Alongside Pulp Fantasy Library, one of the most popular and enduring features of Grognardia is the Retrospective series. As of this writing, there are more than 400 posts in the series — even more than Pulp Fantasy Library! That number alone says something, but the real story lies in its longevity. Since the very first entry, way back on September 17, 2008, Retrospective has been a near-weekly presence on the blog. Few other features have shown the same consistency and that regular rhythm has made them a kind of backbone for Grognardia, a through-line that ties together the site’s entire history.
I think the reason for that endurance is simple: Grognardia has always been about memory. I sometimes shy away from calling it “nostalgia,” since that word often carries a whiff of sentimentality or even self-indulgence — and, to be fair, I’ve occasionally felt that myself. But memory? Memory is different. Memory can be clear-eyed, thoughtful, and celebratory without being naïve. It’s about revisiting the past and understanding how it shaped us. At their best, I hope my Retrospective posts do exactly that. They look back at the games, supplements, and ideas that defined roleplaying’s early decades, not to preserve them in amber, but to reflect on what they meant then and what they can still teach us now.
My Retrospective posts are not just reviews or summaries; they’re invitations to remember — to recall the thrill of discovery, the quirks of design, the triumphs and missteps alike. For long-time gamers who make up the bulk of Grognardia’s readership, they’re reminders of the things that sparked our imaginations when we and the hobby were young. For newer readers, they’re a guided tour through the foundations of roleplaying, offering context, perspective, and, I hope, a deeper appreciation of how we got here. In both cases, they’re a celebration of the shared culture of gaming, approached with equal parts affection and critique.
In this respect, I see the Retrospective series as a kind of companion or counterpart to Pulp Fantasy Library, albeit with a different focus. Whereas Pulp Fantasy Library explores the literary foundations of the hobby — the stories, authors, and traditions that fed into its earliest imagination — Retrospective turns its attention to the hobby’s own artifacts: the games, adventures, supplements, and odd little products that shaped how roleplaying was actually played. They are two sides of the same coin. One series reminds us of the broader cultural wellsprings from which the hobby drew, while the other examines the tangible expressions of those influences within the gaming world itself.
What makes this pairing so valuable is that it shows roleplaying’s development from both directions. First, there’s the outside inspirations that fired its creators’ imaginations and, second, the inside works that crystallized those ideas into rules, settings, and shared play experiences. Together, they form a dialog between literature and gaming, imagination and application, dream and design. I’d always hoped that that dialog would be at the very heart of Grognardia, which is why the Retrospective posts have loomed so large in its history.
One of the downsides of having devoted so many posts to discussing RPG products, large and small, is that, after more than 400 entries, I sometimes struggle each week to come up with new topics. It’s not that I’ve covered every game, adventure, or supplement published between 1974 and today — far from it! — but I have written about a great many of them. More importantly, I’ve already covered most of the obvious ones, the works I had direct experience with or at least a meaningful brush against in my gaming life.
That’s an important point to bear in mind. Because memory lies at the heart of what I want the Retrospective posts to honor, the series is necessarily shaped by my own recollections. Like every gamer, my experiences are idiosyncratic. There are well-known games I never played or only dabbled in, while there are obscure titles that loomed larger in my imagination than they probably did for most players at the time. Consequently, the Retrospective series was never intended as a comprehensive survey of old school gaming. Even if such a “universal experience” existed (and I doubt it does), my aim has always been more personal, namely, to capture the texture of one gamer’s journey through the hobby.
Ultimately, the subjects of my posts are my own, chosen because they mattered to me in some way. That, I think, is a real strength of the series, even if it’s also sometimes a limitation. Readers aren’t getting a cold catalog or checklist of titles; they’re getting a window into history, refracted through the eyes of someone who was there. If the Retrospective posts resonate, it’s because memory is contagious. One person’s story sparks another’s and soon we’re all remembering together. That shared act of recollection is what keeps the past alive and meaningful.
That’s also why I’ve always valued the comments and conversations that grow out of these posts. Every time a reader adds his own recollections, fills in a detail I missed, or offers a completely different perspective, the collective picture of our shared hobby becomes richer. In that sense, Retrospective isn’t just my memories; they’re a catalyst for yours as well. The series works best when it becomes a dialog, a chorus of voices remembering, comparing, and keeping alive the culture that shaped us all.
In the end, the Retrospective series is really about remembering where we came from, not out of sentimentality, but out of a desire to understand and appreciate the foundations of our hobby. By revisiting these games, adventures, and artifacts, through my own imperfect lens of memory and with the added recollections of readers, we keep alive a shared history that might otherwise be forgotten. More than just nostalgia, it’s an act of preservation, reflection, and celebration and I can think of no better reason for the series to continue as long as I keep writing Grognardia.