Dungeon Master Forum

I don't know about anyone else, but on the rare occasion I try to make someones birthday absolutely outstanding with something that they would perhaps never have done otherwise. However it should suit them in some way. For example I had a friend who loved to take photos of various things around the city all the time and quite enjoyed eating in different resturaunts. So I found a place that did a fly and dine. They took us up in the air to take photos, and then stopped at a resturant with a very special meal.. so... she got to take a lot of photos all together and it was a nice event.

Well, tomorrow is Sandie's birthday so I decided to do one of these rare but interesting birthday events. However this time I don't have a lot of cash so what to do on a budget and still make it fun. The reason I'm posting this here is because like many of you, we both enjoy adventure games and so on, and so I'm taking a que from those and sending Sandie on an adventure of sorts. 6 riddles and a trip to various locations that she will find in the answers to those riddles. each location containing one of her gifts. I'll be sure and let you know how it goes, but I have done this sort of thing for a friend before and it went over quite well. So I expect the same this time as well.

My question to you though, is there any cool events that you've done for someone or someone has done for you? Something memorable.. or perhaps something you've thought about doing but haven't pulled it together yet? perhaps we can all share some ideas for cool birthday surprises that we can use for future birthday events!

anyway, more details on this adventure tomorrow or the day after.. as I don't want to tell too much here in case she happens to read here the details.. Not that she frequents here, but just in case

Oh, that does sound fantastic! I like these adventure games with riddles about further locations etc. I've never used it as a birthday present, and I'm really looking forward to reading details about your adventure game - actually, I hope I'll learn something smart and use it later.

By the way, it's my 30th birthday this Sunday. My GF together with my family are preparing something *special* for me - that's all I know. I wish I knew what it is. I wish it was this kind of adventure game. And I hope the surprise won't be too big (like giving me an elephant or something).

PS Yeah, and happy birthday to your Sandie!

well it was a series of riddles and puzzles... she went through them all in advance because she expessed to me that she wasn't sure she wanted to spend the whole day out. She's been feeling under the weather the past 3 days so I gave her the riddles to solve at home rather than going to each location. She still enjoyed it and said she might like to try it again.

I gave the first set as 3 riddles that all depended on each other.
1. a 4 letter word for something that represents a country
2. a 2 letter word for smoething that represents you
3. take 3 letters from the first answer and add it to the second answer and you will have what you need to see the clue.

Spoiler

flag and me are the answers which then provides flame. The flame is then used to see the invisible ink (rice vinegar, but you can use anything, lemon, wine, etc) by heating up the paper and gave her next clue

when she got the clue she went to a book I chose, as the clue was XML and so inside her book of XML was the next riddle which was a puzzle which was just squares of paper. Before I cut them I folded all the lines for cutting and put symbols like squares, S shapes, = shapes, and X, and so on.. things that you could use to identify the edges of each. So that she could put them together. on the oposite side of each square is a letter which has an underscore so you could tell which way it faces. when I made it, some letters were put upside down to provide nonsense and the ones right side up were the message. Once they were cut though, there was a lot of letters and no way to figure out the message without using the edges of the squares to line it up for you.. she took a while to get the use of the edges but once she had that she got the puzzle figured out fairly quickly.

the next one was a sudoku puzzle where the corner numbers were used to spell out a word. She had to use the T9 english on her cell phone to type in the numbers which spelled only one word "LUSH" which is a soap place here that she likes. So that was one of the locations we were going to.

the next one was a light puzzle. In order to make it you need either a light table or a sunny day.. you fold a paper in 3 and on a seperate bit of paper write your message.. than trace over just parts of each letter on each side of the 3 folds so that they make up whole words but look like just marks on paper without that. then I added a few more marks around the place to make them look more random but not to interfere with the area where the message was.. The riddle contained with that one was "In Shadow you will not find me. seek out the light".. this message took her to her favorite place.. a book store..

the last riddle was again 3 questions which were used to sound out a location.
All answers are only 3 letters. Once you have all 3 answers they must be placed in the correct order and spoken out loud. Keep in mind that one of these answers must be spoken twice.
1. A womans name, or to take legal action
2. 3 letters, 9 lives
3. another word for "her"

Spoiler

1. sue, 2. cat, 3. She.. this was to spell out Sushi Katsu Sue-she Cat-sue ..

she had trouble with riddle number 1 but got the others easily and once she had those words she knew immediately what it was as it's the name of her favorite resturaunt..

some ideas I didn't go for was the black light idea, you can write on any bit of paper with a brightening detergent, or with saliva onto dark paper.. it will not show except under black light... and we have one here, but I felt it was a bit difficult to put into riddle form. If someone were to go to clubs where they had them or had one in one of their rooms perhaps they could make it a bit easier.. but for us it just turned out to not be practical. All in all it was a good 3 days of trying to find things to do and making all the puzzles and riddles.. but a lot of fun all the same.

The one other time I did this sort of thing I had left the Riddles at the stores, but I found it was hard to get them to agree to keep them there with the gifts. They did in the end, but you also need to plan in advance so they can let whoever is working that day know what the gift is there for and that their name is not the same as the name of the person you're giving it to.. or they may open the riddle and think it's for them So this time I opted to keep them with me.. which worked out well because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to change the daily plan. And really it's not much different since I would have been wandering around with her anyway.

Absolutely awesome, Cows! This is definitely true love.

This is exactly what I wanted to say. Excellent riddles and true love.