D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Ruin Explorer]

I don’t think out purchasing power outweighs theirs.

I think the thing is, even if it does, WotC doesn't supply so much official, rules-bearing material that their buying power would be hugely different. There's a pretty low limit to how much you can spend on official rulebooks, including setting books, probably including adventures, per year. Because WotC just don't put out that much.

It's not like MtG, where you could easily blows thousands chasing certain cards or just because you're a lunatic. With D&D you just buy all the books and then you have all the books and that's it.

But the excess purchasing power does often go somewhere - 3PPs/Kickstarter!

When I first started we used terms like grognard but I feel like there was more respect to it.

At the very beginning maybe Gygax etc. used it self-laudatorily, but that man thought genocidaires were cool, soo... But by the early '00s? The opposite. There was more of a sneer on it. As illustrated in the discussion in this thread, people (including me, sorry), said grog specifically to cast some kind of aspersion on the person (i.e. moaning for the sake of moaning), where now it's more like "you're just another old fogey like me, remember that!" without much of a sneer.

Younger people don't generally use it at all. Not because they're nicer - just because it's not part of their vocab much.

 

[Maxperson]

A level-up from there and you become Schroedinger's Grognard, right?

And there's only one step up from there.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I




At the very beginning maybe Gygax etc. used it self-laudatorily, but that man thought genocidaires were cool, soo... But by the early '00s? The opposite. There was more of a sneer on it. As illustrated in the discussion in this thread, people (including me, sorry), said grog specifically to cast some kind of aspersion on the person (i.e. moaning for the sake of moaning), where now it's more like "you're just another old fogey like me, remember that!" without much of a sneer.

My perspective may be different because I am talking more about the 80s and 90s. But even in the 00s, I didn’t refer to that generation sneeringly. It was the same with music or musicians. The old guard were all hippies from the 60s who complained about our heavy metal. But we understood we could learn a lot about playing and about the history from them. We might bicker about matters of taste if Obituary came up (but I also understood the aesthetics of death metal were probably justifiably incomprehensible to a person who came of age with Hendrix)

Also we were often playing with and learning from older gamers. If I met someone who was older than me, I would generally be interested in hearing their account of how things were before my time. I saw terms like that as having a lot more good natured running to them then than how I see them get used online today (but again I do think there is a big difference between IRL and online so it is a lopsided comparison I am making)

 

[Maxperson]

I think maybe you or whoever taught that to you confused it with whale-based approaches.

That the, "Throw a whale on your competitors so that you're the only one people can buy from." method?

 

[NN]

I thought the grog wars were old gits vs 3E, long overtaken by The Event that was 4E.

 

[Parmandur]

I thought the grog wars were old gits vs 3E, long overtaken by The Event that was 4E.

4E is ancient history: now itnis 2014 5E vs. 2024 5E, with the old guard preferring Volo's and Xanathar's to later 5E material.

 

[Maxperson]

Just be the kind of grog you want to see!

That's easy.

 

[Mercurius]

So that's a big loud "No" to my question?

No, I don't have hard numbers - but I don't think you do either. But it is really beside the point. Regardless of what the actual numbers are, older players (25+) still make up a significant percentage of purchasing, whether that is 25% or 55% of sales.

It also doesn't reflect my experience as an RPG buyer. I was never more completist, more keen to buy every book, than at that age group. Even if it pushed my finances kind of hard. I'm far less completionist now. I'm currently a lot better positioned to buy every single WotC D&D book as it comes out, but I don't. Why? Because both I'm far more financially responsible and sensible at 46 than I was at a younger age, and because I'm far less overexcited by RPG stuff (even though I care about it deeply) than I was at a younger age. I'm no longer a completionist.

Also "more product" over the industry as a whole is I think very different from "More stuff from WotC specifically".

Again, I'm not saying "more product" or "more WotC stuff." I do think that older players buy the larger share of non-WotC stuff. I never see my students carrying around Free League stuff, though I see the occasional PHB (maybe it is different in other parts of the world). But again...there are larger points here, and I don't think getting too fixated on specifics is particularly valuable, especially when we don't have the data. Furthermore, this isn't a court of law, requiring evidence for every opinion. I don't think I need to provide documentation for expressing the view that grognards still buy a lot of RPG product, WotC or otherwise - and a significant enough amount to "matter."

And again, "matter" does not equate with "matter more" or "matter most."

Not really. It's actually quite fundamental, because the young people definitely wildly outnumber the grogs, your only logic for grogs mattering significantly is that the grogs wildly outspend them.

Did I say "wildly outspend them?"

Sure but we're what, 10%? 15% of sales? 20%? Without figures it's meaningless, and clearly even you agree that the vast majority of the market isn't grogs.

Because of the way your post is written, dude, it absolutely looks like that's what you're saying - that we spend more and thus matter disproportionately. You are not free from responsibility here!

Tell me what I wrote that gives you that implication, because I think that is a clear distortion. "Looks like" doesn't necessarily equate with what I actually wrote, especially the part "matter disproportionately." I never said such a thing.

Again, fixating on specifics is, imo, a distraction. My main point is that grognards (in the broad sense of the word) still matter, and yes, because they buy a lot of books. I don't think that's the only reason, but I was mostly making a rather innocuous statement that several posters took as some sort of manifesto for grognard entitlement. To me that points to the problem of tribalism that I have no interest in (partially because I eschew tribes!).

Now what I find interesting, even slightly disturbing, is how insistent some here are on negating the idea that grognards matter at all. Why is that?

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think that's the only reason, but I was mostly making a rather innocuous statement that several posters took as some sort of manifesto for grognard entitlement.

To be fair, there has been rather a lot of that on the forum in the past, and the internet at large.

 

[Mercurius]

Right, I think the old school players in charge of D&D creative are constantly writing love letters to their fellow longtime while working to make the old relevant to younger audiences. A balanced approach.

But it really does seem to me more money probably comes in from teens than older gamers.

Again, I don't know. In other threads I have said that I think younger players are, and should be, the primary target audience of WotC. This seems rather obvious (and doesn't at all hurt my feelings ). As I said above, not only are younger players far greater in number, they're also potential life-long gamers (and consumers). We--that is, anyone who has been playing for 10++ years, are already a bird in hand, but...the bird in hand shouldn't be forgotten about and still matters.

(It is such a weird thing to me that this is at all controversial, but I guess: the internet)