Book:Scouting for Trolls

An unwritten book whose title was first released prior to the publication of Thud! as a forthcoming Discworld novel. It was never published, though the concept - a book about the formation of a Scouting movement in Ankh-Morpork - is mentioned in the afterword to The Shepherd's Crown.

A Blink of the Screen contains a short piece, referred to by Terry as a "squib", titled The Minutes of the Meeting To Form The Proposed Ankh-Morpork Federation of Scouts. This consists of Rufus Drumknott's minutes of a meeting between Lord Vetinari and selected City dignitaries and Guild representatives, all of whom have an interest in establishing Scouting as a pursuit for young boys of all races and species. Everyone is broadly in favour, Chrysoprase and Detritus explain about the original Troll concept of Scouting as a kind of citizenship training for young Trolls (apparently both were Scouts as pebbles), and at least three members of the Committee are of the opinion membership should be equally extended to girls. The page on the Ankh-Morpork Scouting (and possibly Urban Survival) Federation‎ gives a list of the Committee members, any or all of whom were potential major characters in this potential book. They include Miss Alice Band of the Assassins' Guild, who gets her first formal speaking part in this short. Captain Carrot is also present, and of course he mooted a prototype organisation of this kind for the street kids as long ago as Jingo. This involved football and the possibility of character-forming Outward Bound camps in the wilderness.

Just as the short story "A Collegiate Casting-Out of Devilish Devices" was later expanded into a sort of prologue to Thud!, it is possible this short had the same potential relationship to Scouting for Trolls, or else any material worked on for the book was recycled for other writings. This might be the case in Raising Steam, which in its first few pages mentions a former "Scout" called Magnus Magnusson. His troop seems all-inclusive, and issues proficiency badges; and indeed a boy-scout like association in Morpork is occasionally referenced throughout the book.