SubscribeMost gamers have never heard of Braunstein. Sad but true. In the hierarchy of self-awareness you’ll find the circle of gamers who know what D&D is (a very, very large circle), then inside of that is the circle of gamers who know what Greyhawk is (large but smaller), and inside that the circle who knows what Blackmoor is (smaller still). And then in the very center, vanishingly small, are the people who’ve heard of Braunstein. Which is a pity, because Braunstein is the granddaddy of them all.Braunstein: the Roots of Roleplaying Games by Ben Robbins. The first role-playing game was run by soldier David Wesely in 1967, his group including none other than D&D co-creator Dave Arneson. This past GenCon Braunstein was revived! Here's what the players had to say. Handouts from an earlier Braunstein revival. David Wesely's post-game comments. [via Rob McDougall]
Back in 1965, I read the rules to a game published in 1880 that said one could use a "12-sided teetotum" instead of a 6-sided die, for resolving odds of 6:1, 7:1 etc up to 11:1, but did not explain what a teetotum was or how to make one. I had seen a set of models of the regular polyhedra in my High School trig class, and decided that a "12-sided teetotum" must be the 12-sdied thingy (a regular dodecahedron) I had seen in the set. Wanting to try out the game, I went to school, got out the "Edmund Scientific Supplies" catalog, and ordered one set of the polyhedra from them for $6.00 (gasolene was $ 0.20 /gallon then, so that would be about $66.00 in today's money). This set of five polyhedra came with the faces already numbered, to make it easy to see that there were 12 sides on a dodacahedron, or 20 on an icosahedron, which made them easy to use as dice. So they became the ancestors of all the D4, D6, D8, D12 and D20 sets ever sold. There have been other shapes, and other ways of numbering them invented since, and there alwys were six-sided dice (though using the numbers 1-2-3-4-5-6 instead of pips or painted dots is a feature of the classic "D6" used by D&D, that I do not remember ever seeing before then).Teetotum (a word I didn't know before).
Someone tried to patent using these solids as dice at about the same time that I started using them, and since I have never met this guy, I am willing to assume that - like the airplane and the lightbulb - a lot of other people could have thought of it, and he did not necessarily get the idea from me. I only learned of the 1965 patent application very recently, and was amused to find that he was granted a patent on not the idea but on his "design" for the five regular polyhedra (invented back in 150 a.d.) he sent in with the application, which were the same colors and numbering patterns that were already being sold by Edmund Scientific...
Rather like submitting a '59 Chevrolet when applying for a patent on inventing the Automobile, and being granted a patent on the shape of the tailfins.
I thought using them for dice was (1) already implied by the 1880 game rules and (2) so obvious that no one could get a patent on it. I guess I was wrong.
SO why are my dice the ancestors of all the D&D dice?
Well, while I only saw value in the D12 and D20, the other guys in our wargaming group thought they were all "cool", and we used them in our wargames (and kept buying these expensive sets from Edmund Scientific as they wore out). When Dave Arneson (one of the guys in our group) invented his fantasy role-playing game, and took it to Gary Gygax to be cleaned-up and published, they decided to use the cool polyhedral dice, even though I told them that they should just use regular dice, because "No one is going to buy your game for $10 if they then have to spend another $6 to get the special dice before they can play it". But they ignored me and of course, "Dungeons and Dragons" did not sell, and no one has ever heard of it.
By the way, a 12-sided teetotum is not a D-12! I finally found one in a game published in 1828, which I paid a lot of money for, just to get the teetotum (the game is REALLY stupid, but the teetotum is kind of clever).
Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.We can rule out GURPS right now.
On the second page of the "further background" link David Wesely mentions it was Lou Zocchi who invented the d10.Woah. Flashback to the Eighties. Somewhere in my house, buried in stacks of old gaming stuff that hasn't seen the light of day in decades, is a Zocchihedron.
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posted by Kattullus at 8:53 PM on September 6, 2008