How to Build a Treasure Scavenger Hunt The Basic Formula

adventures my name's Chris am the architect and want to give you the basic building blocks that you should start with whenever you want to build treasure scavenger hunt adventure what mean by that is any time you want to take somebody and send them from place to place to place to place maybe culminating with big surprise or major puzzle or just even for fun some people call it scavenger hunt which isn't quite right treasure hunt makes more sense but that's kind of been hijacked by pirate movies and then we really enough Instagram people that are finding hot wheels at antique shops don't understand how they manage to get that hash tag but it's theirs now and nothing I've done so far has gotten it back anyway like to call it an adventure know it's very all-encompassing and broad but just know that when talk about an adventure mean it like somebody gets an envelope that has clue that goes to hear that sense to hear that sense to hear and then finally to an ending surprise or present or proposal or something so here are the things you need to think about step one start at the end think about couple different pieces lot of its logistical where it's gonna end when it's gonna end how it's gonna end and you need to have all this factor in the beginning and lock it down you don't have to commit to it right times could change maybe you're shooting for five and then it's five thirty and that's fine but you need basic idea if you're gonna do proposal you probably wanted at sunset and so you need to look up when the sunset times are if it's during the week and it's surprise party you need to make sure that all the people that are gonna surprise your your significant other or your friend or whoever the player is can get off work and they can get to the location in time without anything being ruined so really think about how this needs to end and then once you're done with that you head all the way to the beginning the beginning is extremely important because you have to know where your player is gonna be and how this thing kicks off if you want to make it really immersive and really you know mystery themed you might need to bring in some people that your player and by player mean the person going on the adventure you might want to bring in some people that your player doesn't know so they can kick this thing off honestly if you want to play it pretty safe you should try to have them at home you also want to think about having them ready remember early on when did one of my first adventures we've set cool we're gonna start this thing at 10 a.m. and it was really up to the person who hired me to make sure they were ready so 10 a.m. rolls around they get knock at the door the box is left the person that dropped the box is kind of waiting across the street in the car making sure they get picked up 10:15 rolls around door hasn't opened 10:30 rolls around door still hasn't opened we realized that the player was still asleep and hadn't been told or briefed or prepped in any way that anything was gonna happen and so it knocked off the whole day everything ran late we were scrambling trying to make things up so you need to try to figure out ways that this thing can begin to which they'll be completely prepared for an easy way is to drop hint sometimes you just have to pull back the curtain little bit and say hey I'm gonna be doing cool treasure scavenger hunt adventure for you so friggin be ready got the ending got the beginning now it's time to figure out what like to call anchor points anchor points are places you absolutely have to send your player to and you might already have some in mind an anchor point could be some place with lot of emotional significance or just place with really cool opportunity like friend's house it could be park with bunch of statues and plaques that just have lots of opportunities or if it's proposal maybe it's lot of different places that have romantic significance to you and your significant other think about these anchor points and just throw on an Excel spreadsheet take look at how far they are and figure out from the starting point to the ending point what's in between and the best route that you can send them on you might say cool there's coffee shop that's their favor right down the street from their house that's probably really great starting point because coffee shops are awesome usually they're really amenable to being part of these adventures and finally it's caffeine and it's great way to start something if you're gonna give them puzzles and clues so you've got the end you have the beginning you figure it out these points in the middle now it's just time to plug in different gambits and ideas to propel them forward use the term gambit because puzzles don't quite work there's lot of different things you can use it's not just necessarily puzzle or riddle or something in later video I'm actually gonna talk about the three main buckets that all of these fall into and they are spoiler alert dead drops handoffs and decodes you can kind of figure out where I'm going with this but you're gonna use these gambits and just check through the rest of my youtube channel to come up with ideas where maybe at the first stop there's word search puzzle and they figure out the word search and it tells them to go to coffee shop and then at the coffee shop they give the barista password it's in the word search and the brief that gives them an envelope that has not endorsed cipher and clues to plaque in park nearby and they use that to tell them where to go next and once they get there someone approaches them and says happy birthday was instructed to give you this and hands them wax sealed envelope and then they go to library where there's library book number and once they get the library book number it sends them to bar where all their friends jump out and yell surprise to recap start at the end then the beginning lock down the places in between and then figure out how you're gonna push them through if you have any questions or you want some clarification please let me know in the comments below don't hesitate to like and subscribe it helps me also keep these videos coming so always have new ideas and gambits and philosophies on the ways to build this without train wrecking everything if you want little bit more help and structure you can support me on patreon for my intrepid adventurer patrons did build out an Excel spreadsheet it's the same one that use when somebody hires me that allows you to input everything you need and then also share with friends that you're going to involve or actors or any piece of that so thank you so much and until next time happy adventuring