"Grognard" comes to us from the French from "grumbler", and originally referred to those veteran campaigners who - having been with Napoléon since the beginning - were entitled to speak their mind. The effective meaning is "an old soldier" so to be young and a grognard is a contradiction in terms.
To me, to be a grognard you have to have begun play no later than 1e AD&D or "red box" basic, preferably prior to the printing of the "Unearthed Arcana" - though if you want to be purist about it, I would accept an argument that you had to have come to the game in the OD&D era before the printing of the 1e Monster Manual.
I would not accept a later definition of what it means to be a grognard until such time as the OG's die off and there is no generation old enough to view the oldest left as youngsters. Rather than seeing you as one of the youngest grognards, by starting your first campaign in 1994 I see you as one of the oldest non-grognards. No one that started play after the printing of 2e counts as a grognard for me, and basically I think we're still at least 20 years out from any need to define such late bloomers as grognards.
The youngest grognard by the strictest definition is probably about 49 right now, probably playing as an 8 or 9 year old with older relatives in 1979. I can't really conceive of anyone younger having the maturity. A slightly looser definition would put the youngest grognards at around 43. But in either case, even if you are 43 if you didn't begin gaming until you were 13 or 14, you aren't a grognard because you don't remotely have a case that you've been with the game since the beginning. You don't remember first hand the original publications of 1e AD&D, the Red Box appearing in toy stores, the Dungeon & Dragons cartoon or the related toys, the first publication of Chronicles of the Dragonlance or when Dragon felt very much like an amateur 'zine. You don't remember Boot Hill, Top Secret, and Traveller. By the time you got into the game, it was Vampire the Masquerade.
And I'm vaguely familiar with the culture of OD&D as it spread from college war gaming groups into the fringe groups that made up the experimental 1970's, but I was too young to actually be a part of it so I would accept the judgment that I'm not a grognard either, having missed the cut off by 3 or 4 years.
My suggestion is that it's quite possible that if you didn't get into D&D from the era where it was splitting off from wargaming, that you can't possibly be a grogard since there is certainly a generation of players who are older and have an older perspective than you have or even have insight into. From my experience, even the players that did become fans of that new fangled RPG "fad" brought with them a certain sensibility and experience that is distinctive from what prevails in later generations, including based on my impressions what seems to prevail amongst OSR fans.
Certainly if I go to a meeting of the local board gaming society, when I'm thinking of assigning the "grognard" to any group, it's the bearded folks in the corner playing a game of "War in the Pacific" that appears to have been going on for longer than the war being simulated did. They have a different perspective than gamers that got into board games after the European board gaming renaissance, and their perspective on things often is observable even when and if they also love games other than wargames. But I can't imagine anyone who grew up on video games really embracing games like Star Fleet Battles or Car Wars, or other highly detailed games which in retrospect where proto-video games meant to run on the player's wetware, and if you don't come from that era then I think you don't get the era of "lonely fun" and obsession with detail and realism that often marked it.
Anyone Gary Fine was referring to as a grognard 1983 regardless of whether they were 16 or 40 then is a grognard today, and anyone a member of the culture he was describing in that book - even if not considered a grognard then - certainly has title to the term now I would think.
Well, I suppose I qualify by your definition. I am STILL a Wargamer to a degree, though the last one I bought was probably a few years ago at this point.
I wasn't into the miniature wargames that many of the D&D'ers were (chainmail is an example of such, as are the Napoleonic miniature wargames), normally more of a board wargamer. Gygax was heavily involved in that and even created some non-miniature wargames himself (I believe he told me one time that his favorite wargame was actually Waterloo, which was a non-miniature wargame, if I recall correctly, though my memory is failing at some points these days).
I'm not sure how I feel about the definition you put there though, for some reason I feel really old in comparison to others here now...
I am still into boardgames as well (and have quite the collection, I even have a LOT of modern boardgames these days, some would say I'm a bigger boardgamer than RPG player by FAR).
The Wargamer is far smaller in population percentage today (anecdotal personal observance) than back before D&D, with some increases recently, though still very small in comparison to the boardgaming groups and RPG gamers overall (personal observance, perhaps there are places where it is booming and far larger, but not that I have observed recently).
I tend to lean more heavily towards older styles of balancing with numbers, charts, and other things than the new methods they have with leaner, quicker to play, and slimmer wargames that sometime incorporate Euro elements into them than the old style games.
Anyways, I could probably talk FAR TOO MUCH on board games and other things (wrong forum for it for me to do that though), so rather I'll shut up now.
Just thought to post as when reading your statements, I felt really old for some reason all of a sudden. Interestingly enough, I suppose the youngest of those that I knew or knew about playing at the beginning probably would be in their 40s or 50s these days.
I DO know a couple of kids (I taught them...so there's that) that started 1e and BECMI in the past decade...but with the influences of modern RPGs and other things, I probably wouldn't list them as having the same attitudes as the supposed grognards, or having the same approaches. For some reason, they just have different attitudes and approaches than the those from several decades ago, even if it is with the same game (AD&D in this case, have not taught them OD&D...books are too valuable to have them handle them much these days).
Now, 5 or 6 years seems like nuth'n.
