Our Quests

In Adventure Quest, the kids get to play as characters or heroes within a “quest.” Quests are highly interactive storylines that the kids shape the course of as the primary characters. Renaissance Adventures has written literally hundreds of quests so that each storyline is unique, inspiring, and exciting for the children. Some quests are epic, some humble, some teach lessons in rivalry or chivalry, others are sillier than a flame-breathing chihuahua at an ice troll’s belly-dance party. During our summer quests, we have a new and amazing quest each week for the kids to discover. Every week-long quest is the result of about 50 hours of work – they are well thought through, dynamic, empowering, wholesome, holistic, and a lot of fun!

"It's very imaginative and the adventures are new and unknown. It's like a fun voyage into the unknown." --G. K., age 7

The Quest as a Unique Adventure

The written quest is just the beginning. Our master story-weavers – the Quest Leaders – shape each quest to suit the kids’ actions and needs so that the way in which the children solve the dilemmas, defeat the monsters, and save the day is unique based upon the creative talents and collaboration of each group. For instance, a written quest that has the group meet an angry dragon may have four groups deal with it in four unique and empowering ways. One group may decide to see what’s upsetting the dragon by role-playing their skills of diplomacy and understanding. Another group may open a magical portal into the dragon’s dreams to see what thoughts the monster is having. A third group may try attacking the dragon, and another may decide to fool it into thinking that they are actually the dragon’s minions here to do its bidding. The possibilities are limitless, which opens the door for the children’s ideas to flourish. In fact, much of our Quest Leader training deals with improvising a story based upon the kids’ needs and creative energy. Sometimes the Quest Leader diverges completely from the quest to suit her Questers’ sense of adventure!

"For Aaron this has been a rich and creative environment in which to express his imagination and personal power!" - Deborah Iole, movement specialist and R.A. parent.

The Building Blocks of a Quest

Although each quest is unique, we always try to explore five different challenge types in each quest. By having a variety of challenges and situations, it assures that the experience is holistic and engaging at all times. The five different general challenge types are:

Physical Challenges: Such as swashbuckling, races, balancing, and other physical activities.

Mental Challenges: Such as solving a riddle, decoding a cryptogram, reading a puzzling map, solving a mystery, or other intellectually-stimulating challenge.

Social Challenges: Such as interacting with different cultures, creatures that don’t use words to express their thoughts, trying to lead a band of villagers, or other event that has the Questers interact with a group of people in an interesting way.

Emotional Challenges: Such as making peace with a raging ogre, cheering up a sad pixie, keeping calm when a haughty duke is insulting them, or other emotional challenge.

Moral Challenges: Such as deciding whether to take vengeance on a cruel monster, keeping one’s word even though they may lose treasure, making amends for a wrong they committed, or other ethical dilemma.

Requested or Customized Quests

Usually the Questers do not get to decide which of our Library of Quests they are led on. This is because, in order to make the most use of our quest library, we must have an itinerary for our quests. In addition, the Quest Leaders spend hours the weekend before the quest reading and learning the various intricacies of the quest to make sure the experience is truly rewarding. However, sometimes the Quest Leader creates a new quest or shapes the existing quest based upon the Questers’ suggestions and his own improvisation and imagination. For instance, it’s not uncommon to have a Quester request being able to battle a certain type of monster or meet a certain ally during the course of the adventure. Other times, it is possible to run a particular type of quest based upon parent or children interest. This is not always possible during our summer months, but often enough during birthday parties or after-school activities, a group can request a pirate-themed, undead-themed, or dragon-themed quest, or something entirely different. If you would like to request a certain type quest, please call the office at (303) 786-9216, and we will do our best to either make a recommendation about which week during the summer would work well, or inform the Quest Leader about your preferences. We cannot ever guarantee that we can fulfill the request – as we have said, each quest is unique and dynamic! But as always, we do our best.