The 2024 Battle Braunstein Faction Draft.

The Draft's Concept

2024 is the year of the Battle Braunstein, which now thanks to Bdubs BROsr challenge. The challenge is to have a Battle Braunstein by June 2024 or lose your privilege to use #BROsr. I have an in person group and set it to the Saturday of Memorial Weekend so people could make sure they are off for work, just before the clock runs out!

I was originally planning on using some existing patrons in an area and then making patrons out of other possible groups encountered by PCs in the Paradiso campaign. This ended up becoming more work than what I had initially planned. I felt prep addiction starting to rear its ugly head. What if I put all this work in and players are not interested or engaged?

I have played in 2 Braunsteins before, and even won the originally Trollopulous Battle Braunstein refereed by the infamous Jeffro Johnson. The other was refereed by Macho Mandolf and was won by Brian Renniger. I wanted to learn from these experiences to try to improve my Braunstein style game. Something I wanted to figure out is how to set up the game that players can just dive right in with no confusion at the start.

My attempt to solve this is what I am coining as The Faction Draft. The rules are simple, I took 12 possible factions that all are available in the original Monster Manual. I then wrote each faction on a note card and the corresponding page in the Monster Manual. The 12 factions I chose are as fallows.

Faction List:

• Men

• Gnomes

• Halflings

• Dwarfs

• Elves

• Tritons

• Gnolls

• Orcs

• Goblins

• Ogres

• Hill Giants

• Kobolds

Steps of The Draft:

1. Each Player will roll a d12 one at a time. Shuffle the deck of cards then cycle through them based on the number rolled. For Example, If a 3 is rolled the first 2 cards are placed at the bottom of the deck and the 3rd card is given to the player.

2. The player then uses the rolls based in the Monster Manual to determine the amount of units and treasure that their faction has to work with. This hopefully will balance the game and if a bad roll is made it is on the player and not the referee.

3. The player is then allowed to meme up how the faction exists and chose an alignment if there is not a specific alignment given with the faction. Are the humans pilgrims or berserkers? Are the elves friendly or antagonistic with the dwarfs? Do they goblins live in a cave or do they have some encampment somewhere?

4. After everything is rolled and memed, the referee will make a small map that will not allow a faction to feel isolated from the rest.

5. A Brovenloft style land grab will take place by the players to determine their starting positions on the map.

6. The players will have about 1 week to plot, make alliances, and possibly preform some downtime to prepare like reconnaissance, fortification, or moving units to a position.

2024 Draft Results

Draft Pick 1: Goblins

Draft Pick 2: Kobolds

"The Arbronians"

A tribe of creole speaking meth smoking, moonshine brewing Kobolds located in the bayous to the South of the Island dubbed Murkmire by the locals. These canoe paddlers once fought a great war against a tribe of bugbears to the brink of each's extinction. They came together after a peace treaty was formed splitting their home underneath a ruined castle. They now dominate Murkmire as one tribe. Now their Kobold Tribal Chief Shadow-Killer leads the Kobolds to attain allies and rebuild the castle above.

"The Scabs"

A goblin tribe of blood thirsty mercenary raiders possessing an unhealthy obsession with fire and explosives. Their High Chief Shad leads them to glory from their cave within the Great Barren, a large desert resembling a volcanic American South West. All fear their infamous wolf raider cavalry and ruthless warriors. Their blades are for hire to those willing to trust goblins in their ranks.

Draft Pick 3: Ogres

"The Maulki Shogunate"

To the North in an ruined fortress bult along side a mountain lay the Jogres of The Maulki Shogunate. They are lead by their Shogun, Maulki-san, whose authority derives not only from strength, size, and military prowess, but divine right bestowed from their god Shrekiman, the ogre embodiment of strength and domination. They are known across the island for taking slaves and their cultures reverence of Sumo, the true martial art of Jogre kind. Maulki-san plans to gather his shamans and samurai for the long awaited "Great Swamp Raid" in which they will finally lay claim to the island and solidify their Shogunate.

Draft Pick 4: Elves, Grey

"The Elves of the Mushroom Forest"

Within a fey mushroom forest surrounded by The Forbidden Planes of grasslands and flowers lay a small walled off hamlet. At the center stands a tall tower overlooking the tall mushrooms belonging to The Grand Wizard Jacklwyn, Lord of the Sky and King of the Grey Elves. For over a millennium he has righteously ruled his isolated people as he mastered his craft of the arcane arts and tamed the various griffons and hippogriffs to form his legendary Sky Fleet. They are willing to speak with any "intelligent" factions on the island but place their race high above any other.

Draft Pick 5: Dwarfs

"United Dwarven Socialist Republic aka UDSR"

In the Frozen Wastes to the North of the island lies The Red Mountain with the dwarven city of Dwarvengrad carved within. These dwarfs follow a radical totalitarian ideology they call "Communism".

Their Supreme Leader, Chairman Stalin, cares little for the "Capitalist" world above ground and seeks to bring a globalized communist dwarven state to the under dark by spreading the ideology with their little red books by Marx. They have no love for their neighbors above and have been known to fight mounted upon armored bear cavalry.

Landgrab

The Land grab was held exactly 1 week after the Faction Draft. When players where forming their factions during the draft, they already had independently came up with what kind of terrain their faction would desire based off of each faction they had received, Monster Manual information, and their diet of fantasy books, films, and video games.

The original Brovenloft Landgrab, refereed by the hilarious KKalvaitis on X, had the map made with no influence from the players, which gave the feeling of just pick a spot and roll your faction. It was made prior to knowledge of the amount of players that would participate and without the hindsight learned of making the map too big for factions to turtle up and not engage with other factions. It was very fun to play but my landgrab would be a little different. Will it be better or worse? I'm not sure at this moment but I will know after the Battle Braunstein is held.

When making my map right away I knew I wanted it to be an island, I am always a fan of 6 mile hexes so that is what I chose to go with. I used the player input on what terrain their faction was around. They were bayou wetlands, canyon desert, mountainous steppes, and mushroom fae forest. I took these added planes and even a frozen tundra area and we were set for the magic. This map not only has the dreaded desert swamp but the even zanier cold desert! I used the table from Appendix B of the Dungeon Masters Guide to help randomize some of the areas and also gave it my unique touch, and added some points of interest to the map.

Both Jeffro and Macho Mandolf had points of interest in their Braunsteins for players to interact with, but I do not feel they were fully utilized in either game. Jeffro made some kind of obelisk that apparently raised undead forces or something. Not sure what it did exactly because it never got used. Mandolf had a section of flying city dungeon fall on the map and my faction chose to search it for.... something. I feel the points of interest are an important to play and can shift the balance in one way or another.

My Points of interest will work as fallows. They will either give a boon, be harmful, or offer some kind of utility to the greater game depending on what it is. If a dice roll is needed to determine success, a dice roll will be made using a d100 roll on the reaction table. The success rate to determine the outcome. I learned about this tactic from Crossface02 on X. Give him a fallow! This is to prevent too much time being wasted from the interaction and still encourage engagement. Again i will not know the success or impact this will have until after the Battle Braunstein is held. I will go into my Points of Interest during the Battle Braunstein write up to keep some mystery for my players.

Draft Pick 6: Gnomes

"The Gnomish Assembly of Divine Favor."

A cult of religious zealots located in the Southern meadows of The Forbidden Planes. Their Leader, High Reverend Jim Baker, has long prophesized the end times and he fears they are upon the gnomes for real this time... seriously.

Jim has made a lot of money from his congregation who raise and train badgers for their settlement's protection. They will stop at nothing to spread their religion in the name of their all powerful deity The Gold Badger, bringer of fortune and protector of gnome and badger alike. May The Golden Badger guide the High Reverend and his flock to victory and prosperity.

The above map shows the map prior to the land grab. 2 of the players were unable to attend the land grab or the faction draft so they forfeit their ability to chose either for sake of time. Both players are bros I've known forever so they had no problem with this. They are just happy they get to join in on the action. These factions were the Dwarfs and the Gnomes in case you were wondering. Anyway, I selected their locations before the draft for 2 reasons. First being that I wanted people to be able to scout and plot hard the week before the Braunstein. Second because I was already making the map so it was better to just get it out of the way and not think too far into it, simple as.

The selection process was based on first come first serve. It encourages punctuality. I waited till everyone who could attend was present before I showed anyone the map. Then I gave them a couple of minutes to look it over and think about. When the First draft pick was ready, I allowed him to choose then we went down the line in order: goblins, elves, kobolds , and finally ogres. Below is the map after the land grab with each of the factions capitals highlighted.

Next week is The Battle Braunstein. The winner will be crowned King of The Braunstein. The time is upon us, stay tuned.