Harsh Realities Every Adventure Designer Faces

One thing that sets successful adventure designers apart from the masses, is that they acknowledge something will go wrong during their adventure, and they plan ahead to counteract all these unwanted surprises.

It’s time to air out some dirty laundry: There are no treasure scavenger hunts that go 100% as planned. For large events, a pivotal actor may come down with the flu, or your Adventure website may go offline. In small adventures, your bright sunny day may be interrupted by a surprise storm, or one of your players may light your couch on fire trying to find a hidden heat-sensitive message. Knowing that your hunt may fall apart shouldn’t scare you away from creating an adventure you and your players will love. However, it's essential to at least acknowledge these harsh realities when it comes to designing and creating adventures. Just because your adventure is falling apart, doesn’t mean your players need to know that anything is going wrong!

Here are some common threats to your Adventure that you should keep in mind. Remember, these problems affect all designers, but the best of the best use their previous experience (or the experiences of others) to move forward and keep the illusion of the perfect hunt alive.

YOUR ADVENTURE AND PUZZLE DESIGN ARE B-A-D, BAD!

One of the hardest realities to come to terms with is that the project you’ve poured your heart and soul into is just not very good; but that’s okay. All creators hit this mental roadblock from time to time, and it can be difficult to reflect and take the blame for the poor results. It’s essential to take a look back and view your creations through the eyes of a player and see the potential faults. Instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole, look for ways to correct it.

Here are some common design flaws and some suggestions on how you can prepare for or fix them.

Your puzzles are too ambiguous.

You’ve done it. The perfect puzzle! After you give yourself the biggest chef’s kiss, you send it over to your buddy and eagerly await the praise of your puzzling prowess.

“This doesn’t make any sense,”  - you get in reply.

You decide that your beta tester is having a bad day, so you send the puzzle to three other people for testing... and they all come back with incorrect answers.

At this point, you need to realize it may be that your perfect puzzle is bad and not your solvers. In your mind, the puzzle you created is flawless. All the information is there, and everyone should be able to solve it in minutes. However, it’s important to remember that YOU are the one who created it. There are no surprises or second guessing because you know the puzzle inside and out. Your players won’t have this honor. 

Some of us like to refer to these types of puzzles as “Moon Logic”, where the player is tasked with trying to figure out what the designer was thinking when creating the puzzle instead of solving the puzzle itself.

This is why we highly recommend you have a neutral party test your puzzles and clues before you put them into action. You can get so hooked onto a puzzle you’ve designed that you can’t see that it doesn’t make a lick of sense to anyone else. This doesn’t mean you need to start from scratch every time your beta testers fail to solve your puzzles. Someone with an outside perspective can help you simplify the instructions or assist with signposting your answer. “Signposting” means giving additional information to clue your players in on how to solve a puzzle (for example: referencing “fenced in hogs” in a puzzle where players need to use a pig-pen cipher).

Your puzzles are too hard.

This harsh reality can go hand in hand with the ambiguous puzzles. One of the keys to creating a successful adventure is coming to terms with the fact that the hunt you are creating is for your players and not for you! In my experience, most players enjoy feeling smart and (almost) breezing through each section of the hunt. Of course, there are puzzle nuts who want the hardest thing you can dish out, but more casual players don’t enjoy their journey coming to a halt for over an hour because they are stumped on a puzzle.

A good rule of thumb is to create a puzzle and see how long it takes a few beta testers to finish. If you ever have the thought “Is this too hard?”, it probably is. Depending on your audience, take what you think may be the final design of your puzzles and simplify even more. Even the players that you think may be the smartest of the group can go blank in the heat of the moment.

In need of some puzzle testers to judge the difficulty or ambiguity of your puzzles? We are happy to test any puzzles you’ve got in the Constructed Adventured Reddit and Discord! Links are at the bottom of this post.

Your Adventure is too ambitious.

Yet another harsh reality that designers come across is that their projects are too ambitious. This can come at both the hunt level and the puzzle level.

A horseback archery challenge would be a fantastic addition to your medieval themed treasure hunt, but do you have the resources to set that all up? Will your players have time to detour to the archery range? Do you have the energy to make sure everything at this stop is perfect, on top of all of the other tasks you still need to take care of for your hunt?

If you ever find yourself saying “It’ll be cutting it close, but…”, STOP RIGHT THERE! NO BUTS! You ALWAYS want to leave as much wiggle room as you can for yourself in both the design phase and on the day of the hunt itself. Take care of yourself. Your ideas may sound amazing, but you don’t want to collapse from exhaustion trying to get everything perfect.

It’s best to simplify your hunts as early as you can. Try writing out your entire adventure before you start designing anything concrete. Take some scratch paper and write out how your players will get from point A to point B. Are there too many steps in between? Will your players be worn out from too many tasks? If your adventure involves traveling between two locations, travel between them yourself at different times of the day to see how long it would reasonably take your players to do the same thing. Try not to have your players travel for more than 15 minutes without something to do! These are all things to consider to curtail an overly ambitious project early on in the design phase. If this is your very first hunt, keep it linear! One clue that leads to the next, to the next, to the next. No reason to make it open-ended or have a meta puzzle (where your player must collect something at every stop).

YOUR PLAYERS ARE UNPREDICTABLE!

Okay, you’ve got a firm grasp on your basic game design, but a new element you have to be wary of is your own players. Your players can be very unpredictable.

Your players may physically break something.

For some people, it can be hard to imagine that your players could physically break a component of your adventure-- but it is very possible. Have you ever gone to an escape room and, in addition to normal safety rules (don’t play with the electrical sockets), your game master starts listing off peculiar rules? “Don’t climb on top of the bookshelf, don’t drink any fluids you find in the room, and please don’t crawl up and into the ceiling.” These rules are added because players, for some reason, have attempted all of the above in the past.

There might be a silly spark that spreads through your players during the course of your Adventure, or maybe a little alcohol is involved, but inevitably you’ll come across a situation where accidents happen. For example, a player may break the entire lock off of a treasure chest, or accidentally spill a cup of coffee all over your printed puzzle sheets. In group games, a player may take a clue that is meant to be found by a different team.

One way to prepare for this is to make duplicates of your puzzles and clues. If one of the clues goes missing or is destroyed, you’ll have plenty of backups. Did one of your players knock over the vial for your magic potion puzzle? No issues if you have a bunch of paper towels and a backup vial of the secret solution prepared. It would also be a good idea to laminate your puzzles and clues to avoid any unintentional rips or spills.

Pro Tip: PHOTOGRAPH EVERYTHING. Sending a text of the clue or a picture message of the location where you hid the chest is your “break glass in case of emergencies” failsafe.

A quick additional note - your players could also end up “breaking” themselves. Think carefully before adding any physical challenges that could end in injury. In adventure designing, the phrase “I can’t imagine that X would do Y”, shouldn’t exist. Plan for the worst!

Your players may logically break something.

Possibly more frustrating than your players physically breaking something during their adventure, they may end up logically breaking part of your design. This can be done intentionally or by accident. 

For example, a player may deduce your final puzzle or the final code to your combination lock long before they collect all of the expected information. Likewise, they may accidentally stumble on a future clue without finding and solving all of the puzzles leading up to that specific clue. Check out the blog on Meta Puzzles for more information on this.

This is another great opportunity to enlist some beta testers to try and break your adventure. You’ll be surprised how much you can miss as the creator of a hunt. You might think you have all the loose ends tied up, but one of your testers could list out three additional scenarios where players may skip over portions of your hunt (intentionally or not).

Your players may not work together.

It’s a universal truth that not everyone will get along with everyone else. When designing a treasure scavenger hunt for a particular team (or even an unknown team), you’ll want to keep this harsh reality in mind.

One thing to consider is how linear your hunt is. If you plan to have a team run through the hunt, will they be hovering on top of each other trying to solve a single puzzle, or will they have to wait around while one player gets to finish a physical challenge by themselves? It may be better to create a non-linear puzzle or have elements that will involve all of the participants so there isn’t an argument where one player does everything while everyone else is stuck just following the lead around.

Just as a wedding couple decides how best to arrange table seating to keep grouchy Uncle Joe far away from snarky sister Betty, sometimes it’s best to arrange the teams beforehand to avoid any potential conflicts. In addition to avoiding strife, this can also allow you to make sure each team has diverse adventuring talents. For example, it can be beneficial to ensure that each team has at least one great puzzle solver, a member who is organized and can keep the team together, and one outgoing member who can take the lead and isn’t afraid to take risks.

Take a look at this hunt created by the Architect where he utilized different player roles to help create comprehensive teams for the hunt.

Your players may not share your interests.

As mentioned many times before, one of the keys to a successful hunt is knowing your players and designing the hunt around this knowledge. Unfortunately, this could mean creating a hunt that doesn’t fit your desired creations. You may love solving and creating crossword puzzles, but your target audience may dread them.

In an extreme example, and possibly the worst for adventure creators… your target audience might not like treasure scavenger hunts at all! It can be a major disappointment if you’ve spent considerable time creating an adventure to surprise a family member or friend, only to find out that they hate the entire concept of adventures.

The goal of all hunts is to make something that can be enjoyed by your players. Before you invest time and money into a project, reach out to your prospective players and see if this is something they even want and/or what type of puzzles or challenges they enjoy. It might ruin the surprise, but it can save the creator a lot of time and disappointment in the long run.

You Can’t Control the World Around You!

This is possibly the simplest of the harsh realities to understand but also the most devastating for new and unprepared treasure scavenger hunt creators. Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to control the world around them, and as far as I can tell, nobody has succeeded.

Any picnic, concert, or birthday party that has been cancelled due to weather is a prime example on how devastating unpredictable weather can be to a carefully planned event. Start planning early on for how you can counter a sudden change in the weather. Will your event take place entirely indoors? If any of it takes place outside, what will you do if it rains? Will players still be able to safely navigate to each checkpoint? Will the puzzles be in a dry place when they get there?

Make plans ahead of time on how you will handle unexpected weather, especially if the date and time of the hunt can’t be easily altered. Additionally, consider making duplicates of all of your puzzles and clues in case they blow away or get damaged in other ways due to the elements. We recommend that you also take photographs of every clue and puzzle you plan to hide. As a last case scenario, you may need to send that photograph to the players in lieu of the real clue or puzzle.

Outside of mother nature, non-hunt participants may accidentally -or intentionally- disrupt your activities. Unexpected traffic could considerably slow down your teams. If your players are milling around a location for too long, a nosy neighbor may be apt to call the police regarding suspicious behavior. Additionally, if you are seen planting a hidden clue at a public location, some curious individual may come by after you, pick it up, and take the clue with them. You never know how someone not involved in your adventure may interfere, so you should plan for any potential scenarios. 

For example, if you plant a clue or puzzle somewhere, see if you can find a partner to help keep an eye on it to make sure it isn’t picked up, blown away, or damaged in any way. These helpers can also keep in contact with you while you set up other portions of the hunt, so you can keep tabs on how far along your players are. You can also supply your helper with additional copies of your clues or puzzles, in case they need to make emergency replacements!

If your adventure requires your players to travel between different locations, you want to invest some time to create additional checkpoints or puzzles to stall, or reroute the players if they’ve skipped a section of the hunt or have made it through too quickly. On the other hand, if time is a prominent factor, be open to dropping parts of the hunt on the fly to speed them along if they are struggling and don’t seem like they’ll make it to their destination in time.

In addition, keep an eye on your surroundings. Make sure you have proper permission to hide clues where you do. It should go without saying, but if you plan to hide a container in a public place, make sure it doesn’t look anything like a bomb! If you plan to do things in a building such as a library, it may help to speak to the librarians or the owners to let them know your plans. Depending on their attitude and the goal of your adventure, the local librarians may even love to help you with that leg of your hunt! 

In literature, there are three major types of conflict

which pair up nicely with the three types of problems you may face during your adventures: Man against Self (Your Adventure and Puzzle Design are B-A-D BAD), Man against Man (Your Players are Unpredictable), and Man against Nature (You Can’t Control the World Around You).

Just like an author needs to find ways for their characters to prepare for and face these conflicts as they arise, you must acknowledge that these conflicts can and will arise at some point in your adventuring career. It happens to the best of us, but how you deal with it will make or break you as a successful adventure maker; best these challenges, don’t let them best you!

What kind of challenges have you faced in your adventure creations, and how did you overcome them? We welcome you to share your experiences, old, new, good, and bad, on the Constructed Adventures subreddit and on our Discord channel. You can also find us on Instagram at @ConstructedAdventures.

Remember, every day is an opportunity to learn something new!