Boy/Girl Scouts in the Playground?

[Kyrell1978]

A long time ago a well meaning (overly religious) aunt tried to talk me out of playing D&D to try to save my soul and whatnot (yay 1980s). She had a list of traits that the "average" D&D player met. It was honestly pretty accurate for me, but one of the traits listed was being a boy scout (the rpg genre was pretty heavily dominated by boys at that time). I am an Eagle Scout myself and all four of my boys are in the Scouts, so I was just wondering......does this fit you all too?

[Delta]

I spent a couple of years as a scout in Germany (there's not really a separation between Boy and Girl Scouts for most organisations here) after being invited by two of the players of my weekly Shadowrun group, and soon the whole group had joined up, so yeah, that actually fits rather well. Honestly, it was just one more occasion to hang together once a week and do the usual stuff that you do, since we were all 15+ at the time most of the time we were organizing ourselves, so using Scout meetings to discuss und build Shadowrun characters or plan adventures became rather common.

[darkrose50]

I am an Eagle Scout, and we played D&D sometimes. Mostly our Scoutmaster wanted us doing outdoors activities.

[rooster707]

Not one myself, but I have a lot of friends who are Boy Scouts, and I just found out yesterday that one of them is into RPGs.

[Florian]

Did Pathfinders (German Boy Scouts), THW (Emergency Rescue Service) and my compulsory armed forces service tour of duty back in the days. So, like always when you have too much free time and too many young people around, while not being able to leave the duty post, we got drunk and played PG (or Poker), what else?

[Durzan]

I am an Eagle Scout, and I played D&D 3.5 since I was ten or so... or was I twelve when I started playing? IDFK, I started around the time I was entering Middle School.

[Kyrell1978]

I spent a couple of years as a scout in Germany (there's not really a separation between Boy and Girl Scouts for most organisations here) after being invited by two of the players of my weekly Shadowrun group, and soon the whole group had joined up, so yeah, that actually fits rather well. Honestly, it was just one more occasion to hang together once a week and do the usual stuff that you do, since we were all 15+ at the time most of the time we were organizing ourselves, so using Scout meetings to discuss und build Shadowrun characters or plan adventures became rather common.



I am an Eagle Scout, and we played D&D sometimes. Mostly our Scoutmaster wanted us doing outdoors activities.
That's awesome. We weren't allowed to do that on official Scout activities.

I am an Eagle Scout, and I played D&D 3.5 since I was ten or so... or was I twelve when I started playing? IDFK, I started around the time I was entering Middle School.

I started around the same time in my life, but it was in the late 1980s (right around the same time that 2ed AD&D was coming out.

[Delta]

That's awesome. We weren't allowed to do that on official Scout activities.

Well, as I said, we mostly organized ourselves so there really wasn't anyone to tell us not to do something. As I said, for us, it was mostly a fun place to hang out and get cheap soda, beer or sandwiches as long as the guy taking care of the kitchen was in that day.

In theory, it was a catholic organization as well, ironically, only about one in three of the active members was actually catholic though.

[AuthorGirl]

I spent quite a while in Guides (Girl Scouts, Canadian version), but D&D was actually somewhat looked down upon there. The two activities weren't connected.

[darkrose50]

I was introduced to D&D when I was in the 5th grade by our teacher. I went to a small (and somewhat sometimes incompetent) privet religious school.

I have Dyslexia and Asperger's Syndrome. I went from reading at the 3rd grade level at the beginning of 5th grade to reading at the college level by the end of 8th grade. I attribute this to D&D.

The scoutmasters son played D&D. We hardly had the chance to with all the other things we did (unless it was winter).

[farothel]

I was in a variation of the scouts, here in Belgium, but that's not in any way connected to my roleplaying, as I started that at university after I quit the scouts.

[ve4grm]

I was in Scouts Canada for 14 years. Never played D&D in all that time, only started when I was around 20.

I think part of this correlation is that Scouts is often a way for the more socially awkward kids (like me) to have a fun way to interact with others of their own age with a shared goal (you make fast friends in Scouts without a lot of social effort, since you're all there for the same reason). So if one of the kids brings a game they can play in a tent or around a campfire, it will get latched onto. For myself, that was usually a lot of decks of cards and obscure card games, and eventually included Magic the Gathering as well. We played a lot of tent/cabin Magic.

That said, I was also a Scout mainly in the 90s, when Magic was huge, and D&D was in a downswing. Move it 10 years, and it probably would have happened. Or we'd have played Pokemon cards. Who knows.

[Rockphed]

Was in scouts, but my RPG and my scouting lives have pretty much never crossed. Well, I had a friend who was in scouts who half introduced me to RPGs, but my oldest brother was more involved in that.

[Kyrell1978]

I was in Scouts Canada for 14 years. Never played D&D in all that time, only started when I was around 20.

I think part of this correlation is that Scouts is often a way for the more socially awkward kids (like me) to have a fun way to interact with others of their own age with a shared goal (you make fast friends in Scouts without a lot of social effort, since you're all there for the same reason). So if one of the kids brings a game they can play in a tent or around a campfire, it will get latched onto. For myself, that was usually a lot of decks of cards and obscure card games, and eventually included Magic the Gathering as well. We played a lot of tent/cabin Magic.

That said, I was also a Scout mainly in the 90s, when Magic was huge, and D&D was in a downswing. Move it 10 years, and it probably would have happened. Or we'd have played Pokemon cards. Who knows.

I think you are exactly right about the correlation. We weren't allowed to play in scouts being in the midst of the "satanic panic" but my first party consisted of six people and five of those were boy scouts from various troops around town.

[FireFox]

I'm an Eagle Scout too and I've always considered boy scouts to be, as a general category, physically fit nerds. D&D and other geeky games weren't just big when I was a youth (15-5 years ago), they were HUGE. We played on picnic tables by lantern light, atop rock formations during hikes, on sandbars in the middle of a river, in a submarine, on an aircraft carrier, inside tents by flashlight, and when we were places we couldn't bring the necessities we usually ended up talking about games. I can remember playing: 3.5, some d20 homebrew, poker, blackjack, spoons (played with pocket knives), gin rummy, cribbage, sheepshead, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, chess, checkers, Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, as well as a bunch of physical games like Ultimate frisbee, Kubb, and capture the flag. After I turned 18 and aged out I got to see the organization from the perspective of an adult, which is always good for a laugh. Over a five year period a short while back I spent my summers working at three different scout camps. Everyone played something.

Camps 1 and 2 were boy scout camps up in the north woods of Wisconsin. The average age of a staffer was probably between 18 and 22 and the campers ranged from 11 to 18. Campers were there for 6 straight days and staff got 24 hours from saturday noon to sunday noon off; there were quite a few campaigns that ran the whole summer. Camp 3 was a cub scout camp in central Wisconsin. The staff there were a bit younger, mostly highschool kids, some college students. The campers were 7 to 11 years old and were only there for weekends and the day during the week, leaving more free time for the staff in the evening. From what I saw, there was one D&D 4e game running through the summer that would have sessions when people felt like it and Magic games every night.

When it came to the PnP RPGs, I noticed two types of players. The ones who had played the game before, usually during the rest of the year, took it seriously and tried to roleplay. The ones who didn't play a lot of RPGs but wanted to try it out were more likely to run your stereotypical chaotic randumb murder hobos. At Camp 1 we played a 3.5 game that, by July, had ended up being the core of experienced PCs trying to save the goofy characters who dropped in and out every week. We tried Traveller but that ended in PvP teamkilling. At Camp 2 we had a really fun Pathfinder campaign two or three nights a week from June to August. I don't remember the plot, just that we had a really good team dynamic of saving each other with clutch rolls and then scheming with other characters like "If this guy turns on the rest of the party, will you help me kill him?" "Only if you let me have his magic item". Then there was one night where the gray-haired camp director walks in to see what we're making so much noise at midnight over. We were trying to figure out how to explain it to him without running into the whole satanic panic thing, but it turns out that he grew up in Lake Geneva back in the 60s and played his first game in Gygax's house.

Kyrell1978, what council are you with? I just so happen to have had the pleasure of visiting two great scout reservations in Missouri. Beaumont for a weekend when I was a Venturing youth and Bartle for a week of national camp school. Both were very impressive: bigger and better funded than any of the camps I worked up in WI.

[Kyrell1978]

I'm an Eagle Scout too and I've always considered boy scouts to be, as a general category, physically fit nerds. D&D and other geeky games weren't just big when I was a youth (15-5 years ago), they were HUGE. We played on picnic tables by lantern light, atop rock formations during hikes, on sandbars in the middle of a river, in a submarine, on an aircraft carrier, inside tents by flashlight, and when we were places we couldn't bring the necessities we usually ended up talking about games. I can remember playing: 3.5, some d20 homebrew, poker, blackjack, spoons (played with pocket knives), gin rummy, cribbage, sheepshead, Magic the Gathering, Pokemon, chess, checkers, Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, as well as a bunch of physical games like Ultimate frisbee, Kubb, and capture the flag. After I turned 18 and aged out I got to see the organization from the perspective of an adult, which is always good for a laugh. Over a five year period a short while back I spent my summers working at three different scout camps. Everyone played something.

Camps 1 and 2 were boy scout camps up in the north woods of Wisconsin. The average age of a staffer was probably between 18 and 22 and the campers ranged from 11 to 18. Campers were there for 6 straight days and staff got 24 hours from saturday noon to sunday noon off; there were quite a few campaigns that ran the whole summer. Camp 3 was a cub scout camp in central Wisconsin. The staff there were a bit younger, mostly highschool kids, some college students. The campers were 7 to 11 years old and were only there for weekends and the day during the week, leaving more free time for the staff in the evening. From what I saw, there was one D&D 4e game running through the summer that would have sessions when people felt like it and Magic games every night.

When it came to the PnP RPGs, I noticed two types of players. The ones who had played the game before, usually during the rest of the year, took it seriously and tried to roleplay. The ones who didn't play a lot of RPGs but wanted to try it out were more likely to run your stereotypical chaotic randumb murder hobos. At Camp 1 we played a 3.5 game that, by July, had ended up being the core of experienced PCs trying to save the goofy characters who dropped in and out every week. We tried Traveller but that ended in PvP teamkilling. At Camp 2 we had a really fun Pathfinder campaign two or three nights a week from June to August. I don't remember the plot, just that we had a really good team dynamic of saving each other with clutch rolls and then scheming with other characters like "If this guy turns on the rest of the party, will you help me kill him?" "Only if you let me have his magic item". Then there was one night where the gray-haired camp director walks in to see what we're making so much noise at midnight over. We were trying to figure out how to explain it to him without running into the whole satanic panic thing, but it turns out that he grew up in Lake Geneva back in the 60s and played his first game in Gygax's house.

Kyrell1978, what council are you with? I just so happen to have had the pleasure of visiting two great scout reservations in Missouri. Beaumont for a weekend when I was a Venturing youth and Bartle for a week of national camp school. Both were very impressive: bigger and better funded than any of the camps I worked up in WI.

Lone Bear District. We head to Bartle Every year. My eldest son just made Brave in the tribe.

[Rogar Demonblud]

There was about zero overlap between our local troop and the RPG scene. The Scouts tried to be the purity police and had more in common with SA Brownshirts than anything I saw in the Boy Scout Handbook. Happy day when the council people shut them down (not so happy what it took to get that to happen).

[Kyrell1978]

There was about zero overlap between our local troop and the RPG scene. The Scouts tried to be the purity police and had more in common with SA Brownshirts than anything I saw in the Boy Scout Handbook. Happy day when the council people shut them down (not so happy what it took to get that to happen).

I am very sorry that your experience with Scouting was a poor one.

[Eldan]

I was in the Scouts, though the Swiss ones, which are pretty different from the Americans from what I gather. No roleplaying. And I don't think any of the guys there would have gone for it.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

A long time ago a well meaning (overly religious) aunt tried to talk me out of playing D&D to try to save my soul and whatnot (yay 1980s). She had a list of traits that the "average" D&D player met. It was honestly pretty accurate for me, but one of the traits listed was being a boy scout

That was on a list of religious peoples' reasons d&d is evil and you should stop playing it? Awesome.

I'm pioneering another tower next week. Last weekend I had a short camp. Scout for life.

[Kyrell1978]

That was on a list of religious peoples' reasons d&d is evil and you should stop playing it? Awesome.

I'm pioneering another tower next week. Last weekend I had a short camp. Scout for life.

I'm the default "committee member" right now, but I'm going to be one of our troops asst scoutmasters next by Feb.

[Honest Tiefling]

I've personally never met anyone who did both, but since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, I also can't say I know many scouts of any gender. Either it isn't as big of a thing here until they pop out of the woodwork to sell cookies, or I just don't notice them.

If it was/is big in the Girl Scouts, I do wonder how many games are going to be derailed about unrealistic rules regarding archers or everyone trying to play a ranger since they do archery nowadays.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If it was/is big in the Girl Scouts, I do wonder how many games are going to be derailed about unrealistic rules regarding archers or everyone trying to play a ranger since they do archery nowadays.

American scouts do a lot of archery?

I mean, I would certainly expect a lot of scouts to like the ranger class, since the basic idea is "outdoorsy badass", which is the most scout like kind of badass. I'm just not sure if it would be mostly because of archery.

[Kyrell1978]

American scouts do a lot of archery?

I mean, I would certainly expect a lot of scouts to like the ranger class, since the basic idea is "outdoorsy badass", which is the most scout like kind of badass. I'm just not sure if it would be mostly because of archery.
In the BSA there is an archery merit badge which is pretty popular. Ranger is certainly one of my favorites.

[Eldan]

So, list of things we did differently in Switzerland...
We had pseudomilitary ranks. There's been a motion to rename some of them, but at least group leaders still go by Ensign (Fähnrich).
No merit badges, at least not in the style they are done in America. I had like... three badges? By the time I made Ensign, I had two. First Aid and Navigation.
Superregional organisation came barely into it. We didn't have anything like national products like cookies. I'm sure the local officers/adults who did the finances and so on had some contacts in the national organisation, but for the most part, if we wanted to sell anyting, we had to bake it our selves.
Naming ceremonies. In your first summer camp, when you've been in for about half a year, you get your naming ceremony. You get woken up in the night, have to do something embarassing and/or dirty in the woods for a bit (we were told to fish something out of a mud pit), then you get to dry off by a fire, get your uniform and your scout nickname bestowed upon you.

As for D&D, as far as anyone, and certainly the parents, were concerned, the entire point of the scouts was for 20-30 ten year olds to get out of the house and run themselves to exhaustion in the forest all Saturday so the parents had a day off. I can count the number of things we did indoor on one hand, probably. So, this mostly attracted the most sportsy kids, the kind who would beat me up for reading books. D&D would not have been a thing. To be fair, I never had all that good a time in the scouts. Mostly, it was a lot of rain, mud, exhaustion and bullying. I liked to read all the books they had on file on animals, plants and tracking, though. Mostly tried teaching that stuff to myself, the leaders weren't interested.

[Rockphed]

Naming ceremonies. In your first summer camp, when you've been in for about half a year, you get your naming ceremony. You get woken up in the night, have to do something embarassing and/or dirty in the woods for a bit (we were told to fish something out of a mud pit), then you get to dry off by a fire, get your uniform and your scout nickname bestowed upon you. .

The Boy Scouts of America has a policy specifically forbidding that sort of thing. Well, technically it forbids secret meetings and initiations, but it probably applies to what you described. I'm not sure exactly what the origin of that rule is.

[Eldan]

The Boy Scouts of America has a policy specifically forbidding that sort of thing. Well, technically it forbids secret meetings and initiations, but it probably applies to what you described. I'm not sure exactly what the origin of that rule is.

Hazing, probably. Switzerland had pretty massive problems too, it seems, in some groups. The problem is, most of the summer camp leaders themselves and anyone running the day-to-day operations with the kids are barely adults themselves. We had a lot of 18-25 year olds running groups of 12 year olds. I had to step in quite often when I was 18-ish and two of us had to organize a pack of shouting tweens initiating some new 10 year olds into the "proper" scouts from the cub scouts. I mean, the idea was just that they should lead them barefoot over a meadow with a blindfold on while making some noise. Not, you know, throw them on the ground or try to make them walk into trees. From the stories I've heard, some groups went farther than that with their ceremonies, with stuff like throwing things at the new kids any number of other stuff that could have got someone baldy hurt.

[Delta]

We had some of that stuff, too, but it was completely harmless, like sing a ridiculous song and drink something that tasted weird (but again, nothing really bad, I don't think any of the higher ups would've stood for any of that)

I guess a big difference in Germany is that the whole scout movement had been completely banned after the Nazis took over (since they wanted every kid to go and join the Hitler Youth...) and only reformed after WW2, was then strongly influenced by the peace movement and so on. As I said, the organization I was in was catholic in theory, but in practice, it was just about the most chill and open-minded group of people I knew at that time (I only did join up when I was already around 14 or 15, though, so no idea about what it was like as a younger kid)

[Kyrell1978]

The Boy Scouts of America has a policy specifically forbidding that sort of thing. Well, technically it forbids secret meetings and initiations, but it probably applies to what you described. I'm not sure exactly what the origin of that rule is.

It would certainly count as hazing and is prohibited.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The Boy Scouts of America has a policy specifically forbidding that sort of thing. Well, technically it forbids secret meetings and initiations, but it probably applies to what you described. I'm not sure exactly what the origin of that rule is.

Like a lot of "This is really stupid, and we shouldn't do it" rules in America, it seems to have started about the time of the Ribbon Creek debacle.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Play D&D when I can. I was in Troop 1592. Never made it to Eagle, sadly. Only went as high as Star. My youngest brother made Eagle, though. Also, my Scoutmaster looked like a member of ZZ Top. Cool guy.

Our troop had a fun tradition for scaring new kids. We did weekend campouts every month. On the second or third of the school year, we'd tell the new kids this story about a creature that followed our troop around called the Wompus Kitty. Standard stuff of missing kids and such.

A campout or two after that, a couple of us older kids would sneak off to imitate the creature. We had a coffee can with a hole punched through the bottom and a rope through the hole. Hold the can up, get your hand wet, and pull on the rope. Makes a pretty good noise. Didn't get every new kid with it, but we got enough.

[ve4grm]

Play D&D when I can. I was in Troop 1592. Never made it to Eagle, sadly. Only went as high as Star. My youngest brother made Eagle, though. Also, my Scoutmaster looked like a member of ZZ Top. Cool guy.

Our troop had a fun tradition for scaring new kids. We did weekend campouts every month. On the second or third of the school year, we'd tell the new kids this story about a creature that followed our troop around called the Wompus Kitty. Standard stuff of missing kids and such.

A campout or two after that, a couple of us older kids would sneak off to imitate the creature. We had a coffee can with a hole punched through the bottom and a rope through the hole. Hold the can up, get your hand wet, and pull on the rope. Makes a pretty good noise. Didn't get every new kid with it, but we got enough.

Yeah, that's the alright kind of prank/scare. It's when it's targeted and potentially harmful, especially if it's something they need to go through to become a "true" member, then it becomes potentially-abusive hazing.

We used to lead the Cubs on a Snipe Hunt at winter camp. We'd tell them the story of the elusive Snipe that lives in the area, and how dangerous it can be if you're not careful. We'd be fine, though, as all the leaders knew what they were doing. And then we'd take everyone out on a hunt to try to catch one, wandering the forest doing the "Whoop!" of a Snipe mating call. A leader would inevitably catch one in a bag or box, we'd all run back to the cabin, and the leader who caught it would come in carefully... and oops, they dropped the bag!

...and out tumbles some sort of fuzzy mess. A stuffed animal maybe. One time I think it was a remote control thing with fur on it, so it would go scurrying around once it got out. If you screamed when it got out, you may have been ribbed bit for being gullible, but it never went further than that. And because it was aiming at all of the first-years, you never felt all that singled out. But if you were one of the 8-year-olds who managed to figure out it was bull before the rest did, you had something you could be proud of!

[Rogar Demonblud]

That wouldn't work around here. We have real snipe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm pioneering another tower next week.

By the way, this tower turned out awesome. My design actually worked really well, and I managed to successfully filter out which of the other people's suggestions were good ones. (Quite a few in the end.) A few weeks ago I already had a raft design that worked near-brilliantly. I'm on a roll.

Pioneering is one of those things you don't do quite often enough to properly remember how many details about it are important. Even after having been a leader of the knotting age group for around a decade it still trips me up sometimes, but not this time.



Around here we don't do any sort of hazing. Nope, none at all. Because letting people know you do it and when and how defeats the whole point. So we definitely don't. And this bottle of ketchup is just to go with my dinner.

[Kyrell1978]

By the way, this tower turned out awesome. My design actually worked really well, and I managed to successfully filter out which of the other people's suggestions were good ones. (Quite a few in the end.) A few weeks ago I already had a raft design that worked near-brilliantly. I'm on a roll.

Pioneering is one of those things you don't do quite often enough to properly remember how many details about it are important. Even after having been a leader of the knotting age group for around a decade it still trips me up sometimes, but not this time.



Around here we don't do any sort of hazing. Nope, none at all. Because letting people know you do it and when and how defeats the whole point. So we definitely don't. And this bottle of ketchup is just to go with my dinner.

That's awesome. Glad everything went well for you. :smallbiggrin:

[Frozen_Feet]

I've been a scout since I was 9, though I'm no longer involved in weekly activity.

I started RPGs separately, but after becoming a leader myself, sometimes included them in the indoor meetings. I've also held games at camps to interested kids as part of the program. I got one recurring group out of that myself and inspired at least another. Board games and card games were also common filler activities for late evenings.

Of course, the scout program is sort of broad here. Running RPGs isn't even particularly odd, there are LARP rulesets originating from within the scout movement, dedicated to emulating life in third world countries (etc.) And last year, I worked together with local LARP crowd to organize an adults-only horror LARP for scout leaders. We had a real pig heart impaled on a dagger and everything.

It fits right in when you consider that the more "traditional" scout activities include stuff like making and shootings bows or staging car accidents for first-aid drills.

[Fyraltari]

I use to be a scout. That's where I discovered the legendary (in France at least) RPG-parody Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk. It didn't make me a roleplayer but it was my first step into true geekery, so there's that. :smalltongue: