Piratestein AAR 7/3/25

Braunstein is born of a premise, and that is all that is needed.

Introduction

(You may wish to skip the “The Report” section. Below is just context.)

I am counteracting my own “They don’t really play” allegations recently hurled towards me by announcing that I have run another in-person session Braunstein. It’s true that I have been playing much less lately, for a variety of factors, with time being the most predominant one. But #Piratestein has proven once again that the single session Braunstein can be the most engaging regular solution to the dreaded “time” problem.

The inspiration for #Piratestein came from an obvious place. I was watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl with an eye for fun and not trying to be critical in any way. The film succeeds in being fun throughout. The key is to never ask “is this dumb?” but instead to always ask “is this cool?” And Pirates of the Caribbean is cool. The idea for a Braunstein really became clear when Jack Sparrow is revealed to have stolen a cursed medallion, turning himself undead, while dueling Barbossa, and the question is asked aloud, “whose side is he on?” At the beginning, Jack saves Elizabeth, who defends him, and Jack immediately betrays her trust and uses her as leverage to escape. Will Turner duels Jack early on, but later joins forces with him to save Elizabeth and break the curse. Elizabeth demands a “parley,” as a means to negotiate. As a 1:1 player:character Braunstein, you could use the following factions: Jack, Will, the Governor, Elizabeth, Norrington, Barbossa. I immediately began to brainstorm what a pirate-themed Braunstein setting would look like. Moving to the wider scope of the second and third films, and taking from various other pirate themed media, I borrowed the following factions:

1. Jack Sparrow and his crew

2. Commodore Norrington and the Royal Navy

3. Lord Cutler Beckett of the East India Trading Company

4. Davy Jones and the crew of the Flying Dutchman

5. Tia Dalma, the human form of the goddess Calypso

Had I devoted more time to this, I am sure that I could have come up with 10 distinct factions across all the films, but I simply looked for other sources for inspiration.

Something about me that I am learning. Whatever “gonzo” style play is, I am finding that I actually love it, especially for these single session Braunsteins. Things are allowed to be goofy. This opened up the possibilities for factions in my mind. Inspiration came to me in the form of music as ideas came to my mind.

The song “Banana Man” by the group Tally Hall was my first unconventional idea. A tribal faction who hands out bananas that have some sort of ritual effect. It actually seemed really on theme! The other very unconventional idea was to use “Growl-Tiger,” a character from TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and featured in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats based on that work. A wicked cat-man hybrid who travels up rivers, commits evil upon the world, hates the Siamese, but has a soft spot for romance also seemed on brand with the setting. In he goes. This also gave a natural spot for convergence, I just needed to get an Asian pirate in the setting.

These were the factions in #Piratestein and their faction leader.

1. Pirates of Braunagua

   1. Zach Marrow (Jack Sparrow, PotC)

2. Royal Navy

   1. Peter Brown (Norrington, PotC)

3. Banana Men

   1. Talahal (“Banana Man” by Tally Hall)

4. Flying Dutchman

   1. Davy Jones (PotC)

5. Braundong Pirate Confederation

   1. Zong Shi Sao (Guangdong Pirate Confederation and Zheng Yi Sao of history)

6. The Jellicle Cats

   1. Growl-Tiger (Cats)

7. Dua Lipa

   1. (This is the Tia Dalma faction, the only factions without a ship or crew)

8. Norland Reavers

   1. Angus Macready (Lifted straight from #BROZER)

9. Pirates of Penzance

   1. Pirate King (Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan)

10. East Braunstein Company

    1. Marmaduke Whittington (Lord Beckett, PotC)

This made 5 pirate factions, 2 “civilized” factions, and 3 neutral factions. I will post the writeups for all of these in a follow-up post for those interested, although…

This was very rushed.

While #Piratestein was ruminating in my mind for weeks, the game materialized 8 days prior to its play date. I also did not have my usual downtime set aside at my regular job to work on this. My summer job of moving tables and chairs all day is not conducive to writing, although a lot of ideas come out of those moments. The entirety of the game was written in a span of about 24 hours. Because of this, the game was undoubtedly THROWN TOGETHER. The nice thing about Braunstein is that this doesn’t really matter all that much. It does matter, but this is why we call the game “anti-fragile.” Even a poorly or haphazardly designed game can be a blast for everyone actually playing the game, because the compelling part is not in the setting or in the mechanics but in the interaction the game promotes.

The Report

The Roster

Once I had a date confirmed at home, I invited everyone who has played in a Bruanstein with me so far. Out of that group, 7 immediately accepted (all rejections were due to prior scheduling commitments/work). I was able to get 3 more players who played in one for the first time. One is actually a part of the “original D&D group” I had years ago who was finally able to make it, while the other two were individuals targeted as being likely interested. 10 is likely the maximum number my house can hold WHILE MY FAMILY IS ALSO HOME. We will likely be looking to change venues for the future if the numbers are 10 or higher.

The Premise

The Braunagua Atoll is home to several islands. Piracy abounds, but the King of Braunstein is looking to clear up the area to keep its colonies safe. The mighty Kraken has surfaced, as well as active sightings of Davy Jones’ Flying Dutchman. Each faction is there for a reason, and they need to accomplish those goals using only what’s in front of them.

The Map

Players received a detailed hexmap and had a larger vague map to represent the game map. Players had to move their pieces across the board to go to different islands or to attack other ships. If they were in the same hex or an adjacent hex, they could engage with another ship. The game map was not to scale unfortunately, so players tried their best to determine who was where exactly. This didn’t seem to cause any issues. Because of this, ALL SHIP LOCATIONS WERE REVEALED AT ALL TIMES. This does away with about 80% of the referee work. While it removes the biggest part of what a fog-of-war game is, the tradeoff in what it does for pacing more than makes up for it.

The Time

The session was scheduled to go from 5-9. As one may expect, not everyone shows up on time. 5:30 to 9:15 was more accurate. I used turns that allowed ships more movement: otherwise there was no restriction on actions per turn. Every turn allowed them to move their ships to a new spot on the board, most places being about 2 turns away from each other for the standard ship. The key to maintaining pacing was that turns progressed even as combat was occurring. Players did not need the referee for combat, so I threatened them at the first big combat: if this goes any longer, the turn will change and the other players will get to make their moves. To my surprise, players had no problem with losing their turns in this way! And if they did, they may disengage combat to get their movement in. Only one faction had a mechanic tied to a turn. Davy Jones’ heart was recoverable by him after turn 8. On turn 8 he arrived on land to where it was buried, just to discover that it had been dug up on turn 7!

The Combat

Combat was split between naval combat and melee combat. While much has been said about what is best for a Braunstein’s combat, I have what I think is a unique problem: My players are USUALLY neophytes to ANY system, or their experiences do not overlap between OSR, 5E, Warhammer, etc. Boot Hill 2e isn’t something I had time to condense down or teach to the whole room. Instead, Naval combat was resolved using a system I came up with a few hours before the start. Each ship has a hull value and a gun number (multiple of 6.) You roll d6’s equal to your gun number divided by 6 (most ships rolled 3d6). You subtract that number from your enemy’s hull. When their hull hits 0, their ship sinks. You can move towards or away your opponent, depending on your ship’s speed score. We made up a quick system to determine running away, comparable to death saving throws in 5E, but you roll xd6 where x is your speed score.

Boarding another ship led to melee combat, where we just used RISK rules. This was unsatisfying for most as they realized and was later confirmed that RISK favors the attacker if numbers are equal. This favored aggressive play, which is not altogether bad!

How this played out in an example: Davy Jones’s primary goal was to press Zach Marrow into 1000 years of service upon the Flying Dutchman. However, the Dutchman is too slow to catch Marrow’s ship, so their first engagement just led to Marrow fleeing. Jones needed to get another faction involved, and got the Pirates of Penzance to help stall Marrow long enough to board him and capture him.

I learned this from the design of Diplomacy while playing #DiplomacyByX. In Diplomacy, you cannot advance without cooperating with another faction SOMEWHERE. You can design your factions in a way where they cannot achieve a goal without the help of another faction just from a mechanics standpoint.

Combat needs to be fixed. I am thinking of a d10 way based on Tiny d10 that can be a way to resolve Braunstein combat at any level, that can be picked up in about 5 minutes while playing through it. If all your players know how to use AD&D or Boot Hill, that would be preferable. But for my scenarios, maybe it doesn’t need to be so deep?

The Goals

Goals were usually too vague or TOO specific. Go read Parker's Substack report on his first Braunstein to get an idea about what I mean. I needed to spend more time crafting the goals. It turns out this is the ONE part of the Braunstein that really needs to be hammered down before the game. The biggest flaw was that players didn’t quite feel motivated to pursue their faction goals and focused on their personal goals, probably because they were more specific and more interesting.

Romance Subplot

I introduced a “marriage” mechanic where players could essentially trade women as wives. It did keep some people busy, but it was almost entirely forgettable. What I think WAS successful was the idea of introducing subsystems to keep players always working on something, especially if it goes across alignment.

Treasure Maps

Nobody started out with magic items. Instead, I gave players coordinates to follow to find buried treasure. Some players used it a lot, some ignored it completely. It was inconsequential for all but one: the map to a map to a map to the location of Davy Jones’s heart.

The Most Interesting Part

Here is the most interesting sequence of events. Dua Lipa, the sea witch, had the goal of essentially falling in love (Based on Calypso in PotC as stilted lover). The only player who gave her the time of day was the Royal Navy Admiral, who ferried her across the sea. Dua Lipa’s treasure map was the one to Davy Jones’s heart, or rather it was a chain of maps that eventually led to it. The Royal Navy took her to each location not knowing what it was. But when she got the heart, I revealed to the player what he could do: If she took it to the Kraken, she could actually use its power to take the form of the Kraken and essentially become it. That is what the player chose to do, and rewarded the Admiral for his affection by being the equivalent of a 60 gun ship with 4 times the hull strength and 3 times the speed. The crazy part is that the Admiral did not need this boon! He had already leveraged his position to such a strong spot it was icing on the cake. He used the Kraken to sink a French ship that came through (given to a player whose captain had died). Braunagua Atoll is now safe from all pirates, protected by a literal goddess of the sea following the orders of the Royal Navy! It was an incredible way to end the evening.

Overall

I pushed the limits on “low-prep Braunsteins.” I learned that goals need to be well crafted and well communicated to players. I was very happy having an open map for players to track their own movement, but obviously it needs work. I was pleased with simple combat that resolved itself, but I need to develop a system that is fair to both sides and instead highlights a faction’s specific traits and bonuses.

My players kept talking about what we should do for next time. That assumption is SO AWESOME TO HEAR. My players WANT to do this again. They want to try out new settings. One is looking to run his own.

This feeling beats any D&D campaign. I am creating a growing community of gamers who cut across different groups and interests. Maybe we turn this into a legitimate clubhouse. An in-person clubhouse. All I can do is keep playing games and inviting more people. That’s all I intend to do!