Grognards?

[PeelSeel2]

Blah

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Blah

That was intelligent.

 

[Henry]

OK, please, enough with the derogotory dismissals and snappy comebacks, please. People are displaying a depressing lack of civility to one another.

PeelSeel2, if all you plan to contribute is "blah", you need to not post in this thread again. This also applies to anyone else planning to make other "drive-bys."

 

[the_myth]

Boy, the way Steve Miller gamed; Hair & Metal bands still raged.
Guys like us, we had it made; those were the days.
No healing surges in the mix; Save or die or 3d6.
Tomb of Horrors was just for kicks; Those were the days.

And you know who you were then; Elves were elves, not Eladrin.
Mister, we could use a man like Gary Gygax again.
Wizards had one spell to spend; Fly spells could just suddenly end.
Owlbears had an auto-rend. Those were the days!

Sheer brilliance.

Also...

Hasn't every single edition and permutation of [A]D&D had good points to it in addition to bad points?

Elf as a class? ick. Elves unable to be clerics? ick. Elves as super-PCS? ick. Elves as default Wizards? ick.

Yet each step was something different to the rules...a new variation...to be embraced or houseruled away...

 

[Jayouzts]

I'm personally very tired of hearing this term now thrown around for those people who don't like 4E, or don't think it's there thing anymore. (Especially for those of us who played it at DDXP)

Grognards, to me, are those old, 40something guys with big beards who sit in the back of game stores playing wargames and insist that Shadowrun is unplayable and it's all about this brand-new Tactical simulation of D-Day from a tiny indie basement publisher, and they laugh when you talk about White-Wolf, derisively.

I just don't get it.

According to this site http://grognard.com/ a grognard is someone who likes to play wargames. By that I mean either a minatures game (such as Chainmail) or a hexes and chits type wargame like GMT puts out. At least, that is consistent with my understanding of the meaning of the term.

It would seem to me that to the extent 4E (and for that matter 3E) is dependent on miniatures a true grognard might find something he likes.

I think people really are using grognard as a synonym for "conservative", "narrow-minded" or "inflexible" and not so much as a synonym for 4E-hater. Either way, it is not a correct use of the term as I understand it.

I consider myself a grognard and am not offended by the term. (Any all 3 definitions apply to me. I like wargames. I am conservative and narrow-minded - proudly so. And I have no interest in 4E).

BTW I am 38 but I do not have beard.

 

[wingsandsword]

Yeah, I know that most of D&D's problems with change were the result of an entrenched and treacherous management team who used the company as their own personal ATM. It inadvertantly trained people to expect things to remain the same in D&D-land but that's an abberation; that's not how things work normally. But to hear people my age - and especially younger! - defend this abberation just makes me shake my head sadly.

Or, on the other hand, there are those who believe the current model of D&D releasing a new edition that completely rewrites the game from the ground up every five to ten years is inherently flawed.

I know several people IRL that have forsaken 4e the moment they heard about it, longtime veteran D&D players, and don't care one whit about what it is or how good it might be, they are offended enough at the very concept of Planned Obsolescence in RPGs to look at an edition that they see as nothing but a money grab. I know one, one of my best friends, who only converted to 3e under protest under this logic, and declared when 3.5 came out he was refusing to ever play any later editions, and he's sticking to it. I know another who had played 1e since it came out, and only reluctantly upgraded the group she DM'ed straight to 3.5, but at hearing they were releasing 4e she put her foot down, she'd played 1e for 25 years, and she'll play 3.5 with her friends and family for a couple more decades at least, probably the rest of her life. There are a lot of D&D players that are still out there playing old editions, and inherently reject the idea of new editions being necessary.

I guess it comes down to, for a lot of people, you have the job of selling them on the need for a new edition, and then once you've got that, you then have to sell them on a new edition that meets their needs and wants in D&D. I know for a lot of people the fact that it's the newest edition is enough to sell them on D&D 4e, but for other gamers it's much more of a question of "why should we buy this?" instead of "Why shouldn't we buy this?".

 

[Orius]

What's very interesting to me - and yes, I know, you've heard it said before - in 1999 there was a very loud chorus of folks saying that 3e wasn't D&D, either. For many people nowadays that isn't the case. I have no idea if it'll be the case with 4e, but for me it seems premature to decide before we've played it for a few months.

Same here. A lot of the comments Carnivorous Bean posted (even if they are generalizations) sound a lot like things that were said 8 years ago. I said that already before and I'll said it again.

I think the real "problem" is that WotC is trying to generate enthusiasm by pointing out the differences, and then people draw premature conclusions. If they were just saying how much 4e is like 3.x, then how many people would even care?

 

[Orius]

Or, on the other hand, there are those who believe the current model of D&D releasing a new edition that completely rewrites the game from the ground up every five to ten years is inherently flawed.

I think a lot of that comes from 3.5. It was more than a simple revision, yet less than a new edition. And it was only after about 3 years too, at that point most I had pretty much gotten used to the changes and was just getting into 3e full swing. I found it a bit disorienting myself. There's also a difference between fixing small problems, working new rules into the system that were introduced in the previous edition and dumping stuff that isn't really popular and making grand sweeping changes to a game system. And while I agree with this sentiment to some degree too, my gripe tends to be more with flavor than rules.

 

[Derro]

Elf as a class? ick. Elves unable to be clerics? ick. Elves as super-PCS? ick. Elves as default Wizards? ick.

What's with all the elves, man?

 

[Zinegata]

Hi guys. Just my second post here in Enworld while I'm temporarily exiled from the WoTC forums (My fault. Got carried away on top of doing a bad Stephen Colbert imitation), but it feels rather comforting that this particular issue seems to be in all of the D&D forums .

And as I keep saying in the WoTC forums, labels like "grognard" aren't really helpful for the gaming community as a whole. Monte Cook aptly described labels are merely ways to say "My D&D is better than yours". The thing is - there's no such thing. Games are judged subjectively. There is really no objective way to judge a game except perhaps by sales figures, but even a poorly-selling game often has its own, small, dedicated cadre of fans.

So really, it's best to just not use labels at all. Don't call your fellow gamer a grognard, a powergamer, or whatever. They're just playing the game their way.

It's all D&D. It's all good.