How to host an adventure party

I mean, how to host a World of Warcraft party, but for sake of simplicity let’s call it an adventure.
Step 0.  At least a month before the party start saving your milk carton handles for shield handles.
1.  Order enough swords for all of the attendees.  Then take tissue paper and wrap it around the swords for scabbards.  It ends up looking very cool.

 
2.  Paint your treasure box.  Yes, it would have looked a lot prettier if I had taken control and painted it all myself, but then my kids wouldn’t have gotten to take part in the process.  Sometimes it’s about the process, not the product.

3.  Decorate your cake.  In case you were wondering 6 year old boys do not make for a very fancy and decorated cake.  There is however a lot of frosting involved.

4.  Clean the beaters.  This is a very important step.

5.  Get cardboard or foam core board and cut into a shield shape.  For sake of ease I just cut rectangles, all the kids cared was they got shields.

6.  Get out your hot glue gun and glue the milk carton handles on.  This is not a very strong glue, so they will break, but it works just fine for playing with, and they’re easily repaired.

7.  Now eagerly wait for your guests to hand them their swords.

8.  Practice your combat.  Make sure everyone knows the rules.

9.  Now comes the quest giver.  She came with the sad story of what was happening.  We had about 4 quests (5 if you include training).
A.  Rescue the villagers from the bandits.
B.  Retrieve the stolen medicine by ambushing the bandits.
C.  Get the secret weapon to defeat the bandit king.
D.  Defeat the bandit king.

Going left to right, top to bottom:
1.  Cowering villagers
2.  First fight
3.  Receiving medicine that we retrieved.
4.  Looking for the secret weapon by crossing the dangerous river.
5.  Turning in a quest.
6.  A dead bandit, don’t worry they keep coming back.
7.  Fighting the bandit king.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS:

1.  Don’t have all of the older kids as bandits, the little kids don’t always herd well.
2.  Have a plan and stick with it.
3.  Our quests worked very well, that was a good plan, think through how you will move from quest to quest.
4.  Have simpler rules.  We tried a 3 times and you’re down rule for the bandits.  We should have gone with one hit.  Nothing to keep track of.
5.  Make sure everyone knows all of the rules, that went pretty well over all.
6.  Account for the weather.  We had originally planned for some of the bandits to be magicians and throw construction paper fireballs, but it was too windy for that.
7.  Plan in a water/snack break.

All in all it was a wildly successful party.  Every report I’ve heard was that the kids really enjoyed it, including the 20 year old who was just dropping off some of the kids.  He said it was the most fun he’s had in a while.  That’s saying something.

I’ll probably do a birthday memories post later this week, but I know some of you were curious about how the party went.  It was a blast, and I was SOOOOO tired afterwards.