Q. What exactly is the Rogue Hunt?
The Rogue Hunt is a quirky creative scavenger hunt for people all around the world who want to put more whimsy, creativity, and goodness into the world. Our main event is a week-long team-based hunt held every August. Other shorter hunts may be held throughout the year with varied formats and may be team or individual based.
Every hunt will contain a few items that must be found in the style of a traditional scavenger hunt, but there are many other items that must be built, baked, performed, written, programmed, painted, fund-raised for, crocheted, posted on social, designed, solved, and (sometimes) suffered through. The best way to get a feel for what kinds of items go on the List is to check out some of the lists from past hunts.
Q. When is the next hunt happening?
A. August 2 – 10, 2025
Q. I’m excited for the hunt! When can I register?
A. May 1, 2025
Q. What is The Starfish Foundation?
A. The Starfish Foundation is the primary nonprofit benefactor of the Rogue Hunt. Before we became an LLC, they hosted registration and took care of all the legal backend work. We’re forever grateful to them for making The Rogue Hunt possible. Learn more about them and their role with Rogue here.
Q. Who is Eugene?
A. Eugene is the Rogue Hunt’s fairy-goblin mascot. Members of the Rogue Treehouse voted to name him Eugene in Spring 2023. He loves mushrooms and spreading goodness like glitter. Also, he’s cute and his best friend’s name is Gronn’k.
Q. Where can I find the official Rules for the Rogue Hunt?
A. https://roguehunt.com/about-us/rogue-hunt-rules/
The Hunt:
Q. What happens during the hunt?
A. A list will be made available with various items/tasks. Do your best, and have fun! Submit images, videos, and PDFs (as directed by each item). Make others smile.
Q. What do teams look like?
A. Teams will be made up of 4-6 people. At registration you will be asked to indicate your team type.
- Will your team be competitive?
- Will you focus on the social good items?
- Will your team be chill? or…
- Will your team just hang out and donate?
Whatever you choose it totally up to you!
If you don’t have teammates, no worries! We’ll connect you with them after registration closes.
Q. What will the list look like?
A. The list will have three columns: Item number, item description, and point value. You can take a look at past hunts in our Archive to see format. The list will also be made available as a PDF and in GoogleSheets (view only; you’ll need to copy or download).
Submitting Items / Item Requirements:
Q. How does my team submit items?
A. Your team should create a Google Folder and send it to RogueHuntOfficial@gmail.com. All items should then be uploaded to this folder during the hunt. A step-by-step guide can be found on YouTube.
Q. How do I label my item submissions?
A. Name each of your items starting with a three digit number (001, 045, 112). You can include additional words after the number, but it must start with the three digit number.
Q. Submission requirements? Video length? Preferred file types?
A. Submit the type of file requested – PDF, Image, audio file, or video file. Failure to do so will result in point reduction.
For videos, length will be indicated in item description. Landscape or portrait are both fine. Preferred file type is .mp4.
For images, preferred file type is .jpg or .png. Unless the item asks for a collage, screenshot, or side-by-side, you should submit 1 original image for each task.
Q. Can we upload a caption file with our videos or does that count as two uploads for one submission?
A: Yes, 100%. You’re not required, but are encouraged to do so. We support accessibility in every way. Here’s a how to guide. You can add CC after the close of the hunt so long as you do not edit or re-upload your original video file.
Q. Can I share items on social media?
A. Not during the hunt. This goes against the rules. (See Rule 9.)
Scoring / Judging / Winning / Points?
Q. Who wins?
A. There’s more than one way to win.
- Overall Winner: Awarded to the team that earns the most points.
- Altruist Prize: Awarded to the team that does the most ‘good’ (fundraising, acts of kindness, etc.)
- Item Specific Prizes: These will be identified when the list drops. Awarded to the individual(s) who best completes (a) specific item(s).
- Judges’ Choice Prize – The judges will award an additional prize at their own discretion to an individual or team that they feel deserves recognition
Q. How does judging / scoring work?
A. The items on the list will each have an assigned point value.
There are 6 judges* for the 2025 Rogue Hunt, including the 3 admin and 1 representative from The Starfish Foundation. Scoring guidelines can be found here.
*Judges will judge all teams, but scores for teams that include their own family members, friends, and any former teammates will not affect the overall winner. This will not affect the eligibility of the Rogue Participant, nor the total number of points given.
Q. Why is this item worth X amount of points?
No matter how much we try to reason it out, there’s no “obvious” way to assign points and it all ends up being kind of arbitrary, but, we do have some general guidelines we follow when assigning points.
- Warm-up items are all worth 12 points and under. We recognize a few of those items COULD have been higher point items, but we thought kids might like to do them, so we leave them in that low range to let them play.
- Maximum point value is 150. In 2024, only the spread goodness like glitter item (fundraising item) was worth 150 points.
- Items in the 100 – 150 range are the “high point” items. They are selected based on time we think they’ll take to complete, difficulty, importance (like many altruist items), and how much we wanted people to do them / how much effort we wanted people to put into doing them (so we can use it in the future on social media, emails, or our website, or we just really want to see what you can do if you work hard to impress us). We also try to make sure these 100+ point items are spread out among a variety of disciplines (adventure, building, traditional art, performance, education, etc.) so that a team that excels in one area isn’t unfairly rewarded. (This year there was 11 items in this range)
- The rest of the items are between 20 and 99 points. The admin more or less take turns filling in numbers over a week or so and then bring back ones we think need further discussion – raising or lowering the point value on a few for whatever reason. And sometimes, we just disagree and that’s okay too.
- Tasks that involve finding/involving specific sorts of people (pilot, college mascot, scientist) or a specific location (border between two countries) are mid-level items even though they might be “harder” and “more time consuming” because we know luck often plays into completing those tasks and we do not want any one of those items to become a deciding factor to the overall winner.
- It’s impossible to universally say if coding something in Excel is harder or easier than a crochet task.
- Also, sometimes we’re just incredibly wrong about how hard or time consuming something is until we start seeing submissions / hearing grumbles through the grapevine. “Why is this only 22 points??!?!” … Well honestly, we thought it was easy. But it’s not. Who knew? Not us. We’re sorry (but it will happen again).
Money:
Q. How much does it cost to enter?
A. The week-long hunt in August cost $20 USD. There are scholarships available.
You will also have the option to donate a “ticket to play” to a scholar in Ecuador. Mini hunts or other events may have different pricing.
Q. Where does my money go?
<p>A.</p>
<ul style="list-style-type:circle">
<li>30% of all registration fees will go directly to our non-profit partner</li>
<li>30% of all registration fees will go to supporting Rogue (website fees, taxes, email servers, etc.)</li>
<li>The remaining 40% of funds will go towards prizes!</li>
</ul>This means the more registrations we have, the more money our non-profit partner receives, and the more we can contribute to prizes!
Q. What if I still have questions?!?!?!
A. First, we know you’re excited about Rogue if you’ve read this whole FAQ, but we need you to stop shouting. Second, if you have a question that cannot be answered on this site (that includes the Rules), please email RogueHuntOfficial@gmail.com.
The Rogue Hunt is not in any way affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to GISHWHES, LLC, Cotopaxi’s Questival, the University of Chicago’s Scav Hunt, or other similar scavenger hunts.