an absolutely necessary addition to real D&D campaigns. 

The above information is also important because one of my gaming goals with all this is to have it all lead to a MAX LEVEL Battle Braunstein. In ACKS that's level 14. Guys like Kyle Oconner and Drakon Invictus need a real game to play, not just solitaire. But max level lads like them (and Macho Mandalf if you're talking about Trollopulous) need AND DESERVE something earth shattering. Something incredible. Something epic and campaign shaking. 

They need Ragnarok. And it’s coming. 

Class Grades

Einar: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. Grade: E. Dealt Death

George (of the Jungle): L5 Beastmaster, Lawful. Grade: E. Tracked and did his part in combat.

Kyrandis L2 Wonder-Worker, Wrath-Bringer, Lawful. Grade: S for superior. Allowing a vampire/undead to just keep rocking it is hitting Divine Lawful spellcasters in this case due to the circumstances of Slenderman destroying a Lawful creature in the dungeon and no clear in session planning against this great evil. I understand the argument "class grade shouldn't mean suicide" but I feel its egregious enough situation (and between downtime actions of cleric-types not looking into the vampire issue) to cause a one step grade hit.

Rory: L6 Barbarian, Death Dealer, Neutral. Grade: E. Dealt Death.

Tuck: L6 Barbarian, Neutral. Grade: E. Did his barbarian thang.

Xanthos: L7 Cleric, Mendicant, Lawful. Grade: S for Superior. See Kyrandis above. I was also concerned about not much Divination cast but it looks like that particular slot was used. It's a shame because the conversation with the wind unicorn was great!