Holy smokes, guys, David Wesley is running a game of Braunstein at GenCon!

Originally shared by Brent Newhall

Holy smokes, guys, David Wesley is running a game of Braunstein at GenCon!

https://www.gencon.com/events/122494

For those not familiar, David Wesley ran a wargaming club in the 1960's, where he both introduced the idea of the referee, and for a change from all the wargaming ran a one-shot where the players controlled specific characters in a small town with explosive politics. That game was Braunstein, and it quickly turned into a full-scale role-playing scenario. When Wesley was called up to serve in Vietnam, he left the control of the group to another member, a young Dave Arneson, who started using Gary Gygax's "Chainmail" rules to run games in Arneson's sprawling castle and dungeon of Blackmoor, setting the stage for the invention of D&D.

It's always hard to pin down who was the original inventor of many things, but you can strongly argue that David Wesley invented tabletop role-playing as we know it today, and you can play in his game in two weeks!

Here's a (lengthy!) interview with Wesley that explains all this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1SZJjZ-U9I&t=6027s
https://www.gencon.com/events/122494