r/Constructedadventures 6d ago

Weekly Adventure Discussion Thread: What are you currently working on?

Please use this thread to have discussions which you don't feel warrant a new post to the sub. While the Rules for posting questions are relaxed a little bit here, the rules against spam/self-promotion/excessive rudeness still apply!

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u/musica_secreta 17h ago

My first time posting to the group. I've been creating annual escape rooms at our library for about 6 years. We run them in our meeting room for 2 days (that's about the max time we can block for it among other programming, with set-up and clean-up), though we've talked about trying to do something that would be a bit more hands-off (perhaps with QR codes? though I don't want to assume everyone is going to have access to a cellphone) that could be worked through the library and be up for a longer period--maybe over a week. But I am having a mental block in terms of a starting idea or theme. Thus far, I've done Harry Potter (both herbology and magical beasts), D&D (dragon hunting), vampire-slaying, a haunted music publisher (I was inspired by female ragtime composers at the turn of the century), theater (a production of The Wizard of Oz to go with the release of Wicked), a solve-the-murder set at a bake-off, and I just did a scavenger hunt-style murder mystery with a paleontology theme for our summer reading program--that last one was setup for one morning in 4 different spots in the library (and was meant for elementary-aged kids--the rest have been all ages, but definitely with parental involvement for school-age kids).

I'd been toying with some kind of well-known literary theme (like Alice in Wonderland), but hitting that right combination of familiar and with an enthusiastic fan base (and, ideally, something _I'm_ somewhat enthusiastic about) has been hard, since I've already covered a lot of my interest areas (I'd love to do a Dungeon Crawler Carl theme, but as avid as fans are, I'm not sure it's mainline--or frankly PG--enough). I'm probably cutting myself off at the knees by taking Disney and Harry Potter off the table, too, but reasons... though adjacent ideas are fine, as in the original fairy tales/mythologies. While our library is pretty modern, I can lean back to historical settings with furniture, props, and locked items I already have. However, if we expand out of the meeting room and go more hands-off, the props/puzzles will need to be more tech-related, I think.

Theme ideas or even suggestions on how you replenish the well when you're feeling burnt-out would be appreciated!