My parents created “quests” for me growing up. Sometimes it went along the lines of “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate though enemy lines and retrieve the very important classified intel from the drop at the end of the driveway.” Or “You must deliver the dangerous artifact encased within this glob of darkness to the Box of No Return.”

And my cousin and I would do recon. We would plan. We would encounter enemy soldiers or bands of roving orcs. And, ultimately, we would fetch the mail. Or take out the trash to the dumpster. But, boy would we have fun along the way, and our imagination muscles flexed all the better for these experiences!

I started having themed birthday parties, and my parents would deliver much better quests than household chores for those. Backstories. Plot twists. With help from my eldest sister, they created aged maps and treasure chests. They would lie in wait and ambush us. And I had the most talked about and well-remembered birthday parties among my circles of friends! Because it was more than just a fun birthday party activity. These were exciting stories and we were the main characters!

So when my best friend and I decided to make really awesome pirate costumes to see the midnight showing on opening night of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, it didn’t take a huge leap of thought to, “Man, we’ve put a lot into these costumes. We should have a pirate party and invite other people in pirate costumes!” And what’s better at a pirate party than a pirate treasure hunt, complete with buried chest of gold and jewels with lots of cryptic clues and puzzles along the way? Setting it up was so much fun, and we heard such positive feedback from our guests, we made our Pirate Parrrrty (and its accompanying treasure hunt) an annual event for several years!

Out of these fond memories, Adventure Quest was born…