These games, along with D&D, were alive and well when I was in the military.

Like this? I guess it depends on the base and someone stepping up to organize the game.

https://jblm.armymwr.com/calendar/event/75270

https://www.jbmdl.jb.mil/Quick-Links/Get-Connected-Clubs/

In my country, barracks have "open days" (basically a weekend, once a year i think) where they would present all their clubs and invite external personnel to check out and participate (long-term, not only on those two days). I wanted to try fencing, so i went, and i finished joining the tabletop club (and fencing too). This is what brought me back to tabletops.

Then covid, moved to a city without any barracks close by, so i couldn't continue, but military definitely have tabletop rpgs (and they are very partial with those where battlemaps are easy to set up)

That sounds awesome! Which country?

France. The city i was is was Rennes (There is 4 barracks there), but i'm pretty sure the same thing exist in Paris (CESNAD? Not certain).

or you can get them into 40k and take the rest of their money

this man Warhammers

Anecdotally, my brother in the Air Force had a pretty regular and frequent D&D group in the past 3 years. But I don’t know how widespread that is.

Very common in all branches, it just differs based on what the job is. Mechanics? Probably less likely. Intel? Way more likely.

Can confirm it was fairly common in the Marine Corps, even some of the grunts and motor transport guys would get interested on ship duty. When you're bored as hell you'll take anything you can get.

Boredom and creativity go hand in hand. Not necessarily good creativity. On my first deployment i chugged a bottle of syrup for $50 bucks and gave the corpsman heart attacks. It is not fun throwing up syrup for an hour after.

>Mechanics? Probably less likely.

Coincidentally, my partner's father was an airplane mechanic stationed in Okinawa in the 1980s... and apparently played a lot of D&D.

Cheaper to go to slot machines!

I've been to Diego Garcia. It is boring as hell; about all there is to say. We got in trouble for trying to organize an expedition to secretly catch and eat some of the coconut crabs (which is verboten).

Also played D&D in the service. Most active tabletop gaming group I've ever been in too.

Didn't D&D in DG tho.

There's no way organizing a secret group to capture and eat some sacred monsters doesn't count as D&D.

> secretly catch and eat some of the coconut crabs (which is verboten).

Was this out of environmental concerns / the crabs going extinct or was there something more to it?

According to my buddy the Canadian Navy is absolutely crawling with Warhammer players, apparently being a player has been pretty good for their career.

Yikes, probably cheaper just to bribe superior officers for promotions :-)

True, but if you've already spent the money might as well choose a career that will at least allow you to tell your parents 'See, I told you these plastic models will pay off one day.'

Fair point. That would indeed be priceless.

Didn't the Prussian general staff basically invent the idea of table top gaming/simulations?

The Chinese were doing it >2000 years ago - I expect that such games were a common tool.