Who here is lucky enough (or perhaps unfortunate enough) to have a Old School, 3 Volume set OD&D, maybe Avalon Hill wargame , veteran player in their group?
I'll accept as "Grognard" if they played AD&D or Holmes Basic when those first came out.
I've been lucky enough to have played with a number of those people when I first started gaming; that said, my main rise to playing came when the AD&D books were shiny and new. As I came into the group they were transitioning and it was an interesting time.
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Who here is lucky enough (or perhaps unfortunate enough) to have a Old School, 3 Volume set OD&D, maybe Avalon Hill wargame , veteran player in their group?
I'll accept as "Grognard" if they played AD&D or Holmes Basic when those first came out.
I was playing SPI wargames before OD&D came out, so I suppose any gaming group I'm in has a grognard ;-).
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You are both Grognards! (Gives secret handshake)
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I had been under the impression that "grognard" was a dismissive and somewhat ageist term, and thus I try not to use it. Am I mistaken?
Yes you are mistaken, it is a badge of honor.
I am a Grognard.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I had been under the impression that "grognard" was a dismissive and somewhat ageist term, and thus I try not to use it. Am I mistaken?Yes you are mistaken, it is a badge of honor.
Hm.
Sure doesn't seem that way when used by folks who don't self-identify as such. But I'm glad to see this thread is going in a more positive direction than I first feared when I saw the thread title.
Carry on, then.
:)
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I had been under the impression that "grognard" was a dismissive and somewhat ageist term, and thus I try not to use it. Am I mistaken?Yes you are mistaken, it is a badge of honor.
Hm.
Sure doesn't seem that way when used by folks who don't self-identify as such. But I'm glad to see this thread is going in a more positive direction than I first feared when I saw the thread title.
Carry on, then.
:)
Anything can be used as a pejorative by those not in the group- "New school gamer" "raised on video games", "powergamer" "roleplayer". etc.
I don't tend to use the term myself (or at least for myself), mostly for the reasons Jiggy and thejeff mention above. But I certainly recognize that people use it to mark a period of time and/or style of gaming. It's all good, as long as people can be reasonably decent to each other. And yes, anything can be a slur, sadly.
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Well... I started with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay back in 1988, so I don't know if I may be considered a grognard.
Btw I started playing AD&D much later, around 1997 IIRC.
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Dice in my day were soft plastic and the sides were prone to ware. In an effort to preserve our cheap box set dice, my wife and I agreed to roll them only after having sex. I havent rolled mine in years, and she rolls hers at least three times a day......no respect i tell ya!
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My entire face-to-face group qualify. (Our group has been pretty static since the early eighties).
I had been under the impression that "grognard" was a dismissive and somewhat ageist term, and thus I try not to use it. Am I mistaken?
I think it's a bit like "optimiser" - it's not inherently anything more than a descriptive label but it is often used as an insult.
I had been under the impression that "grognard" was a dismissive and somewhat ageist term, and thus I try not to use it. Am I mistaken?
More likely the term started as insulting and dismissive towards the 'old guard' who didn't like change, but then started getting used by the selfsame old guard as a badge of honour. A common tactic to disarm an insulting phrase is to start using it proudly to refer to yourself.
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More likely the term started as insulting and dismissive towards the 'old guard' who didn't like change, but then started getting used by the selfsame old guard as a badge of honour.
That's roughly how the term got started back in the 18th century. Napoleon's "old guard," the guys who had been with him from the start, spent a lot of time complaining, and were nicknamed "les grognards," the complainers, or the grumblers.
If you weren't one of them, it was annoying to have these old farts always complaining about things. But if you were one of them, it was a mark of identity that you had been through it all and knew more than these little kids that would go out and get themselves killed because they didn't understand how war worked.
And, yes, I'm a grognard -- OD&D, AD&D, Avalon Hill. In fact, Avalon Hill was for lightweights, and for real war games you went to SPI. 3200 counters to punch out, a map that covered 30% of the globe in simulation and something like 3m by 3m of floor space, and the "introductory" scenario took ten hours to play.
Now get off my lawn, dammit!
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I'm in a discussion thread here with some grognard with a scary name...
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Yes we have a Grognard, and its me. I've been playing this game for about 38 years or so now.
Unless playing heroquest as a kid counts then nope. I started when D&D 3E released and have the longest heritage in our active group.
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Most of our group are Grognards, the rest are either married to one or a Munchkin!
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All of my group are grognards to one degree or another (myself included). We've been gaming together since 2e and before, and I think one's gaming predateds AD&D.
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Semi-grognard reporting in!
For the first several months I didn't realize our "D&D" playing was just my friend making stuff up while we rolled dice and moved tokens on ad-hoc graph paper dungeons, but eventually that year I got to see a 1st ed. Monster Manual and played in an A2 'Secret of the Slavers Stockade' adventure!
One of my favorite finds on my bookshelf is an shrink-wrapped copy of the D&D Basic boxed set (grey, not pink). That being said, I never did see the original D&D or Chainmail rulesets in my time.
It was hard for me to move away from Greyhawk after so many years imagining stories in it, even after converting fully from 2nd ed. to Pathfinder.
Who here is lucky enough (or perhaps unfortunate enough) to have a Old School, 3 Volume set OD&D, maybe Avalon Hill wargame , veteran player in their group?
I'll accept as "Grognard" if they played AD&D or Holmes Basic when those first came out.
Not everyone who played in the 80's has any real desire to play that way today.
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I'd play 1e again if I had my very first group together, but alas, I only know where one of those guys is and he no longer plays. But aside from that I really don't have any desire to go back to those days. Now one of my guys occasionally brings up how much better he liked 1e than Pathfinder, but he's a 47 year old guy going on 85, anyway.
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I guess I am one. I started playing in 1979 - 1980 with AD & D 1st edition. I have also played some Avalon Hill games. I found the original D & D books at a yard sale, but the got left at a friend's house and he lost them.
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Who here is lucky enough (or perhaps unfortunate enough) to have a Old School, 3 Volume set OD&D, maybe Avalon Hill wargame , veteran player in their group?
I'll accept as "Grognard" if they played AD&D or Holmes Basic when those first came out.
Who knows. I not only have a 3 OD&D set, but also the supplements and I think 5 volumes of Strategic Review (there weren't actually that many of them, I think it's either 4 or 5 that I have, if there were more I may be missing some of them).
I was just reading the Strategic Review this summer!
I also think it was Dr Deth who introduced/created the Thief Class?
I'm definitely not that grognard.
Last time I think I got the books out was to answer a question someone asked about it on these forums if I recall right.
Plus, the originals weren't originally mine. I started play as a kid with the other kids who had been introduced to it by their older brothers and dads. I got them second hand eventually.
I didn't even really know the rules all that well (for the longest time when someone said a two handed sword I thought it was something like a two bladed sword similar to what one saw in 3e finally but that was years...no decades...after when I thought it up playing the original game) until I finally got a basic box years later. That was eye opening. There were a TON of misperceptions I had when just playing it with the kids and another DMing without ever having read the rules myself.
I didn't get BX until much later than that, and by that time knew the AD&D rules a LOT better than anything else.
But a Grognard...I don't know. My brother/cousin is the grognard. That guy's hardcore...and someone I don't get along with all that great at times. We don't exactly see eye to eye these days in many areas.
I'd say my spouse is a grognard. I think they started with Basic (Holmes), but played mostly AD&D with their brothers who were many years older and avid players (they were born in the 60s, my spouse MUCH later). My spouse never really liked THAC0 though and never really got into 2e. Stuck with 1e...and later 3.X and Pathfinder along with C&C at times.
In ions group, there are 3 of us - shelves stocked with Avalon Hill or SPI games, D&D for over 30 years. And in the other group, we fall to only one because of lack of interest in the war games among the other long term players.
Not exactly, though my first ever game was a 1st edition AD&D game. But that was in 1997, and I bought my very own set of black 2e AD&D books the following year. 2 years after that, 3rd edition D&D was released, and ended up switching to that.
I have no idea if any of the various groups I have played over roll20 have had any grognards in them. Sometimes I felt like I was the oldest one in the group (I am 35).
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I've played with a couple grognards, but have none in my group. They are very strange people... in a good way. Heck it was a grognard that first showed me what a role playing game was. So Yay to grognards!
I'd play 1e again if I had my very first group together, but alas, I only know where one of those guys is and he no longer plays. But aside from that I really don't have any desire to go back to those days. Now one of my guys occasionally brings up how much better he liked 1e than Pathfinder, but he's a 47 year old guy going on 85, anyway.85?
He acts like the old man who wants kids off his lawn, even though he doesn't own a lawn. He complains about "kids today" and you'd swear he was from the pre-women's rights era. To look at him you'd say he was hippy holdover with his long hair and John Lennon specs, but he's a gun totin', Trump lovin', women belong in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant grumpy old man. He hates change of any kind and is always lamenting on "when I was a kid" stories. So yeah, he's like a stereotyped old man. Sure, I sometimes do the "when I was a kid" bit, but I'm not bitter about it. I count him among my good friends, but he can be bit hard to take sometimes, and sometimes I cringe at his misogyny when we have female gamers present, though he's gotten better about keeping quiet about that. At least a little.
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My Dad played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons when it was new. He sometimes plays, but he feels uncomfortable because the rest of us are less than 1/3 his age.
What he doesn't seem to get is he's the life of the table, and all of my players ask "Is your dad gonna play?" before every session, because he's that awesome.
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Not everyone who played in the 80's has any real desire to play that way today.Who here is lucky enough (or perhaps unfortunate enough) to have a Old School, 3 Volume set OD&D, maybe Avalon Hill wargame , veteran player in their group?
I'll accept as "Grognard" if they played AD&D or Holmes Basic when those first came out.
Some of the things are still golden, others are best consigned to history.
Who knows. I not only have a 3 OD&D set, but also the supplements and I think 5 volumes of Strategic Review (there weren't actually that many of them, I think it's either 4 or 5 that I have, if there were more I may be missing some of them).
I was just reading the Strategic Review this summer!
I also think it was Dr Deth who introduced/created the Thief Class?
Nice stuff.
Yep.
So you're the guy responsible for all the underpowered rogues out there? =)
My avatar name here came from the 1981 basic red box play example, so I guess I am one.
Long Live Morgan Ironwolf!
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So you're the guy responsible for all the underpowered rogues out there? =)
Naw, that's Paizo, pre Unchained. ;-)
The Thief was pretty powerful and very very necessary, esp in those days of diabolical Gygaxian traps. They were't just "make a reflex safe and take 5d6 damage". You could be Tported naked, or trapping in a pit with a Gelatinous Cube or lose life levels, etc.
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Started approximately 1978, for a couple of weeks on Basic D&D (didn't see the box but the booklet was blue), then our DM transitioned us over to AD&D. So I definitely qualify. Now, getting myself into a group is another matter . . . . I plan to get serious about this after I get some things taken care of in my life (at least I now have a computer that works on Paizo's web site so that I don't have to post from a phone all the time).
So you're the guy responsible for all the underpowered rogues out there? =)Naw, that's Paizo, pre Unchained. ;-)
The Thief was pretty powerful and very very necessary, esp in those days of diabolical Gygaxian traps. They were't just "make a reflex safe and take 5d6 damage". You could be Tported naked, or trapping in a pit with a Gelatinous Cube or lose life levels, etc.
Not to mention that the Thief was the only character that could do things like open locks, disable tracks, and move silently. If your cleric wanted to walk past a senty,.... forget it.