Review: Brozer - Island of War and Winter

Review: Brozer - Island of War and Winter

In the online TTRPG discussion circles, you may hear the term “Braunstein” being thrown around. You may have heard that Braunstein was the precursor to D&D and tabletop RPGs in general, and that Blackmoor was first labeled “a fantasy Braunstein.” However, it’s much more difficult to understand what it is and how to run one. At least, it was until last year there was a very important release – Brozer: Island of War and Winter. I believe that it deserves much more publicity than it did, so I’d like to give you a quick rundown and review. For the most part, my ramblings are pointless because Brozer is free, and you can simply download it and read it yourself.

Brozer is only 60 pages long, but even if you are not planning to run Brozer, the first 20 pages would still be extremely useful. These 20 pages are full of short essays on all things Braunstein. The first one is “Why is our Braunstein scenario free?” by Gabe Mamola and “Contorted Trash.” This essay describes the current (absolute) state of the TTRPG industry and hobby in a delightfully provocative, but honest manner. The best part of this essay is the following: “RPGs are a very difficult product to build a profitable business model on; once someone understands the principles of the game, and grabs a set of dice, they're set for life—so long as even the faintest breath of creative spirit animates them.” This is even more relevant now with the entire tariff debacle – I see people throwing tantrums because they will not be able to consooom as much as before. Don’t you have everything you need already? The secret is that the hobby doesn’t need the industry.

Nowadays, it really seems that many players have a very consooooomerist attitude towards the hobby, and the industry is trying to exploit that. By “industry” I mean not only the Hasbro/WotC, Paizo, SJGames, and others, but also OSR PDF peddlers who either keep trying to sell you the same old product over and over again or push barely playable rules-lite pamphlets. Most will claim that this trend started with D&D 3.0, but some will argue that it began with AD&D 2e. Regardless of when it began, it’s ongoing and there no sign of it slowing down. This essay was one of the reasons why I decided to make all my materials free – I realized that if I want to see a change in the hobby, paywalls are not the way to go. However, I’ve seen some strange claims about certain publishers saying that hobbyists releasing free content is one of the reasons for their low profit. “Just how dare they use their products!”

This essay also tells you what Braunstein actually is in bold text: “A mode of play that involves multiple actors operating in conflict under a fog of war.” As you can see, there is not a single word about the rules system, game mechanics, and other similar stuff, because Braunstein is a mode of play, not a strictly defined ruleset. You can run a Braunstein in any system or without any system at all – that’s the beauty of it. Once you understand the principles, you are good to go – you do not need to buy the Braunstein Player’s Handbook, Braunstein Master’s Guide, Complete Braunstein, Ultimate Braunstein, or anything else. In short, the main point of this essay is to stop being a whale.

The next essay is titled “Running your first faction Braunstein” by Jeffro Johnson. It talks about the history of Braunstein, how it happened, how it was rediscovered, and how the community reacted. You know, the good old “There’s no wrong way to play -> No one had ever played this way -> We have always played that way -> They were playing it wrong -> I’m trademarking Braunstein and will take you to court if you use this word”.

The most important thing about this essay is that it tells you of not one, but three ways of running a Braunstein with upsides and downsides of each. I will not describe them – you can read it yourself. However, I’d like to point out the following – something Jeffro italicized in text: “You have to get the players to interact with each other and they have to interact a lot.” It just will not work otherwise. This can be a problem, because many modern players are very… uninteractive. I bet all of you have had players who just stare blankly when the referee describes the situation and then, after a minute of awkward silence, ask him “So, what do we do?” Sometimes, it feels that a solo game oracle would’ve been a better player.

In Braunsteins, however, you have to create an inciting incident that would force players to interact with one another. You have to avoid turning it into a set of solitaire games. Another important aspect to expect is complete chaos – things will get out of control. The essay suggests you not to panic. As somebody who has not run a Braunstein yet (I am going to, I swear), I say that this is probably the most difficult part. However, this is the case where my favorite advice comes up – man up, stop being a wuss – just go ahead and run it!

The next chapter is titled “Brozer: Island of War and Winter” by BDubs1776. It seems that the book used to have a different title, because in this chapter, it is referred to as “Island of Wind and War”, not “Island of War and Winter.” But anyway, that’s just a nitpick. The chapter very briefly describes the setting, and the inciting incident – the McGuffinstone falling from space. It also says that you may see players ignore the incident entirely and instead focus on their faction’s goals.

Speaking of that – factions. Factions are the most important part of Braunstein (and arguably, TTRPGs in general), as their goals drive the gameplay. Each player will control a faction. Each player will know which player controls which faction, but probably will not know the specific abilities, resources, and goals of all factions. Factions have different alignments, resources, and goals. The book suggests assigning players factions of varied alignments to facilitate player-versus-player conflict – without conflict there is no Braunstein. Factions can be asymmetric – some are stronger and have more resources than the others have.

There are some other things you have to think through before starting. First – how do factions communicate? Second – how do you decide the winner and when do you stop? The book provides guidelines for that. Also, there is something profound hidden in there – generating your own factions. In Brozer, most of the stats and resources for the factions were rolled up using the AD&D 1e Monster Manual. Next time when you roll a random encounter and get, let’s say a dragon clutch, a bugbear clan, or a drow enclave, you roll up not just a combat encounter, but add an entirely new faction to your game. This is very important.

The next chapter is titled “A brief introduction on the factions and faction play” by P. Alexander (Cirsova). It briefly discusses how to use factions, what parameters are given, and gives a page-long quick rundown on all the 14 factions included in Brozer.

Then, the book talks about each faction in greater detail. Each faction takes up only two pages and consists of the description, leader, officers, troops, location, goals, and “under the hood” notes. Stats given are almost system-agnostic – they can easily be used with most D&D-like systems and will not be a problem when adapting to, for example, GURPS. The factions range from things like the Roman Empire to meme frogs to swolecerors. The main point is to showcase faction design and how to write their objectives in a way that increases interaction.

At the very end, you also have another chapter titled “Battle Rules for Old School Fantasy Games” by Jeffro Johnson. The chapter talks about the necessity of mass combat rules in RPGs and why it may be difficult to introduce them. It also talks about scaling, abstraction, and why AD&D combat works so well for this purpose.

That’s basically it. Brozer is an excellent piece of work, I would even say groundbreaking. However, even if you read it, it may still be unclear how to set everything up properly. If you’re interested, I suggest reading a GM’s Report by Obsessor about his elven Braunstein scenario called Hvytbarg. I linked it below alongside with the download link to Brozer. Get it, read it, run it, embrace it. I haven’t run Brozer yet, but I do have a Braunstein scenario in mind to try.

Download Brozer (for free!) - https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/497682/brozer-island-of-war-and-winter

Hvytbarg — GM’s Report - https://obsessor1.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/hvytbarg-gms-report/

Hvytbarg — The Story - https://obsessor1.wordpress.com/2025/02/19/hvytbarg-the-story/