The Best of Grognardia

What Are You Favorite Posts?

Last week, in my welcome post to this newsletter, I mentioned that I’d typically be posting twice a week – Mondays for Thousand Suns and Fridays for Secrets of sha-Arthan. That’s still the plan. Lately, though, a third project has been taking up more and more space in my thoughts, one that probably deserves a regular place in this newsletter too: the idea of producing an anthology (or perhaps several) of Grognardia posts.

This isn’t a brand-new idea. I gave it serious thought a couple of years ago before setting it aside. However, as I dive back into writing and publishing RPG material more regularly, the notion has resurfaced and this time, it’s sticking.

Of course, the first challenge isn’t about logistics or layout. It’s a more basic question: What goes into the anthology?

You’d think it would be a simple matter, but with nearly 5,000 posts going all the way back to March 2008 and over 80,000 comments, the task feels more like curating a museum than compiling a book. That’s a lot of ground to cover, especially since so much of it dates from the early, formative days of the Old School Renaissance. How can any single volume (or even several) do justice to the scope and variety of topics Grognardia has explored over the years?

It’s a tough nut to crack. In talking it over with friends and colleagues, one idea that’s come up more than once is to create smaller, themed anthologies. For example, a volume focused on the Pulp Fantasy Library, another on the Retrospectives, and so on. That kind of thematic approach would certainly make the editorial process more manageable, as well as giving each book a clearer identity. Still, I wonder: is that the best way to begin?

One alternative I keep circling back to is the idea of a “Grognardia Primer,” which would be a collection of the most popular, controversial, and influential posts from the blog’s long run. These are the ones that continue to be linked, cited, and discussed, even years after their original publication. A volume like that might serve as a solid foundation for the anthology series, offering both longtime readers and newcomers a sense of the blog’s tone, themes, and approach to the hobby.

Of course, to do even that, I’d need to determine which posts are my most popular, controversial, and influential. Off the topic of my head, here are a few of the ones that most seem to fall into one or more of those categories:

• On the Oracular Power of Dice (April 24, 2008)

• How Dragonlance Ruined Everything (April 28, 2008)

• Brandification (August 1, 2008)

• Locale and Plot (August 21, 2008)

• Gygaxian “Naturalism” (September 4, 2008)

• D&D as a Myth Cycle (October 21, 2008)

• Picaro and the “Story” of D&D (October 28, 2008)

• Scrappy-Doo and the Hickman Revolution (December 4, 2008)

• The Implicit Christianity of Early Gaming (December 23, 2008)

• Silver Age Obsessions (January 2, 2009)

• The Ages of D&D (January 11, 2009)

• On the Loss of D&D’s Endgame (March 27, 2009)

That’s a dozen posts right there, all from just the first year or so of the blog and pulled entirely from memory, without even digging deep into the archives. I have no doubt that long-time readers can name plenty more noteworthy entries, which only reinforces my point: doing this right, even on a modest scale, will take real time and effort.

That’s not a complaint – it’s a challenge I’m excited to take on.

That’s where you come in. If I were to put together a “Grognardia Primer,” what posts do you think absolutely have to be in it? Let me know in the comments or drop me a line directly. Your suggestions will be a huge help as I start to map out what could become a truly sprawling (and, I hope, useful) project.