D&D General Why grognards still matter

[Remathilis]

A grognard is a grumbler. A member of the guard who grumbles about change.

That is certainly the presumption based on the online chatter. I don't feel that's really accurate, but there is a vocal element that happens to paint that group in those colors. Some people just happily play their favorite edition and don't begrudge the game from moving on. And then there are the ones who bemoans every little change.

 

[Belen]

Why does this matter? I see a lot of people focusing on generational BS. I do not recall age wars in D&D back in the day.

Gamers tended to stick together because those were the people who understood us.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That is certainly the presumption based on the online chatter. I don't feel that's really accurate, but there is a vocal element that happens to paint that group in those colors. Some people just happily play their favorite edition and don't begrudge the game from moving on. And then there are the ones who bemoans every little change.

I kind of feel that D&D has only just caught up with what what I was doing 30 years ago.

 

[Clint_L]

Why does this matter? I see a lot of people focusing on generational BS. I do not recall age wars in D&D back in the day.

I do! I was a munchkin!

On top of that, D&D was generally derided by "serious" wargamers (the original grognards).

 

[DrJawaPhD]

it’s a long essay, but basically it comes down to this.

So I guess the correct response is…. cite?

It should be trivial to find a citation that Wealth increases with Age (I think up to ~60-70, as folks generally start hitting retirement).

Doing some quick searching into citations for Money Spent on Hobbies vs Age, everything I found did NOT support the OP's claim, and rather showed that Millennials and younger spent more. This is going to be hobbies in general though, not DnD specifically

As far as DnD specifically goes, I challenge the OP's supposition of defining the Grognard tiers by age or even by when people started playing DnD. I am Gen X, started during AD&D 2nd edition - I love 5th edition and only spend money on those products, and I would never play older editions. Anecdotally, I know dozens of other players as old or older than me who only buy 5th edition products, and I don't know a single person who likes old DnD editions. That dataset clearly has self-selection bias so I would only use it to argue that Older Age does not equal Prefers Older DnD Editions

The OP is definitely partially correct though in the sense that Grognards are one subset of customers with money to spend, and therefore matter to WotC because the overriding corporate principle is that #AllWalletsMatter

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Ohmigosh, how is that not a thing? Is it a thing?

Yeah of course DnD Cruises are a thing. D20 Cruise and D3atSea are the two main ones I've seen. There's also DnD in a Castle which looks freakin awesome.

 

[Malmuria]

I do not recall age wars in D&D back in the day.

I do! I was a munchkin!

On top of that, D&D was generally derided by "serious" wargamers (the original grognards).

Yeah, we get the Grognard/Munchkin vocabulary from the late 70s/early 80s as precisely a generational war over the audience for dnd.

 

[Morrus]

It should be trivial to find a citation that Wealth increases with Age

I’m sure, but that wasn’t the claim.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, we get the Grognard/Munchkin vocabulary from the late 70s/early 80s as precisely a generational war over the audience for dnd.

Must be a regional thing - round here, "munchkin" was the term for what we'd now call a cheese-weasel or over-optimizer or borderline cheater while "grognard" was never heard.

The first (and still, only) place I've ever seen-heard the term "grognard" is on these boards or on links followed from here.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I would not be a master grognard without pointing out in a grognard thread that the late 90s is not a "long, long time."

I didn't start playing until late high school.