D&D General On Grognardism...

[JiffyPopTart]

Its amazing that someone who quotes so much doesn’t actually read what’s there.
Asserting your subjective views over the validity of my subjective views is hardly debunking anything.


I never said I don’t trust players to have codified abilities. I said I dislike that they disempower players in my opinion.



Again, in a thread where the point is to discuss why we still play older rules sets, I fail to see what you want as an intended out come.

If you enjoy your new school gaming, go for it. You should be free to enjoy what you want and feel confident in your decision.

The fact that you’ve come onto a thread specifically about why we still play older games to vehemently defend the new school games just comes across as a lack of confidence in their ability to validate themselves and stand on their own merits without you wading in and loudly proclaiming their virtues. But you do you

Very much this. I want to hear why people enjoy old style play much more than I want to hear attacks for or against it. There will be some debate of course, but it would be great to avoid "My opinion is right let me prove it to you" posts.

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note:

Folks, please stop using this thread to prosecute and defend RPG Pundit. Thanks.

 

[Mercurius]

Focusing on just the age or what edition the player started with misses an essential element of grognardism - the grumbling. Grognards are the "all you kids get offa my lawn" of gaming. Not just old, but aggressively uninterested in things that aren't of their preferred era.

Grandpa voice: "Back in my day, we didn't need no newfangled damageonamiss dragonborne taking 20 with their cantrip feets! If my Fighting Man wanted to scratch his crotch, I told the DM (none of this Game Master nonsense - we played in a proper dungeon, don't you know) and they had me roll, and if it came up a critical failure, well then old Sampson OrcRender put his eye out, and we liked it that way!"

That's a grognard.

Yes, I hear that - although, again, it really depends upon how you define the word. There are multiple usages and I don't think one of them is inherently righter than the others. Thus the spectrum.

I wonder what the "newbie" counterpart could be called? "Things are different now - everything from the past is dead and gone, or should be. All of those old approaches are outdated and wrong or bad in some way. Move over, grandpa!"

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

That does posit the question - is Grognardism specific to the 70s-to-early 80s gamers, or is it a rolling generation?

For my part, I think grognards are indeed a specific time, whereas "old school" is a continually moving thing. Someone (younger than I) could call BAB and ECL old-school, but you couldn't have a 3e grognard.

But as I just wrote, it isn't!

A grognard used to be a veteran wargamer - to other wargamers.

Then, it morphed again. With the "rise" of computers (we are still discussing the 70s here), computer wargamers thought those old "historic miniature" or AH wargamers were the grognards.

Then, it morphed again. The entirety of wargamers became the grognards- not the hip young TTRPGers. I can vividly tell you about the cultural and (more often than not) age divide between the grognard wargamers with their detailed maps clutching their miniatures, and us freeky-deeky yung 'uns with the power of imagination and our minds!

Of course, at some point it changed again- now, grognards are veteran TTRPGers, usually those who play earlier editions. To be honest, it's still weird to me to see it used to refer to TTRPGers! A bit of looking around shows that through the 90s, it was still used to refer to wargamers; but at some point in the early 2000s, it looks to have switched to referring primarily to old TTRPGers.

So it's really a moving target. And as more of us older players die off, and people begin to nostalgically talk about the good ol' days of 3e and grumble about 6e, then they will be the grognards.

Plus ca change.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, I hear that - although, again, it really depends upon how you define the word.

I know language grows and changes, but maybe you should just say "old" when you don't want the other bits. That word already exists, and the only quibbling over meaning will be over exactly how old you mean.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Focusing on just the age or what edition the player started with misses an essential element of grognardism - the grumbling. Grognards are the "all you kids get offa my lawn" of gaming. Not just old, but scornful and aggressively uninterested in things that aren't of their preferred era.

Grandpa voice: "Back in my day, we didn't need no newfangled damageonamiss dragonborne taking 20 with their cantrip feets! If my Fighting Man wanted to scratch his crotch, I told the DM (none of this Game Master nonsense - we played in a proper dungeon, don't you know) and they had me roll, and if it came up a critical failure, well then old Sampson OrcRender put his eye out, and we liked it that way!"

That's a grognard.

No.

The original term, while coming from the French grumbler, was specifically used to refer to an experienced (veteran) wargamer.

Since then, it has changed in its application, but using it in the pejorative sense as you do is not the most commonly accepted usage - unless, of course, you mean it to be pejorative.

Many grognards are quite happy to share their knowledge; to be honest, it is rarely the grognard who is aggressively uninterested in things that aren't of their preferred era," but rather the whippersnapper, who assumes that everything good is current, and that the past has nothing to teach them.

This I know to be true, having once been the whippersnapper and assuming that the grognards of the time had nothing to tell me.*


*Probably because I was too busy smoking their gra.... um, on their lawn.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

So, these new narrative-focused games have several other things keeping them from being really a "John's the DM" game.

Other than the whole thing that I talked about ... sure.

But let's agree to disagree.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, the grumbling over "how things were back in the day" vs. "how things are now" is a big part of it. It is possible to like OSR stuff and not be a grognard.

I think with D&D, grog has a more specific meaning because we've got a bit of a generation gap, and whilst I think it goes later than that, it's unlikely many people born in the 1990s or later qualify as grogs.

And as @Umbran says the groaning is a key part of it. If you don't complain about modern games or newfangled things, you might be old enough to qualify as being a grog, but you aren't really one. I've yet to see a TT gamer under about 35 do the "back in my day!" groaning dance. I have seen people under that age advocate for some pretty old-school games and go on about how cool they are, but that's like kids rediscovering Phil Collins and stuff, they're not groaning that modern games are bad - especially as a lot of the best OSR games are, well, really modern!

And will there be, like, 5E grogs one day? Probably. But I think it'll be quite a while. I don't really see any 3E or 4E grogs, for example.

See, I'm not so sure it's so cut-and-dry. The crossover between old school veteran wargamers and the 70s gamers is probably pretty darn high. Is it a moving target? Probably. Is it moving quickly, probably not. It's entirely possible that like sap, it could harden into amber and we won't see "4e grognards" in 20 years. At that point, the term could fall entirely out of use. Or heck, it could shift again. I don't pretend to have the answers here.

But as I just wrote, it isn't!

A grognard used to be a veteran wargamer - to other wargamers.

Then, it morphed again. With the "rise" of computers (we are still discussing the 70s here), computer wargamers thought those old "historic miniature" or AH wargamers were the grognards.

Then, it morphed again. The entirety of wargamers became the grognards- not the hip young TTRPGers. I can vividly tell you about the cultural and (more often than not) age divide between the grognard wargamers with their detailed maps clutching their miniatures, and us freeky-deeky yung 'uns with the power of imagination and our minds!

Of course, at some point it changed again- now, grognards are veteran TTRPGers, usually those who play earlier editions. To be honest, it's still weird to me to see it used to refer to TTRPGers! A bit of looking around shows that through the 90s, it was still used to refer to wargamers; but at some point in the early 2000s, it looks to have switched to referring primarily to old TTRPGers.

So it's really a moving target. And as more of us older players die off, and people begin to nostalgically talk about the good ol' days of 3e and grumble about 6e, then they will be the grognards.

Plus ca change.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Yes, I hear that - although, again, it really depends upon how you define the word. There are multiple usages and I don't think one of them is inherently righter than the others. Thus the spectrum.

I wonder what the "newbie" counterpart could be called? "Things are different now - everything from the past is dead and gone, or should be. All of those old approaches are outdated and wrong or bad in some way. Move over, grandpa!"

In the boardgame universe they are called The Cult of the New....

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wonder what the "newbie" counterpart could be called? "Things are different now - everything from the past is dead and gone, or should be. All of those old approaches are outdated and wrong or bad in some way. Move over, grandpa!"

I don't think we have a word for it because it's relatively rare to actually see this in TT RPGs, and usually very quickly self-correcting lol. People who take that attitude typically start exhorting the virtues of something novel and then it's pointed out that thing is actually from 25+ years ago and they basically get laughed out of class. You don't get whole groups of people backslapping over this stuff typically either, whereas you do with grogs in any field.

4E's initial marketing did come pretty close to that though. But as I've said, that was so bizarre it was like a bit from the Simpsons. I have no idea what they were thinking.

EDIT - You also see the amusing reverse with younger people I think, where they treat something as always-present, especially if it's part of an older-seeming thing, but which is actually pretty novel. I was discussing the whole "Be a fan of the players" thing in the context of OSR-style games earlier - a lot of people honestly treat as if it's obvious/inherent and it totally makes sense, because it should be, and makes those games work way better - but it ain't inherent... (though not truly novel either, I think I first read it in about 1992 or something).

See, I'm not so sure it's so cut-and-dry. The crossover between old school veteran wargamers and the 70s gamers is probably pretty darn high. Is it a moving target? Probably. Is it moving quickly, probably not. It's entirely possible that like sap, it could harden into amber and we won't see "4e grognards" in 20 years. At that point, the term could fall entirely out of use. Or heck, it could shift again. I don't pretend to have the answers here.

I guess I'm not married to the word, I'm wondering if in 20-30 years there will be people complaining about 8E or whatever, which hard-requires a phone-app to play, and talking about the good old days of 5E. Even if they don't get called grogs then, they're still grogs. I think there probably will be if D&D keeps changing.

I mean actually put it another way - it'd be a bad sign if there weren't grogs, because they're basically a sign that D&D has adapted enough to stay viable. If there's no 5E grogs in 20-30 years, then D&D is probably not popular and not changed much. You see that with RPGs who haven't changed - they don't have "good old days" people, but they also typically aren't very popular.