The short answer is that a NeoGrognard is someone who loves gaming’s past and is excited about its future. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you’ve been gaming. It’s an attitude. A fevered curiosity. A nerdish delight in gaming.
For a really long explanation, tongue-in-cheek in many places, check out the NeoGrognard Manifesto:
- Part 1: A Statement of Beliefs
- Part 2: A Statement of Mission
- Part 3: The Roll of Revolutionaries
As for something in between, how about this:
I’m always amazed when I come across a gamer—and not just someone who plays on occasion when a group magically appears before him—but a hardcore gamer who’s never heard the word grognard. By hardcore I mean someone who has to DM at least once a month, but prefers to one a week, one of those vagabond players tumbling about local groups like a junky looking to score, or some other manifestation of their ilk. But every once in a while I do, and it feels like I have to justify the darn word’s existence.
A grognard is a grumbler, but not necessarily in a bad way. The word is French in origin, and often referred to the old guard of Napoleon I (that’s the short fella in Bill and Teds and Time Bandits). I guess those old warhorses grumbled quite a bit about battles lost and glory forgotten. It’s no surprise gamers picked up the term. Once upon a time, back before my time, Napoleonic’s were super popular. First bandied about at a game company called SPI (a wargame company founded in 1969 and its trademarks sold to TSR in 1982) it popped out in influential Strategy & Tactics magazine and has been part of the gaming geek lexicon ever since. It shows up the first time in Dragon magazine in issue 26 (June 1979, just shy of the Bicentennial) in an article about how System 7 Napoleonics were going to rule the world. (I told you they were popular! Big chunks of that issue was about this minis game without minis.)
It’s an obscure word to be sure (it’s not even in Dictionary.com!), and it really shouldn’t surprise me that more people don’t know it. And tacking the Neo on it…well, what’s that all about? It’s because I love the idea of a grumbler who is appreciated. A grumbler who is testing the boundaries of ideas with his grunts, rather than constructing them. Someone who pokes, prods, and sometimes bashes, to test a point rather than to just make it. It’s that grognard I want to make new.
Sure it may be a dream, but it’s a small one.