“The emphasis is on the adventure, the exploration, not the explorer per se. Just a few days ago, Michael Mornard, who played in both Greyhawk and Blackmoor before D&D was even published made this very interesting comment on Finarvyns ODD74 forum ‘… And that was the first year or so of how the game grew… ‘Hey, who wants to explore MY dungeon?’ The game was centered around the referee, and the idea of the game was to explore the referee’s world. At some point this changed. The mindset became, ‘We want play being a bunch of heroes, who can we talk into refereeing?’ The game became centered on the idea of the players’ adventures rather than the referee’s world.'”

– from here

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The term “grognard” is a French word meaning “old fighter.” It started being a term for older, more experienced strategic war games players and has been appropriated by the D&D crowd to refer to people who played the game when it started. How does one qualify to be a true D&D grognard? Some insist the term only applies to the folks who played the game in the mid-to late ’70s. Others insist it can apply to the people who were involved in the early ’80s. Some, who missed the boat entirely but who still see the virtue of the game in its earliest forms, refer to themselves as “grognardlings” – or those who aspire to true grognardhood. Since I began playing D&D with the “white box” set of the “little brown books” (“LBBs”), I feel it’s safe to see myself as a true “grognard.”

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