Greybeards & Grognards Part 1: Nomenclature and Manifesto

Greybeards & Grognards Installment One: Nomenclature & Manifesto
ByJustiN Orion Neal Taylor
This is my blog on geek culture, particularly RPGs. I decided on the title Greybeards & Grognards because many of the more well-known RPGs and their rule books have alliterative titles, like Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, Castles & Crusades, or the Fiend Folio tome.

I think that perhaps I might start by defining my terms.

Geek: 1) Traditionally a sideshow attraction of a person biting the heads off live chickens.

2) Now it has come to mean someone who is in some way outside the norms of society, often by virtue of an unusual hobby or interest. Examples include comic book fans, Star Trek fans, those who watch a science fiction television program very regularly, and those who play RPGs.
Grognard: 1) A dedicated wargamer as in the hexmaps and cardboard chits wargames.

2) A wargamer with a tendency to grumble about the upstart RPG hobby.

3) An RPG player who got into a particular game at an earlier generation and is dissatisfied with the current generation, especially one who feels the need to discuss his dissatisfaction regularly. This can happen very fast in RPGs. The rather major D&D 3.5 rules revision came out only about three years after the launch D&D 3rd edition. There are now anti-3.5 grognards who got in at the launch of 3rd edition.

Greybeard: 1) Pretty close to definition 3 of Grognard.

2) Also, the player who has been around forever. This leads to much of the attitude described above.

When I posted this essay earlier on ENWorld, ther was a certain amount of controversy regarding definition number 3 of Grognard, especially in regards to the fact that it was the only definition given at the time.

Now that I've defined my terms, I can now get on with my geek manifesto.

We are here. We are geeks. We are tired of being an underclass.

I believe that now more than any other time in history, geeks have power. The biggest hit that NBC has is Heroes, which is a very geek-oriented show. There's a whole network theoretically dedicated to Sci-Fi. Somebody must have realized that geeks have money.

The troubles we as geeks face are twofold:

1) We're a fractious lot. The comic book guys hate the rennies. The RPGers hate the CCGers. The Heinlein fans hate the Harry Potter fans.

2) Not everybody will admit that they are a geek. Too many say, yeah I'm an adult, and I've read the Harry Potter series, but other than that, I'm normal.

If you have a geeky interest, you are a geek. You may hide it, but you are a geek. Come out of the closet. Admit to your friends and relatives that you are a geek. Look to other geeks for support. Only then can the healing begin.

Stand up and be counted.

The geek shall inherit the Earth.

I am a geek and a greybeard and darn proud of it.