What is a "Neo-Grognard" anyway?

So, for my second post, I'd like to explain a bit about the idea of a Neo-Grognard.

Essentially, in the most simple of terms, it means someone who started out with newer or more recent versions of RPG games, namely Dungeons and Dragons. For me, I started out with third edition (3.0 to be exact), and moved on all the way through a significant portion of the fourth edition.

However, after a while of DMing 4th edition, I became increasingly less satisfied with the game as a whole. Now, I don't mean to say that 4th edition is necessarily a bad game. It just happened to be not of my taste. There was too much unneeded symmetry between classes, the mechanics babied the PCs too much for my taste, and some of the mechanics just seemed to lack any sense beyond the need to "balance" things.

So, what did I do? Well, I decided I'd get a the roots of my Dungeons and Dragons obsession and see where the game came from. The main spark from this was through reading online blogs such as Grognardia and the forums of Dragonsfoot.

So, slowly in the early summer of 2009, I started ordering via Amazon and EBay the core books for both the first and second editions of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. After reading through the core books, and further blogs and forums, my taste for the game grew. As this happened my collection expanded much farther then my original intentions called for, until I had a regular stock pile of game supplies. Eventually I would posses not only a large amount of resources for the AD&D editions, but also content from more TSR editions. I currently have access to play every notable version of Dungeons and Dragons published under TSR. This includes OD&D (I got this and Greyhawk off of EBay for just over $50!), Holmes basic, B/X, Mentzer all the way up to Masters, Rules Cyclopedia, and both editions of AD&D. (I don't count many of the challenger sets in the 90's as being notable as they are more or less derivative of the RC)

To this day, I currently run a more than year long campaign with Second Edition AD&D - as well as occasionally dipping into the first edition and OD&D, and must say I am quite pleased.