D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Morrus]

My point has always been on this topic old people generally have more disposable income and are therefore more important to companies that sell stuff including all the gaming companies. As we are talking old people in the gaming hobby I disagree on your assessment of the relevance of the topic. Money rules in any business. Therefore if my assumption is correct (made without any internal gaming company data obviously) then it would be correct though at this point it's just a theory. Perhaps I have misunderstood the original question. I'll go back and reread the early posts. /Peace out

Yes I fully understood your point every time you made it. I’m clever like that. It is tangential to the question. Please, this merry-go-round is tedious.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Part 1: What is a Grognard?
First, a new definition of grognard: It starts with anyone older than the target audience age of D&D. Now of course that is rather nebulous, but I would think the target audience is the big part of the bell-curve of current D&D players, which is probably something like age 15-25 right now (could be wrong, but that's my guess...I'm guessing someone comes in here and says, "I disagree, it is actually probably more like 14-24"). Furthermore, under my definition, a grognard must have cut their teeth on an older edition of D&D, meaning 4E or older (2014 doesn't count).

Now I would put for that grognardism is a spectrum. We could posit the above definition equating with "quasi-grognards" or perhaps "apprentice tier" grognards, while journeyman grognards are two editions removed, and so forth. Something like this:

0-LEVEL - Novices (non-grognards): Started playing during the 5E era, 2014 or later. Generally under age 25 - younger Zennials and Alpha.​

BASIC - Apprentice grognards (aka "quasi-grognards"): Started playing during 4E, age 25-35ish, or older Zennials.​

EXPERT - Journeyman grognards: Started playing during 3.x, probably age 35-45ish. Younger millenials.​

COMPANION - Adept grognards: Started playing AD&D 2nd or BECMI, 1990s. Age 40-50ish. Millenials, mostly.​

MASTER - Master grognards: Started playing AD&D 1st edition, or B/X D&D. Age 50-60ish. Gen-X or older.​

IMMORTAL - Grandmaster grognards: Playing with Gygax in the 70s, OD&D, baby. Age 60+. Boomers or older. Of course a true grognard had to have played wargames before D&D even started, but we'll waive this criteria for grandmastery.​

Or something like that - all of the above is general, so there are probably exceptions. Back in the day, only "grandmasters" were considered grognards, but we're in 2025...meaning, the dawn of 3E is basically the mid-point in D&D history (crazy thought). But really, none of it really matters and is just a bit of fun.

Part 2: Why Grognards Still Matter
OK, that aside, here's why grognards still matter. I had this this thought while reading the thread about the new Magic book (whatever form it takes). Someone mentioned that Theros and Ravnica did well, Strixhaven not so much. I thought, "Interesting...I bought Theros and Ravnica, but not Strixhaven."

Now I'm a Gen-Xer who started playing AD&D during the early 80s, so would be a "master grognard." Aside from the boom of the 1980s, for most of my playing time D&D was thought to have several million players at a time and was mostly a bit niche in the larger scheme of things. Now there are allegedly tens of millions of players, maybe 5-10 times as many as there were 20 years ago. No one knows, except for perhaps a few folks at WotC, but certainly they talk big. At the very least, we can say that there are more active players than there have been since at least the 1980s.

Anyhow, who are those new players? Young folks, mostly. Zennials and even some Gen Alpha. Meaning, grognards might still be a few million, but are probably no more than 10-20% of the current player base. But...

We still buy a higher percentage of books than kidz these daze.

We matter, economically speaking.

I say this as someone who has loved RPGs for over 40 years, but maybe actively played for half of that time. But, I've probably never gone more than a year without buying an RPG book - even during several hiatuses of several years. Currently I haven't actively played since 2019, but I've bought a handful of RPG books, including a few from WotC. My purchasing has diminished over the years, and where I bought almost every 5E book for the first few years, I started skipping more and more books about five years ago. The last new book I bought was Ravenloft in 2021...and then I skipped the next 15 or so, until the core 2024 books came out.

Why did my spending dry up? Well, when I'm not playing, I still tend to buy setting books, or new RPGs that I like for reading enjoyment (e.g. Free League stuff). Strixhaven didn't grab me, and I found the reviews of Spelljammer and Planescape tepid at best (thought might end up getting PS). Other than that, WotC hasn't really done any other setting books in the last few years.

Of upcoming books, I'll buy at least the FR setting book; not sure about the player's book, the dragon anthology, and will check out the Magic book.

Now here's the implication: I haven't played in five+ years, and while I didn't buy much from 2021 into mid-2024, I still plan on buying most of the books in late 2024-25. Meaning, if an inactive grognard is still buying books, I can only assume that the many active grognards are buying at least as many, on average.

Now let's cut to the kids at the small high school I work at. There's a bunch of kids that play D&D, but I've never seen anything other than 5E core books. They're mostly casual players, but I still found that noteworthy. One of the kids I talked to didn't even know about the 2024 books (As an aside, one of the reasons I don't buy the 50 million number that WotC cited a couple years ago, is that while a large number of the kids I've interacted with have played D&D, most don't actively play it....meaning the new boom involved a lot of kids playing a bit of D&D, but as with the 80s boom, it didn't stick for all of them...I think we're kind of in the early stages of "post-boom").

Which brings me (back) to my point: We grognards of different degrees still, as a group, follow D&D more closely than most of the younger active players. Having stuck with the game over the decades, it is mostly a life-long hobby even if, like myself, not all of us actively play. Some of those "new boomers" will become diehards, but most won't.

Part 3: Summing up (sorta)
OK, thanks for reading if you made it this far. My apologies for being long-winded. I just wanted to share something that I've changed my mind about. Previously, I knew I was no longer WotC's target audience - and haven't really been so for a decade or two - but I guess I extended that to not only the tone and themes of the game, but the economic aspect. In that sense, I am still the target audience, because I probably spend as much on WotC books as a dozen casual younger players.

WotC is probably cognizant of this. Not only are many of the people that make the games grognards of different degrees, but they must know that grognards tend to have a larger share of purchasing power than the typical "novice." In fact, I'm guessing that a large majority of books are purchased by people age 25 and older, and still a significant percentage age 40 and older. And I know a lot of my fellow "old-timers" still play--and purchase--a lot more than I do. And yes, WotC is looking to the future - at the current players who will age and (assuming no huge economic collapse, ahem) will increase their discretionary spending. But most of us grognards will still be around for the next decade or three, which is a lot of time to buy books.

In other words, WotC's target audience may actually be potential grognards in that they want to convert people to lifelong fans, but they still must (or should!) have current lifelong fans in mind, because we still pay the bills.

So fellow grognards, we stiil matter. We're still at the table.

Don't forget most of the setting lore outside of the 5 deep dives locations in the FRAG is actually in the FRPG making it more like the FRCS from 3e then the FRAG is which is closer to a 3e regional book.

And I'll add it's hardcore & semi hardcore fans (Grognards usually) that drive the buzz that drives sales among the semi casuals, casuals, and none TTRPG player (folks that enjoy the setting via other media like Drizzt novel fans or BG3 fans) fans.

To many believe that the way to get new fans is very changing things to appease what they think those potential fans want, this almost never works, it's making hardcore fans that draws in new fans because the hardcore fans will generate excitement that will spark curiosity in new fans and that will draw in new customers.

Hardcore fans/Grognards are the engine the powers an IP, if you make the engine happy you can let it do the work for you.

Look at BG3, the hardcore fans are working their arses off for free to build mods and even new campaigns for the game, which is keeping sales going long after the should have completely died off.

Entertainment companies that forget this end up wrecking their IPs eventually.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Another thing that should be noted is that ttrpg's are not a high spending market. There are only so many adventures that a group has time to play. Plus I really doubt that return on setting books is really worth the cost of developing them. Before, people come at me about this, WoTC has produce very pure setting books in the 5e era. Their most lore heavy books have been monster books as far as I can tell and even then they had player facing mechanics.
Now there is a place where lore sells, in video games, tv, movies and books. Anywhere story is a major part of the experience.

 

[Mercurius]

Another thing that should be noted is that ttrpg's are not a high spending market. There are only so many adventures that a group has time to play. Plus I really doubt that return on setting books is really worth the cost of developing them. Before, people come at me about this, WoTC has produce very pure setting books in the 5e era. Their most lore heavy books have been monster books as far as I can tell and even then they had player facing mechanics.
Now there is a place where lore sells, in video games, tv, movies and books. Anywhere story is a major part of the experience.

I sort of see it like loss leaders. The primary purpose of a setting book is less about the actual sales itself, and more about strengthening/deepening the overall product (D&D).

I think part of Pathfinder's success was the ongoing development of Golarion. Now obviously their timing with the 4E collapse and the subscription model probably were primary factors, but I think Golarion as a living, developing world provided Pathfinder with a home. It brought it to life.

So if I'm running WotC, I'm looking at major cash cows and things that strengthen the overall line. A setting book is probably not a cash cow, but it breathes life and imagination into the game, in a way making it healthier.

 

[Scribe]

To many believe that the way to get new fans is very changing things to appease what they think those potential fans want, this almost never works, it's making hardcore fans that draws in new fans because the hardcore fans will generate excitement that will spark curiosity in new fans and that will draw in new customers.

Hardcore fans/Grognards are the engine the powers an IP, if you make the engine happy you can let it do the work for you.

Look at BG3, the hardcore fans are working their arses off for free to build mods and even new campaigns for the game, which is keeping sales going long after the should have completely died off.

Entertainment companies that forget this end up wrecking their IPs eventually.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Whoops double posted

 

[Warpiglet-7]

If the company does not care about retaining long time players, there is a disconnect perhaps.

I don’t think Uni and Prato are necessarily a thing 20 year old are into nowadays. And Greyhawk…why put that in the dmg? Why publish 5e conversions to 1-3e modules?

Either
A,. long time gamers matter to the company;

B. the authors are adding this stuff for fun without discussing implications with business types

C. I dunno…why take any guidance deom
The old guard even as consultants in the first place?

The most parsimonious explanation to me is that while not proportional! The company would like to capture all segments to the extent that they can.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And I'll add it's hardcore & semi hardcore fans (Grognards usually) that drive the buzz that drives sales among the semi casuals, casuals, and none TTRPG player (folks that enjoy the setting via other media like Drizzt novel fans or BG3 fans) fans.

Facts not in evidence, your honor, please have the counsel's comments stricken from the record.

Hardcore fans/Grognards are the engine the powers an IP, if you make the engine happy you can let it do the work for you.

Facts not in evidence again.

Look at BG3, the hardcore fans are working their arses off for free to build mods and even new campaigns for the game, which is keeping sales going long after the should have completely died off.

Facts not in evidence.

And in fact this is outright wrong and is to show as wrong!

BG3 kept selling and selling even when there was no official mod support, and there's been no noticeable uptick in sales related to mods being added nor to the "campaigns" you talk about. Nor could there be re: campaigns, because none of them actually exist! You're literally spreading misinformation here, and people might want to think about whether that's happened before.

Before you rush to to try and refute this, I suggest you do some basic research. There are quite a few PLANNED mod campaigns for BG3, but none of them are actually finished. Most of the ones you can even download (and there are very few) are bare-bones levels with little or no combat, just a map and some NPCs.

BG3 kept selling very well for a very long time because it's very good. There's no evidence to support your claim here, let alone in way you've made, and your claim contains an actual falsehood that I'm guessing you picked up from skim-reading an article, and not actually fact-checking that article.

An article like this:

Big Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod about an all-new adventure to Minthara's terrifying home town is aiming to release a demo pretty soon

Time to see if all the horrifying tales Minty's spun after starting a sentence with the dreaded 'In Menzoberranzan...' are true.

www.vg247.com

Soon. Will. May. Demo. Will. Soon. Etc. QUALIFIERS. Read the QUALIFIERS. Don't just assume the dumb clickbait headline is true. Because "soon" and "may" and so on are weasel words. This campaign might never come out - in fact historically that's very likely. The most likely scenario here is that the "demo" of the campaign comes out, then the people making the campaign struggle and people leave because it's not actual job, and people have artistic differences, and then it never gets finished.

So basically here you've made a load of unsupported claims, all of which have strong countervailing evidence, one of which is definitely and conclusively wrong, and you're saying because you believe them to be true, they're facts.

They aren't facts. You then say, hilariously:

Entertainment companies that forget this end up wrecking their IPs eventually.

The preponderance of evidence actually suggests the opposite. That companies who rely solely or primarily on pleasing "hardcore fans" tend to devalue and then dead-end their IP unless the IP is extremely niche (and perhaps fetish-adjacent).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, he isn't.

Sorry man.

He's literally provably completely wrong on his third claim. It's outright wrong and is the result of him reading clickbait headlines, not actually reading the text in articles.

The other two claims have no real support behind them, and there's plenty of evidence that narrowly fixating on "hardcore fans" has lead multiple different companies into financial difficulties or even ruin. Blizzard and WoW would be one easy. The did exactly and precise what he suggested and it was causing them to waste huge amounts of money, and they nearly had to stop putting in raids at all, because by focusing on the "hardcore fans" they were missing that they were pissing off the majority of people who actually played their game.

So he's demonstrably wrong. This is the worst possible post to use this gif on. It's not even opinion. We can prove he's wrong.

 

[Scribe]

The other two claims have no real support behind them, and there's plenty of evidence that narrowly fixating on "hardcore fans" has lead multiple different companies into financial difficulties or even ruin. Blizzard and WoW would be one easy. The did exactly and precise what he suggested and it was causing them to waste huge amounts of money, and they nearly had to stop putting in raids at all, because by focusing on the "hardcore fans" they were missing that they were pissing off the majority of people who actually played their game.

I'm not so sure about this, I look at Classic WoW, a huge success, as reaching out to 'hardcore fans'.

To clarify my position.

I believe the most important segment of a community is the Casual-Hardcore. The ones who talk alot, who think about things, who dont have the time to REALLY go hardcore into something, but try or wish they could.

Without them, we venture into 'Dead Game' territory.