How to host an adventure party

Hi, Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this post into something that is useful for people now, rather than in the crazy Wild West days of 2011 where blogging was more of an online journal and people just came for a story. I’m not quite sure how to describe this, it’s a LARP birthday party, or maybe a quest adventure party, or a choose your own adventure party. It’s all of that and more, but what it really is, is a fun birthday party for my kids who now that they’re all grown up probably don’t remember it as much.

Future Ticia has also added in some affiliate links, and has it slightly organized better now. I return you to the original post. I’ll pop in from time to time with more comments.

Oh wait, one final statement, I do not try to create Pinterest-worthy projects. This is my sons’ birthday party, and they designed with input what everything looked like. That means the treasure chest is painted their favorite colors at the time, and it’s not painted well.

Preparing for a Quest Adventure Party

I mean, how to host a World of Warcraft party, but for the sake of simplicity let’s call it an adventure.

Supplies you need for this LARP birthday party

milk carton handles, foam core board (or save lots of cardboard), foam swords, small bottles for potions, lots of cardboard, poster paint, tissue paper

Step 0. At least a month before the party start saving your milk carton handles for shield handles.
1. Order enough swords for all of the attendees. Then take tissue paper and wrap it around the swords for scabbards. It ends up looking very cool.

2. Paint your treasure box. Yes, it would have looked a lot prettier if I had taken control and painted it all myself, but then my kids wouldn’t have gotten to take part in the process. Sometimes it’s about the process, not the product.

3. Decorate your cake. In case you were wondering 6 year old boys do not make for a very fancy and decorated cake. There is however a lot of frosting involved.

4. Clean the beaters. This is a very important step.

5. Get cardboard or foam core board and cut it into a shield shape. For the sake of ease I just cut rectangles, all the kids cared was they got shields. For more detail check out Knight Shield

6.  Get out your hot glue gun and glue the milk carton handles on.  This is not a very strong glue, so they will break, but it works just fine for playing with, and they’re easily repaired.

7.  Now eagerly wait for your guests to hand them their swords.

8. Make the quest signs. Since ours are inspired by World of Warcraft, we made a yellow exclamation mark to get the quest and when it was completed there was a yellow question mark to turn in the quest.

Rules for Combat for a Happy Adventure Party

Future Ticia is inputting something here, now that my boys are full-grown adults and have spent the past several years running Nerf wars, and melee combat with friends.

• Do not aim for the head, headshots are not an automatic out, but they do not count for hitting someone for points. We recognize it happens on accident.
• Unarmed people are off-limits.
• Do not use your full strength and swing hard, but recognize you are hitting each other foam swords, so that can happen.

Designing Quests for your LARP party

Our quests were very simple because we were designing a party for six-year-olds. We did not write out a script, my best friend, their unofficial aunt, improved a brilliant sob story.

• Training quest, practice sword-fighting with another party-goer
• Rescue the villagers from bandits
• Retrieve the stolen medicine by ambushing the bandits
• Get the secret weapon to defeat the bandit king (in our party it was a pinata)
• Defeat the bandit king

As you can see these are very simple ideas. We have later done more complex quests, and we did one that was driving to several locations. I wouldn’t recommend that with a large party.

Lessons learned from our party, and tips I’d give you.

• Don’t have all of the older kids as bandits, the little kids don’t always herd well. Also, sometimes the older kids got too enthusiastic in their banditry.
• Have a plan and stick with it. We changed our plans sometimes off the cuff.
• Our quests worked very well, that was a good plan.
  • Think through how you will move from quest to quest. We could have made this part slightly smoother, perhaps by changing how to get the next quest?
• Have simpler rules.  We tried 3 times and you’re down rule for the bandits.  We should have gone with one hit.  Nothing to keep track of.
• Make sure everyone knows all of the rules, that went pretty well over all.
• Account for the weather.  We had originally planned for some of the bandits to be magicians and throw construction paper fireballs, but it was too windy for that.
• Plan in a water/snack break. With the quests we did, after rescuing the medicine, I think I might have bought water bottles or juice boxes and fruit snacks or something similar for everyone at that point.

All in all it was a wildly successful party.  Every report I’ve heard was that the kids really enjoyed it, including the 20 year old who was just dropping off some of the kids.  He said it was the most fun he’s had in a while.  That’s saying something.

I’ll probably do a birthday memories post later this week, but I know some of you were curious about how the party went.  It was a blast, and I was SOOOOO tired afterwards.