What's a Grognard?

[tkdco2]

Here's a video about the origin of the term, as well as its use in D&D.

[skars]

At least they admit toward the end of the video that the whole thing is conjecture

[Deleted]

Grog is spirits (rum) mixed with water and served to English navy sailors. Nard is an aromatic ointment used in antiquity. Grod + nard? A full body partially drunk state of mind set against hard work and strict rules and regulations.

[rhialto]

And at least they took a stab at correct pronunciation.

[tkdco2]

Someone on a different forum criticized the claim that Arneson invented campaign games. I'll have to re-watch the video.

[thegreyelf]

Grognard (noun):
gro·​gnard (ˌ)grō¦nyär
1: an old soldier
2 (often capitalized): a soldier of the original imperial guard that was created by Napoleon I in 1804 and that made the final French charge at Waterloo
-Merriam Webster Dictionary



(admittedly I didn't watch the video because when people post YouTube videos that aren't pure entertainment...I run the other way)

[skars]

Jun 26, 2023 12:38:00 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Someone on a different forum criticized the claim that Arneson invented campaign games. I'll have to re-watch the video.

Yeah I didn't call that out specifically but I'm sure Charles S. Roberts might object if he were alive

[howandwhy99]

There are a number of sketchy historical takes on there. Grognard was a wargamer term pre-dating RPGs, at least wargamers in the 80s seemed to think so. IME.

At least they got the French connection right.

[tetramorph]

It would be good to read Playing at the World before making such a video.

Especially with such an investment in production cost with the (excellent) animation.

[skars]

Jun 28, 2023 8:29:37 GMT -6 tetramorph said:

It would be good to read Playing at the World before making such a video.

Especially with such an investment in production cost with the (excellent) animation.

Maybe chapter 3, if you can get through the introduction.

[machfront]

“And it's all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog!
All for me beer and tobacco!
Well, I've spent all me tin with the lassies drinking gin,
Far across the western ocean I must wander!”

[rsdean]

Jun 27, 2023 18:38:47 GMT -6 skars said:

Jun 26, 2023 12:38:00 GMT -6 tkdco2 said:

Someone on a different forum criticized the claim that Arneson invented campaign games. I'll have to re-watch the video.

Yeah I didn't call that out specifically but I'm sure Charles S. Roberts might object if he were alive

I suppose one could argue that board games, at least the strategic level ones, are inherently campaigns. I’d have to check the early Avalon Hill product list to remember which games weren’t overarching campaigns; certainly not Gettysburg.

But, in any case, both of the seminal 1962 wargaming books, Don Featherstone’s War Games and Joseph Morschauser’s How to Play War Games in Miniature have chapters on campaigns, so the roots of campaigning have been there since the beginning of modern publication. (Which also means that it was probably a discussion topic in the ‘zines of the late ‘50s leading up to those books.). So, I agree that that was, at a minimum, infelicitously phrased …

[Finarvyn]

(1) Funny how the "grognard" conversation can get messy. Not this thread, but I've seen threads like this over the years where folks get really testy over the definition. Thegreyelf gave us a great dictionary definition, but in a gaming context the grognard (for me) was always the hex-and-chit wargamer when the youngsters were moving onto those fancy new wargames. The definition I saw in the late 70's or so came from the rift between wargamers (and miniatures gamers) and role players. Now, the problem is that "old" is relative so in the 80's, for example, when AD&D 2E came out I saw a number of AD&D 1E gamers identify themselves as grognards because AD&D was at that time the older edition. The bar keeps getting moved as "old" changes its definition. And folks tend to use grognard as a label to imply "old stuff back when we were better than today" so they tend to get grumpy when newer players try to slid into their definition.

(2) I suspect that the "Arneson invented campaign games" claim is taken out of context. Certainly guys like Bath and Fetherstone had been doing campaign wargames and campaign miniatures games for a long time. Arneson had been doing campaign Napoleonic miniatures games with the Minnesota crew for years before Blackmoor. I suspect that the claim would be that "Arneson invented campaign role-playing games" and this is probably truth except for the fact that the term role-playing hadn't been invented at that time. So we have Wesely running one-shot games where players played a role, then Arneson decided to put in an advancement system so that one session led to the next and that progressed into what became Dungeons & Dragons. There is no doubt that Arneson did something that no one else had ever quite done before, but it's a gray-area to quantify what to call that thing.

[krusader74]

Whatever else a Grognard is, it's also a free, open source, PD retro-clone of CM: discussion, Markdown, source, and PDF. And it begins with this Grognard-y epigram:

C'est lui qui avait appelé ses grenadiers «les grognards»; il leur pinçait l'oreille, il leur tirait la moustache. L'empereur ne faisait que nous faire des niches; ceci est un mot de l'un d'eux.

It was he who called his grenadiers "his grumblers"; he pinched their ears; he pulled their mustaches. "The Emperor did nothing but play pranks on us," is the remark of one of them.

--Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862) Chapter VII Napoleon in Good Humor [English]

[coffee]

Jun 30, 2023 5:34:40 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Certainly guys like Bath and Fetherstone had been doing campaign wargames and campaign miniatures games for a long time.

And that wasn't even the start; they had been happening for quite a while.

One such campaigner was Robert Louis Stevenson.

[Starbeard]

Jun 30, 2023 5:34:40 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

(1) Funny how the "grognard" conversation can get messy. Not this thread, but I've seen threads like this over the years where folks get really testy over the definition. Thegreyelf gave us a great dictionary definition, but in a gaming context the grognard (for me) was always the hex-and-chit wargamer when the youngsters were moving onto those fancy new wargames. The definition I saw in the late 70's or so came from the rift between wargamers (and miniatures gamers) and role players. Now, the problem is that "old" is relative so in the 80's, for example, when AD&D 2E came out I saw a number of AD&D 1E gamers identify themselves as grognards because AD&D was at that time the older edition. The bar keeps getting moved as "old" changes its definition. And folks tend to use grognard as a label to imply "old stuff back when we were better than today" so they tend to get grumpy when newer players try to slid into their definition.

(2) I suspect that the "Arneson invented campaign games" claim is taken out of context. Certainly guys like Bath and Fetherstone had been doing campaign wargames and campaign miniatures games for a long time. Arneson had been doing campaign Napoleonic miniatures games with the Minnesota crew for years before Blackmoor. I suspect that the claim would be that "Arneson invented campaign role-playing games" and this is probably truth except for the fact that the term role-playing hadn't been invented at that time. So we have Wesely running one-shot games where players played a role, then Arneson decided to put in an advancement system so that one session led to the next and that progressed into what became Dungeons & Dragons. There is no doubt that Arneson did something that no one else had ever quite done before, but it's a gray-area to quantify what to call that thing.

I agree with all of this, though I also want to point out that the personalized characters and ongoing campaign structure of the western Brownstone game was another inspiration for Arneson, so that throws another wrench even into the claim that Arneson invented RP campaigning. Probably the safest way to say it is that Arneson invented the fantasy RP campaign structure that we more or less see in D&D—though even there is some debate, since from what I gather Arneson was presumably more interested in the big wargame scale stuff of his campaign, and what we see in D&D is much more focused on the ongoing private lives of individual characters a la Gygax's campaign.

Obviously there was a momentous invention in Arneson's hands, but trying to define exactly what about it was the critical invented part is hard to pin down.