When was the last time you tried something totally new and unplanned? If it's been too long, try one of the Michigan Adventure Games! Click the tabs above to learn about Amazing Race, Survivor, The Mole, and Cryptic Crawl.
The History of Michigan Adventure Games
-When I was 14, I read a Games Magazine Article about Dave Barry's Tropic Hunt, which used all of southern Florida as a game board. It was really a Road Rally done on a grand scale...it had the Goodyear Blimp, the world's largest dice and thousands of players. I wanted to make my own but didn't know enough people who'd be interested. 17 years later, I joined Mensa and found lots of willing participants! Thus the Cryptic Crawl was born. The themes have changed over the years (pirates, secret agents, ancient Egypt, Harry Potter), but it always involves solving puzzles you find in the real world.
-In the TV show The Mole, a group of people get together and attempt missions to win money for the group. However, one of them is The Mole...secretly working against the team to get them to fail the missions. After every few tasks, they take a quiz about the Mole's identity and the person who scores worst is eliminated. It occurred to me that you could do this with any difficult tasks because if people do poorly it raises suspicion - are they bad at that game or are they THE MOLE? So I got a group together and hooked a computer to my TV so we could recreate the show's tense method of player elimination: your name appears in front of a thumbprint...if the print turns green, you're safe but if it turns red you're out. We play for real money...the winner gets money won by the team.
-My favorite game to run is the Amazing Race. Teams of two people traveling to places they never thought they'd go, doing things they never thought they could do and taking a trip around the entire world. Unlike shallow reality shows like Survivor, the Race features life-changing moments (a father reconnecting with his estranged daughter, a Vietnam vet returning to that country for the first time since the war, people seeing third-world poverty or incredible beauty firsthand, and so on). It also teaches you to push your boundaries and that, even in this day and age, people around the world are basically friendly and helpful.
Coworkers talked me into watching it the first time and I was hooked. One day they were talking about how much they'd like to go on the Race and since it was a heavily modified version of the Crawl, I offered to put one on. Even though we only travel around southeast Michigan, we've taken a lot of people to places they never knew existed. But like the show, there are clue boxes, unknown destinations, eliminations and a lot of fun tasks. This is when we started filming our games and giving out DVDs to everyone who plays.
-I resisted attempting Survivor for a long time because it's a very personal game. If you're last on the Race, you're last, but in this game people choose you to be eliminated. I was afraid it'd get personally ugly. But the players assured me it wouldn't so I tried it the first time in 2007. We've themed our Survivors after Southeast Michigan Native Americans, Japan, India, and Italian Renaissance families.
The History of Michigan Adventure Games
-When I was 14, I read a Games Magazine Article about Dave Barry's Tropic Hunt, which used all of southern Florida as a game board. It was really a Road Rally done on a grand scale...it had the Goodyear Blimp, the world's largest dice and thousands of players. I wanted to make my own but didn't know enough people who'd be interested. 17 years later, I joined Mensa and found lots of willing participants! Thus the Cryptic Crawl was born. The themes have changed over the years (pirates, secret agents, ancient Egypt, Harry Potter), but it always involves solving puzzles you find in the real world.
-In the TV show The Mole, a group of people get together and attempt missions to win money for the group. However, one of them is The Mole...secretly working against the team to get them to fail the missions. After every few tasks, they take a quiz about the Mole's identity and the person who scores worst is eliminated. It occurred to me that you could do this with any difficult tasks because if people do poorly it raises suspicion - are they bad at that game or are they THE MOLE? So I got a group together and hooked a computer to my TV so we could recreate the show's tense method of player elimination: your name appears in front of a thumbprint...if the print turns green, you're safe but if it turns red you're out. We play for real money...the winner gets money won by the team.
-My favorite game to run is the Amazing Race. Teams of two people traveling to places they never thought they'd go, doing things they never thought they could do and taking a trip around the entire world. Unlike shallow reality shows like Survivor, the Race features life-changing moments (a father reconnecting with his estranged daughter, a Vietnam vet returning to that country for the first time since the war, people seeing third-world poverty or incredible beauty firsthand, and so on). It also teaches you to push your boundaries and that, even in this day and age, people around the world are basically friendly and helpful.
Coworkers talked me into watching it the first time and I was hooked. One day they were talking about how much they'd like to go on the Race and since it was a heavily modified version of the Crawl, I offered to put one on. Even though we only travel around southeast Michigan, we've taken a lot of people to places they never knew existed. But like the show, there are clue boxes, unknown destinations, eliminations and a lot of fun tasks. This is when we started filming our games and giving out DVDs to everyone who plays.
-I resisted attempting Survivor for a long time because it's a very personal game. If you're last on the Race, you're last, but in this game people choose you to be eliminated. I was afraid it'd get personally ugly. But the players assured me it wouldn't so I tried it the first time in 2007. We've themed our Survivors after Southeast Michigan Native Americans, Japan, India, and Italian Renaissance families.