D&D General On Grognardism...

[Sacrosanct]

There is a difference between appreciating OSR for what it is, while acknowledging the very-real problems with some of the actual old rulesets, as opposed to celebrating the anti-inclusive bugs of the old rulesets as features.

Agreed.

This is just speculation on my part, but the more and more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it has some accuracy. When the WotC team became "woke" (I actually hate that term, because it's usually only spoken by people as a pejorative when it shouldn't be) by the changes they've made over the past couple years especially, certain fans of the game found that they could go back to the early days when the rules were presented as orcs were always evil and could be killed without hesitation always, and drow were another black skinned evil race like all dark skinned races in D&D were, and you had nipples showing from underneath chain mail armor and objectified women left and right, and an entire playable race was based on rape, and "no one attacked us for liking it and it was great!".

So while many fans of the OSR are like you say, appreciating it for what it is while also recognizing how some of the presentation back in the 70s and 80s is problematic by today's knowledge, it seems when WoTC made the official D&D more inclusive, the element of fans who bemoan "wokeness" found a home in the OSR, and have since been taking it over as the loudest voices. Which as I mentioned, has resulted in many of the original creators leaving OSR groups and the hobby.

As a fan of the OSR, that's a shame to me. It's similar to how I come from northern Germanic culture, and watch as my heritage is yet again being hijacked and cultural imagery used by white nationalist groups.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

As a fan of the OSR, that's a shame to me. It's similar to how I come from northern Germanic culture, and watch as my heritage is yet again being hijacked and cultural imagery used by white nationalist groups.

It could be worse. Imagine being a coder at Stormfront Studios* and having that still on your resume.

"No, no, NOT THAT Stormfront!"



*Neverwinter Nights, etc.

 

[Mercurius]

Grognardism exists on a spectrum, from purists who only play OD&D (or maybe B/X or 1E), to those who got into it via the OSR, to "quasi-grognards" who started playing D&D during the TSR days and are influenced by that era, to "neo-grognard" millenials and younger who got into older stuff, sort of like the kid who discovers his dad's vinyl collection and gets into Big Band jazz.

As yet another Gen Xer who started playing in the early 80s, I was quite happy when 3E came out: it updated and modernized what was by then a rather anachronistic and clunky system. I played and enjoyed 4E, and generally really like 5E as a kind of "best of both" version of the game (or at least one that splits the difference). Meaning, I'm a quasi-grognard.

But I like to dip into older materials, OSR stuff, etc, but more for bits and pieces. As a DM, I generally play whatever the current edition is, and then do what I want with it, and what my group enjoys.

I personally find that the specific rules set is secondary to the people I'm playing with and story we're creating together. I have my edition preferences, but I'd much rather play my least favorite edition with a great DM and a good group of players than my favorite edition with a bad DM or simply a group that I don't resonate with.

 

[payn]

Launch sequence actived

You better not miss!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Grognardism exists on a spectrum, from purists who only play OD&D (or maybe B/X or 1E), to those who got into it via the OSR, to "quasi-grognards" who started playing D&D during the TSR days and are influenced by that era, to "neo-grognard" millenials and younger who got into older stuff, sort of like the kid who discovers his dad's vinyl collection and gets into Big Band jazz.

I ... think you're right that it's a continuum, but I disagree that it has to be OD&D or B/X or 1e or even OSR.

Grognard has always been a moving target.

Before my time, grognard was used within the wargaming community (John Young was the first, IIRC) to differentiate between veteran wargamers and newer wargamers.

I can still remember a time when grognards were WARGAMERS, but as a general term. TTRPGers were the young whippersnappers, and all those wargamers who couldn't, or wouldn't, play TTRPGs were the grognards. For example, in the 1979 issue of Dragon Magazine, it still refers to the wargamers as grognards (who will never abandon their figures! ... funny how everything comes full circle, and then back again).

Only later did the term keep evolving- I don't even remember precisely when it switched to mean older TTRPG players.

TBH, at a certain point, if it isn't already there, people who play 3e and PF1 are grognards, too.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Codifying player abilities via feats or proficiencies, meanwhile, absolutely does limit what players can do. If you don't have the proficiency or the feat, you can't do the thing. That's inarguable.

Only inarguable in the sense of false in probably most cases. If you don't have sword proficiency it doesn't mean that you can't try to stab someone with a sword. You're just going to get penalties or not get bonuses for doing so. And not having armour proficiency doesn't mean you can't wear armour. It just means it's awkward, bulky, and gets in the way.

Proficiencies, feats, and codified mechanics in general can work in multiple ways which I call "Must", "May," and "If you must".

You're talking about Must abilities there. Which work the way you say and are frequently very bad design (especially when a "Must" ability manages to retroactively affect the rest of the game)

May abilities are ones like weapon and armour proficiencies, spells, and most 4e powers. They make you better at doing things than the baseline in terms of reliability or effectiveness. Just because you have a climb speed doesn't mysteriously prevent other people from climbing walls - it just means you are really really good at it and that you don't have to roll to climb something that isn't utterly ridiculous. Building a character in 4e is an exercise in choosing what your character will excel at. And the 5e monk getting the ability to run across water isn't what prevents characters without this ability (or the water walking spell or any other way) from walking on water.

And "If you must" abilities can be written into the core rules of the game but are too weak to be worthwhile 99% of the time (the basic push/bull rush abilities in all of 2e, 3e, or 4e) or are too fiddly and obnoxious to be worth using so people groan when you try (many had this reaction to the 3.X grapple rules).

 

[Lord Shark]

I have to push back on this point, at least, because however true it might be on paper, it was never true in practice. Unless for whatever reason you played campaigns where fighters and thieves never got magic items, which would clearly run against the design intent of old D&D. There's a reason that fighters and thieves can use magic swords (you know—the best magical weapons, the ones with all the coolest powers, and the commonest results on the treasure tables) while clerics and mages cannot.

Codifying player abilities via feats or proficiencies, meanwhile, absolutely does limit what players can do. If you don't have the proficiency or the feat, you can't do the thing. That's inarguable. Having a mechanic in the game that gives a PC permission to do a thing isn't transferring power from the DM to the player—it's transferring power from the DM to the rules framework.

These days, I find it less interesting to play a character who's a platform for magic items. Yeah, it's cool to have a magic sword that can strike someone's head off ... but only if you get very lucky with the dice, and anyone with even a single level of fighter can pick up the same sword and do the same thing. (Also, my preference is for fewer magic items anyway -- it's purely an aesthetic preference, but I find games where the fighter is walking around in magic armor with a magic shield, a magic sword, a magic helmet, a magic cloak, magic boots, etc., to feel kind of silly.) I'd rather play the swordsman who can do amazing things no one else can do, even if he's only using a rusty old blade he picked off the blacksmith's trash pile.

And for me, the benefit of codified abilities are that they let players do cool stuff without having to guess at their odds of success, or jump through hoops set by the DM. Too many DMs, and I include myself in this, respond to players trying to do unusual actions by piling on penalties, extra rolls, and negative consequences because it feels more "balanced" that way. ("You want to spin around and hit everyone surrounding you? Uh, okay, -4 to hit on all attacks and if you miss any of them, you trip over your own feet and fall down.") This quickly gets to the point where the player realizes that the most sensible option is to say "I swing at him" every turn.

In 4E, I had a polearm-wielding monk who could jump in the middle of a crowd of enemies and knock them all flying with a single mighty swing, using just one power. That's something that's never going to happen in an old school game, unless I were to somehow get my hands on a polearm of knocking enemies flying with a single mighty swing +2.

(And just to be on topic: not all old players are grognards! I've been playing since 1979 and I quite prefer newer games, thanks.)

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

"Codifying player abilities via feats or proficiencies, meanwhile, absolutely does limit what players can do. If you don't have the proficiency or the feat, you can't do the thing. That's inarguable."

You can still do all that if you have feats. The feats just remove the negotiation aspect on certain things, and give the player agency (which is what seems to bother old style DM's the most). You could still work out a heavy hit that trades accuracy for damage with the Dm even if the power attack feat exists.

It's amazing how magic users can have world overrriding"I do this" buttons (that they can change on a daily basis!), but the second you have a warlord with an "I do this" button the "muh V-tude!" arguments start.

 

[tetrasodium]

I hate to insert myself in the middle of a semiheated argument brewing, but I think there is a lot of misinformation or just badly misinterpreted things being said

It's "more accessible" as long as you don't actually want to engage with the world in my experience. In the real world I may not be able to solve the equations for a thrown ball (at least not when you take air resistance and my rust into account) - but when someone throws a ball I can be reasonably confident where it will land and in other ways have an intuitive understanding of the mechanics of the world. And there are literally dozens of examples I could come up with like this.

What this means is that without having a decent understanding of the mechanics in question I am significantly less able to engage with the fiction than I am if I do because I do not understand the underlying mechanics of the setting. Tone only takes you so far - and tones can vary drastically especially when such a gamist convention as hit points are a key part of the system.

Having rules and structure provides advantages for roleplaying over freeform because it allows me to, as a player, act more confidently and with greater freedom while knowing that what I want to do meshes closely with the shared fiction despite the fact we have never discussed it. Having rules but knowing that as a player they are kept from me just makes me feel that I'm in an unmarked minefield and provides the worst of all worlds between freeform and mechanically structured.

And having a DM who won't tell me what the rules are is having a DM who is purposely and deliberately inserting themselves between me and the fiction, making it harder to reach. If the DM's job is to act as the interface between the player and the rules then purposely hiding the rules when the player wants to reach them means that the DM is about as helpful as pop-up advertising and rather than being a helpful user interface they are getting in the way.

Meanwhile as a DM I don't want to have to learn dozens of subsystems and I don't want to be the one preventing the players doing their thing.

As for "gauging the impact of a plethora of hard coded abilities on my adventure", firstly it's not my adventure. I'm not the one going on it. If it's anyone's adventure it's the players'. And secondly if the players catch me off guard good for them. They've done something cool. I prefer to let them have their genuine victories rather than spoon feeding them to them by their only using pre-approved abilities in pre-approved ways.

This is something I largely agree with entirely those rules structures present in 3.x enabled all of this and included room for the sort of let the gm decide unfilled space @transmission89 (or at least some others) are advocating for in the 1e/2e style of some areas that were just brought forward largely void of rules in 5e with the one size fits all (dis)advantage system. that allowed the player to confidentially act with greater freedom backed p by the rules themselves do do things within the shared fiction feeling like they have at least some capability of understanding what the cause & effect will be. For whatever reason 5e chose to ignore that in favor of nu rules are somehow best rules & (dis)advantage is the perfect hammer in all situations.

Specifically that mechanic was the combination of two parts known as "the dms best friend" & "stacking bonuses]"/bonus types. A lot of hate gets applied to bonus types over how they could be poorly used if you ignored the advice explaining not to in the rule itself, but if you actually read those sections rather than kneejerk regurgitation of decades worth of misinterpretations (totaling less than a page here) it's easy to see how it helps meet the needs of both osr ask your gm style & the more modern rules heavy. Not only that, it does so in a rules light easily extensible framework that can be applied to nearly any situation or simply tossed aside in favor of letting the gm make something else up.

The different editions did different things better & had different weaknesses. The +2/-2 & bonus types is one example, standardizing where bonuses & penalties kicked in on the attribute arrays in 3.x over the attribute by attribute from earlier editions is another. Having those arrays generally kick in with -1/+1 at 6 & 15ish rather than 8 & 12 is an area the older editions did it better by not making players feel so forced to use the most optimal attribute placements.

5e PCs are very sturdy... but there is a lot less munchkinism than 3e. The importance of your "build" is lessened, and because of attunement rules, you are very limited in the number of magical items you can have. Furthermore you can't buy/build them easily. Also, the concentration rules mean you can't "stack" a lot of buffing spells to transform yourself in an unstoppable magical juggernaut.

Actually crafting items in 3.x took a feat, (generally) someone having the ability to cast a particular spell, potentially unique ingredients, a boatload of gold, and a nontrivial amount of exp consumption. If bob could craft a kickass sword because he took the relevant feat instead of powerattack or whatever good for bob. Being able to craft that badass sword didn't allow him to craft rings boots armor or whatever too unless he further invested in even more feats to make becoming a custom crafted christmas tree all that more difficult.

You & so many other proponents of 5e''s choice to go with an exclusive 3 attunement slot system as the only limiter are ignoring another important factor on magic item availability though. If I as the gm did not put a particular magic item out for the players to find it simply did not exist for them to put on their character sheet. That lack of existence was not something players could sidestep by going to a npc crafter/shop either because I as the gm still had the final say over what was available & what if any limitations or changes it had over PC buying hopes.

Attunement is a good system, but like (dis)advantage it should not be the only system even if others are simply options for the gm to employ. Slot types & affinities was something that had value but getting rid of it means that I can't throw out minor magic items that don't need attunement due to not being worth attunement for +1 to baketweaving checks made on the deck of a ship in stormy seas even if that's somehow cool. 5e's perfect hammer for all situations tendency is one of its greatest weaknesses.

 

[Mercurius]

I ... think you're right that it's a continuum, but I disagree that it has to be OD&D or B/X or 1e or even OSR.

Grognard has always been a moving target.

Before my time, grognard was used within the wargaming community (John Young was the first, IIRC) to differentiate between veteran wargamers and newer wargamers.

I can still remember a time when grognards were WARGAMERS, but as a general term. TTRPGers were the young whippersnappers, and all those wargamers who couldn't, or wouldn't, play TTRPGs were the grognards. For example, in the 1979 issue of Dragon Magazine, it still refers to the wargamers as grognards (who will never abandon their figures! ... funny how everything comes full circle, and then back again).

Only later did the term keep evolving- I don't even remember precisely when it switched to mean older TTRPG players.

TBH, at a certain point, if it isn't already there, people who play 3e and PF1 are grognards, too.

So you agree that it is a spectrum (or continuum) but disagree that it is not? ;-) I think you just fleshed out my point: there is no clear boundary between grognard and non-grognard except, perhaps, for certain groups of purists who circle the wagons around whatever group of editions they feel is "true D&D."

We could also call such folks "Grognard absolutists," with a relative perspective also possible - as you say re: 3E. Relative to new players who started up with 5E, 3E players are grognards, or at least groggy. As with most things, it really depends on how you look at it, where you draw the line.

This is why I see it as existing on a spectrum: a grognard is in relation to what the current, dominant demographic is. As someone fast approaching the half-century mark, I kind of laugh at millenials making comments about feeling old, out-dated, starting to be passed by by zoomers. Hey, it is the way of things. Time waits for no nerd, and we're all doomed for grognardism eventually.