More people have hosted Braunstein events as a result of my efforts than they have due to David Wesely’s. If not for me, Braunstein would be nothing but a curiosity of the distant past, a novelty to be reenacted from time to time, an intermediary form in the transition from wargame to rpg. But I showed how the Braunstein concept was applicable to a wide range of problems that tabletop gamers face TODAY. I showed them how to incorporate session Braunsteins into their continuing rpg campaigns. I showed them how to conceive of their continuing campaigns as being a variety of Braunstein in their own right. And I showed them that roleplaying games are in fact broken without the play dynamics that derive from Braunsteins.

Nobody among the “Blackmoor Bunch” ever anticipated any of these developments. No scholar digging through the pages of old fanzines ever conceived of anything remotely like any of this. And no one ever did more to help more people to pay off the promise of the early D&D rule sets than yours truly. Indeed, no one had the audacity or the social resources to even attempt to play the sort of game described by those rulesets until after I and my friends publicly demonstrated that it was not only possible to play such games, but also that it was more fun and more engaging than the derivative nongame that people call “D&D” today.

Astonishing.

If you have an abiding love of vintage rpgs, not for how they have been traditionally understood but because of what they could be and what they ought to be… then you simply cannot thank me enough. And to all of you that are enjoying a fundamentally different rpg hobby culture today than has ever existed before, I can only say, “you’re welcome.”

You’re welcome.