Party Ideas: Adventure Game

Argh! Tech school is taking its toll on my sleep schedule. It's midnight somewhere.

Anyways, here's a cool party idea. You could model your entire party around an adventure game. By 'adventure,' I'm referring to things like the Monkey Island series. Puzzle point-and-click adventures. The games where we watch a guy run around in circles and pick up things and we just sit there watching him.

One thing that I'm sure all of us would like to happen in real life is that people in adventure games find items everywhere. It's so great. They don't even have to have jobs. The difference between adventure games and real life, though, is that the designers of an adventure game get to control what the player gets to pick up. In the right setting, this can be fun rather than damaging to the environment. Perhaps an outside setting would be better, to keep household items out of prying hands.

If you can encourage item-sharing and incorporate your items into a large puzzle, all the better for you! The more people you had, the harder the puzzle would be to implement (if the puzzle relied on specific items.)

Another thing to do at the beginning of the party would be to possibly give out character stats. I know, Guybrush didn't have character stats, but some people get interested more easily if they have something to strive for. There is a potential problem here- how do people gain stats? Should the host or a helper cut out little badges out of construction paper for players to find? Do people get stats by fulfilling orders or quests given by the host? Are the inital values randomly assigned or assigned by other players based on the person's personality? Why not make a list of superpowers and have everybody pick one randomly?

Since people love to play as a character, roleplay would be an exciting element to add. The concept of alignments isn't new (I'm Chaotic Good!) and neither is dressing up. At least it's cool to be a nerd now, so people can actually do this. Beware: this statement comes from someone who owns multiple corsets.

It's your game, too- you can control the environment. If you confine yourself to making up rules before the game, you can miss out on a lot of fun afterwards. You could change the national currency to a previously useless item that shows up everywhere, assign specific players to be spies for an evil regime, or have an earthquake that sends everyone inside to eat cake. The players could even organize a revolution to overthrow the host's monarchy.

One of the things that can ruin a good party or game is having too many rules. For an open-ended adventure game, you may be able to get away with just a general goal and hiding items all over the place. Unlike other party games, this one could be open-ended and go in many directions depending on how it is implemented. Heck, you can even pretend to be a game designer. I'm just waiting for someone to do this.

Has anyone had a party like this? Any more good ideas for things to do?